U02U, Louis Hagenbucher ‘20, Grandmother, 1941, Mie
On October 23, 2018, I interviewed my grandmother, who currently lives in Ōsaka. She is currently 77 years old. I interviewed her by phone about her past experiences during World War II. She told me that she was four years old when she experienced the war, so her memories may be a little hazy.
During the war, she lived in rural Mie prefecture with her family, including her grandparents on both her mother’s and father’s sides. She lived at a farm where they grew various types of crops. Before the war, the family mainly grew wheat, rice, cabbage, soy beans, and sweet potatoes, but due to the constant air raid warnings, the family was not able to take care of the crops regularly, so the amount and variety of crops that they could grow were reduced to soybeans and sweet potatoes. Instead of rice to fill their stomachs, they cut up the roots of sweet potatoes and boiled them. Fish were rare, but meat was even more uncommon. My grandmother said that the farm had chickens, except they only ate them during special occasions.
She also had visitors from the cities who came to ask for food or to work on the farm with them. She was very hungry at the time, but it was far worse in the city area. She heard stories from her uncle and aunt who came back from the city to live with her. Her uncle saw a train that was blown into fragments and exploded, letting out a darkish flame, when a plane shot it with machine guns. Her aunt, who was a nurse, had to walk over burnt corpses and also had to treat people who were heavily burned or scarred. The company where her grandfather worked was a paper factory in the industrial area of Ōsaka, which was also bombed. Her grandfather survived the blast, but some of his fellow workers died. Surprisingly, my grandmother’s relatives who went to the war all came back, unlike some other people she knew.
My grandmother was actually excited when the air raid sirens sounded, since she could go into the air raid shelter and eat her share of roasted soybeans. She stored the roasted soybeans in a bag that also became a hood to protect her head from debris falling on to her head. Her mother was the strongest person there, since all the men had gone to the war, so she came into the shelter last and always closed the doors of the shelter. She said there was no source of light and when the doors were closed she could not see anything, but she heard the sirens continuously warning the people in the vicinity. My grandmother also said that having your own air raid shelter as a family was quite common in her region.
She wore sandals that were made out of harvested wheat, which were easy to make but were very fragile, and in the rain they were useless. She also wore pants that were called monpe. Monpe were baggy pants that were tied at the waist. They were very durable, since they were usually made out of padded cloth.
She said it was always a 30-minute walk to school. No type of transportation existed, so everybody went everywhere on foot, unless they were leaving town, which also was quite uncommon. The teacher at school taught children about words that were restricted during that time, and he also told them that they were quite lucky to have a school building. She has very little memory of what they were actually taught at school. The school actually gave breaks during harvesting and planting seasons for farming, since they knew that the parents needed all the help they could get. Studying at home was actually considered bad behavior since it meant that you were selfish and not willing to help the family survive. She always had to get the water from the well for the family, and once she got stuck in the well, since the weight of the water swung her into the well.
She was given medications at school as well. She was given pills that make you poop out the bugs that infested your intestines. They looked like long white strings, and they wiggled in the water. They were also given hair medication that killed lice and their eggs. This was done on the school field. The teachers lined up their kids in the field then applied white powder on top of their heads. As soon as the powder went on, my grandmother saw a lot of lice crawling down the neck of the student in front of her, and the lice eggs dropped on the school field. She said she got used to it, since this was held every ten days. She said her hair stayed white until she applied water to her hair.
The worst thing she experienced because of the war was hunger. She said that it would be very hard for people nowadays to understand how hunger can really cause suffering. She still remembers to this day about the hunger, but it was worse for her parents, since they ate less than the children but worked more on the farms and took care of the elderly. She said that she could not imagine how much worse it was for her parents. She told me the world we live in is so much better, since you can buy food cheaply almost anywhere. She also said that there was one thing that was good about the war. She said, unlike other young people, I would be prepared for it.