M01C, Freddie Jinzaki ‘06, Grandmother, 1936, Hyōgo
My grandmother was born in 1936 and experienced the war when she was in elementary school. She lived in Kōbe, as the oldest child of her family, and she remembers quite a lot about this time period.
She remembers very clearly the keihō warning sirens. There were two types of sirens: kūshū-keihō (air raid sirens) and keikai-keihō (caution sirens). The difference between the two was that, in case of an air raid siren, everyone had to go to a bōkūgō, an underground air raid shelter that they had built to protect themselves from the bombing by U.S. planes. On the other hand, a warning alarm alerted people that there might be an air raid soon, so they should be alert.
Bōkūgō were usually built in open land, or the back yard of a house, or in the mountains. My grandmother’s shelter would hold at least three to four families, and she reminded me that the average size of families was much larger than today.
She remembers that the bōkūgō had a trap door covered by dirt. Once you were inside, no one could go to sleep. Everyone had to sit up, awake, or crouching on the ground. She doesn’t remember how long she had to stay there, but one air raid might go on for a long time, so she spent many hours in the shelter. Air raids might come at any time of the day or night, so all that mattered is that everyone had to take shelter. She went there almost every night, so she wore many layers of clothing and she always went to sleep with her socks on, since the bōkūgō was cold at night.
My grandmother remembers seeing people who had been injured or killed lying in the streets. She said that mothers might deliberately kill their babies who wouldn’t stop crying, since they were afraid that the American troops who landed would be able to track them.
During the war, people were given ration tickets called haikyūken, which could be traded for food. The quality of food was extremely low, but people then could never complain. Ration tickets could be used for rice, miso soup, and small side dishes like fish. She remembers holding her mother’s hand while they were waiting in line, feeling very stressed standing in the cold. There were always food shortages because of the war, but if you wanted to eat higher-quality food, you had to go to the black market (yamiichi). She never went there herself, but her father went to sell vegetables at a high price to earn a living. There was extreme poverty, and that was the only way that families could survive.
My grandmother lived in the shitamachi (working-class neighborhood) of Kōbe. Her house had only two rooms, with a closet (oshiire), a chest for clothes (tansu), a small kitchen, and a small round table (chabudai), which her father used as a desk. She studied on the table, doing her homework. The toilets did not flush; they were torikumi-shiki latrines, from which all of the excreta had to be removed frequently. There was simple lighting, but everyone had to keep the lights dim at night, so they tied a black cloth around the light. In the winter, they built a fire with charcoal and boiled water in a teapot, since there were no electric stoves (these did not exist until after the war), and everyone wore layers of clothing to keep themselves warm.
During the war, houses were built quite close to each other, so that neighbors could keep each other alert and help each other. There was a notice board (keijiban) to tell everyone in the neighborhood necessary information.
My grandmother went to the Kōbe Chinese School from kindergarten onwards. The school wasn’t run on a timetable, especially in the lower grades. Frequently students had to evacuate with their classmates during air raids. Her textbooks were printed on a manually-operated copy machine. The school backpacks (randoseru) weren’t made during the war, so they used ones that had already been used by previous students.
By the end of the war, her house had been destroyed, but within five years, her father built a new two-story house for the family, especially for her little brother, who was going to first grade. In Chinese tradition, boys were thought to be more important, since they would carry on the family name into the future. Her school was destroyed by the bombing too, but since China was an ally of the United States during the war, it was one of the victorious countries, so the Chinese School was allowed to use the campus of one of the Japanese public schools.