N10G, Lisa Tashiro ‘07, Heinz Meibergen, Grandfather, 1910, Germany, Yokohama: Naka-ku
I wanted to interview my grandmother, Teruko Meibergen. Unfortunately, due to her forgetfulness, she did not have much information to share with me. She seemed reluctant to talk about her experiences during the war time. She was about 12 years old and lived in Ōsaka. She referred to the situation as “haikyū, haikyū, and just haikyū,” which was a food rationing system, where she had to line up for hours just for some bread, milk, or butter. Her brother, Kazuo, was sent to Okinawa to fight in the Japanese Army, but he never returned, and his body was never found. He was only about 24.
I went to my mother seeking help, and she told me I could interview my grandfather, Heinz Meibergen. This did not make sense to me at first, because my grandfather died before I was born. She continued to tell me that he had always told her great stories about his life during the war and left her many photographs, newspaper articles, and even a draft of a book that was going to be published, depicting his life. Therefore, my interview will mainly focus on my grandfather, through the many different articles and letters he left behind.
Heinz Meibergen came to Japan in 1936, escaping the Nazis. He was born on March 3, 1910, into a Jewish family in Bremerhaven, Germany. He began working as an apprentice in a toy agency, called John Hess. After working for ten years, he had proven himself to be a top businessman. He was given one chance to escape the Nazis when his boss asked him to be the representative of the company in Japan. Using the Trans-Siberian Railway, he arrived in Yokohama in March 1936.
He found friendly Japanese who helped him financially to establish his agency. He became successful enough to be able to call his parents and two brothers, Curt and Siegfried Meibergen, to Japan, to escape Nazi persecution. His mother, Meta Meibergen, came to Japan on the last boat that the Nazis allowed to leave Germany.
In 1939, about 3000 German Jews who had managed to escape from the Nazis came through Yokohama to find a new homeland, for example in Shanghai where Jews were accepted at the time. Heinz, with several others including his younger brother Siegfried, formed a committee to help these people immigrate to their new homelands. This was the “Jewish Relief Committee,” located in the Gorakusō building near Yamashita Park.
After the war broke out in 1941, all foreigners in Japan were interned in Karuizawa and were assigned small pieces of land. There were people from many different countries like France, Germany, and Switzerland, who all had to survive there. Heinz tried to grow vegetables to survive. According to him, “the Germans worked very hard to farm and supply food for themselves and their families, whereas the French just went for walks all day.” He used to ride his bicycle to the next town to purchase a pot of miso, for he knew how useful it could be. The clothes that he was provided with through rationing were of such poor quality that, one time when he was riding back to his village, it started to rain, and his clothes literally melted. He also talked about how they had managed to barter some food and tools for a cow. This cow ran away and they spent hours and hours looking for it. It was dark and past midnight when he found himself staring at two glowing circles and realized that he was standing right in front of the cow.
He was able to return to Yokohama in 1945, and he was actually there when General MacAruthur came to Japan and saw him come down the steps of the Hotel New Grand. At around this time, a buyer of the greatest company dealing with live birds came from New York to buy Japanese canaries. Heinz was asked to be his agent, and eventually 50,000 canaries were shipped by boat to America. Siegfried and Curt, his two brothers, went to the United States, while Heinz remained in Japan until he retired. A Japanese writer, Inui Saburō, contacted Heinz a few years later, asking him about his life during the war. Inui’s plan was to write a book on how the Jews were helped.