U05, Hana Saeki ‘20, Tsutomu Saeki, Grandfather, 1939, Kagawa
I interviewed Tsutomu Saeki, my paternal grandfather, on November 4, 2018. He was born in 1939, two years before the war between Japan and the U.S. broke out.
Q. What was the first impression you had that made you think “Oh, this is war?”
A. My first and maybe my biggest impression of the war was most likely during the Takamatsu Bombing on July 4th, 1945. I remember looking from my grandmother’s garden out on the city of Takamatsu. The city was up in flames; you could see the fire all the way from the garden. You could see the planes illuminated by the flames from the city, and you could see tiny seed-like objects falling from the sky, the bombs. They made these high-pitched wailing sounds, drowning out their raid sirens from the city, and they made a huge booming noise as they fell on the city. The sky was red!
My grandfather was in the city during the bombing; he managed to escape just in time, and I remember running to greet him. Our house was completely destroyed in the fire, and when the war ended in 1945 (Shōwa 20), I remember staring at the rubble that used to be a part of our wall. There were remains of incendiary bombs scattered around the house and there were bombs that hadn’t even exploded rolling around the ground next to me! What surprised me the most was that I could see the Seto-Naikai (Inland Sea) from my house. The city of Takamatsu had been destroyed so completely that I could see the sea!
My second impression of the war that was perhaps the most terrifying experience was when I saw a Grumman aircraft fly over my head right after the bombing. I was so terrified I ran directly into a river and stayed there until the aircraft was out of my sight.The Grumman fighter planes were aircraft used to pepper bullets out and shoot people from a low altitude range. There was a rumor that one of the bullets had hit my neighbor and had killed him! Because the aircraft was used for shooting at a low altitude, I saw the man piloting the aircraft. An American man piloting the aircraft had killed my neighbor and perhaps many others. I was terrified and filled with resentment. I don’t think I will ever forget his face or the experience.
Q. Did any of our family go to war and directly fight on the frontlines?
A. Yes, my father Kiyoshi and my mother’s brother Satsumi. I remember them faintly, from when I was three years old and from what my other relatives told me, sending my father off to the war because the military ordered him to. Kiyoshi and Satsumi both went to Manchuria, north of China. My father was lucky; he was a little too old for the war, so he came back in three years. Satsumi, on the other hand, actually fought on the front lines with guns and weapons and came back badly injured.
Q. How was life during the war?
A. Since I was a kindergartner during the war, I mostly stayed with my grandmother in the countryside, helping her with farming and tending the chicken, so I could say that I received more food than the people in the city. But I remember that we could only eat meat on special occasions, like during a celebration. My grandmother had a chicken coop with 100 chickens, so I would go there every morning to collect eggs. After the war, I went back to my mother and father, back to the city, where food was scarce. We barely got to eat rice, and we were allowed to eat meat on celebrations, like on New Year’s Day or festivals. When I was in third grade, after the war, I went to Tokushima with my father, and I ate niku-udon (beef noodles) for the first time. I was so amazed and shocked that such an amazing dish existed.
While I was attending school, our principal told us to find edible weeds when coming to school. Only right before lunch did we realize that those edible weeds would be our main dish. Because we didn’t have any wood to make a fire, most of our class time was spent finding edible weeds or searching for firewood in the mountains or planting and harvesting potatoes.
Q. What was the most painful memory you had of the war?
A. Starving. I was scared that I would die of starvation. And also not being able to read any books. I loved books, so whenever I heard that one of my classmates had bought a book, there were lines of other children wanting to read the books too; we even made lists of who could borrow the books next.
Q. What made you think “the war has ended?”
A. Most likely when all the adults around me started crying while they were listening to the Gyokuon-hōsō (Emperor Hirohito’s “Jewel Voice” Broadcast) on August 15, 1945. What surprised me was that the Emperor had a really high voice! The vocabulary he used was very difficult to understand. It was like he spoke in a different language!
Q. What was your impression of Americans during the war?
A. I thought they were terrible people. I was taught at a young age that “the Americans are our enemies.” I heard terrible things about the Americans, so I was terrified of them. While I was five or six, even towards the end of the war, during school, we were fighting with bamboo spears. When I asked one of the teachers whom we were fighting, he answered, “The Americans, of course.”
But after the war, when I was a sixth grader and finishing my violin lesson, my teacher served me a sponge cake. I was so amazed that such delicious food existed (although the niku-udon was far more amazing than the sponge cake).
I was also amazed by the films that America had produced. The first American film I watched was Tarzan. The storyline and the quality of the film were so good that I was instantly attracted to American films. Watching the films, I started to think that “the Americans perhaps aren’t as terrifying as what the adults said.” After that, I started to become obsessed with films and still am today.
Q. Did you think that the Emperor was a God?
A. Yes, I thought he was a God. That was what I had been taught being brought up. But while I was listening to the Jewel Voice Broadcast, I think every single citizen in Japan thought, “Oh, he’s human.” As time went on, fewer and fewer people thought he was a God. I think that change of ideas had a huge impact on Japan, politically, socially and culturally.
Q. During the war, up until the very end, did you think Japan would have won?
A. Yes, I believed Japan would win. And I think the majority of the adults thought so too. And even if some thought that we would lose, they weren’t allowed to say such things. But towards the end, I think many adults started to become aware that we might lose the war. We only heard good news on the radios; about how much our territories expanded, and how well we were doing in the war. Even though we went through so many bombings, I still thought we were going to win. I think we all believed that those bombings were temporary.
In my opinion, the reason why many Japanese didn’t think that we were going to lose the war was that we had never lost a recent war. We were miraculously saved by a divine wind (kamikaze) when the Mongols tried to invade us; we won the Sino-Japanese War; we won the Russo-Japanese War; and our territories were expanding greatly. There was no way that we would be defeated through all that streak of luck.
Thank you so much for participating in this interview.
I hope you learned something from it.