M03T, Mina Mardani ‘06, Yasuko Takano, Grandmother, 1932, Tōkyō, Chiba
I interviewed my maternal grandmother on November 15, 2004. Her name is Yasuko Takano, and she is 72 years old. This is her testimony.
On December 8, 1941, I listened to the radio news with my family at our house in Ryōgoku, and I remember that that was the day when World War II began. The announcer continuously described the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Navy, and he kept saying that Japan had won the battle. I didn’t know about anything in detail, since I was still a young girl at that time, but I do remember many shocking things that happened to me and the people close to me.
I was in Grade 3 of elementary school when the war began, and it did not make much of a difference to my life at that point. I went to school as usual; I played with my brothers and sisters; I had plenty to eat. There was no problem for a couple of years. By the end of Grade 5, I started to feel worried about the war, which was getting closer to Japan’s territory, but I wasn’t that concerned, because I was with my family and friends.
By the time I was in Grade 6, people around me finally started to discover that Japan was losing the war against the United States, and the news horrified everyone. In that same year, my classmates and I were ordered to evacuate (sokai) from Tōkyō to Chiba. I went to Katori-gun in northeastern Chiba, to stay at a temple with my homeroom teacher and my classmates, and we stayed there for more than eight months.
In March 1945, my classmates and I were told to return to Tōkyō for our graduation ceremony, since we were in Grade 6, and I was able to see my parents. I was really happy, although my brothers and sisters had also evacuated, so I wasn’t able to see all of my family members. I was looking forward to the graduation ceremony which was planned for the following week, but I wasn’t able to graduate with my classmates because of an awful event.
On March 9-10, Tōkyō was attacked by the American planes, and they burned most of the buildings around where I lived. I survived because I ran to Ryōgoku Station with my neighbors and family, because that was our plan if Tōkyō were to be attacked. There were many people gathering at the station, and we were shivering from the fear that we were experiencing at that moment. I found most of my friends there, but not all. I was worried about them and their families, but there was nothing that I could do, so I just prayed for them to be safe somewhere.
After everything had been burned to the ground, I went to look at my house. It was like a field smeared with black ink, since everything had turned to ashes. There was nothing to remind me of the shape of the buildings that I used to see every day. I kept on walking around my house, and then I found something strange lying on the ashes. I saw a big black doll on the street, and when I went to have a closer look, I realized that it was a dead body. I covered my mouth and ran back to the station, and as I ran, I looked around to see if there were more dead bodies.
Maybe it was because I hadn’t looked carefully before, but then I saw dead bodies everywhere. I wasn’t able to stop crying when I thought about people whom I knew. I didn’t know if they were safe, and after I saw all of those dead bodies, I wasn’t able to stop thinking about the terrible things that could have happened to them.
A few days later, I found out that some of my friends had died in the attack. When my homeroom teacher told me this, I couldn’t stop crying. These were friends whom I had been living with in Chiba just a week before, and they weren’t alive. I cried with the friends who had survived, and we sadly graduated from elementary school. One of my friends who was in the same class wrote a novel about her experience in World War II, after she grew up. This novel became very famous later on. It’s called The Glass Rabbit (Garasu no Usagi).
Since my house was burned down, my family (except those who were still evacuated) moved to Sendai to live for about a year, because a family whom we knew quite well had a house there, and they let us live in the guesthouse (hanare).
When I was in Grade 9 (the third year of middle school), I took my 13-year-old little brother to the river near our house. We were having lots of fun playing there, but he accidentally cut his leg on something sharp. I quickly took him back to the house, but he got tetanus (hashōfū) because of that cut. He stayed in hospital for a long time because he had an extremely high fever continuously. I went to the hospital to see him, and I talked to him about many things so he would not be bored. When I went the next time, I saw him lying on the bed, quietly dead. I think that was the saddest day of my life, since I felt like it was my fault that he had died. If I hadn’t taken him to the river that day, he wouldn’t have had to die.
The war ended on August 15, 1945, and I remember that it was a hot, humid day. When I heard on the radio that Japan had been defeated by the United States, I felt strange. It was more like anger, but not towards anyone who was involved in the war, but I still don’t know why I was so upset when the war ended. I was extremely happy, but then I thought about the people who weren’t able to survive. I thought about all of my friends and neighbors who died when Tōkyō was attacked, and I thought about my brother who died of illness.