T02F, Princess Okada ‘19, Sakae Okada, Grandmother, 1932, Hiroshima
On October 26, 2017, I interviewed my paternal grandmother, Sakae Okada. She was born in 1932 and is 85 years old.
She was only nine years old when the Pacific War between Japan and the U.S. broke out in 1941. She was born in a poor farming family of three in Numakuma-gun, Imazu-chō (now part of Fukuyama city) in eastern Hiroshima prefecture. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, (137-1945), her father was sent to Manchuria to join the Army. The other “healthy” men in her village were also conscripted and sent to different parts of Asia to fight in the war. Her father was only able to come back home in 1949, four years after the end of the war.
Since her mother was very sickly and weak, and her younger brother was around five years younger than her, she provided the main support for her family. Therefore, for most of her childhood and early teenage years, the responsibilities of the farm and their house, and taking care of her brother and mother, lay mainly on her.
Her daily routine was simple. Since she had no alarm clock, she woke up from the sound of the rooster at dawn. Then, she would wash her face, then go and change into her farming kimono. The kimono had to be comfortable to work and move around in, so it was a very simple and non-fashionable type of kimono. On a normal day, she spent a few hours in the morning spraying pesticides or adding fertilizers to the crops. Aside from rice, she also planted other crops like potatoes, pumpkin, cabbages, and tomatoes. After all the farm work, she cooked breakfast, which was mainly rice and vegetables, with minimal seasonings. They didn’t eat meat, except for fish, because it was expensive, and there were many vegetables on the farm to choose from anyways.
It was not an easy task trying to maintain her normal childhood life and still support her family. Their farm was not easy to maintain. It encompassed an enormous space and had a lot of various different vegetation, so it required much of her attention. In fact, she missed many school days because she had to work on the farm. Fortunately, everyone in her neighborhood offered to help her. In fact, everyone in her neighborhood helped with each other’s farms, since it was the only way they could get work done with all the men gone to the war. Since there were so many farms to look after, they set up a schedule for each farm.
As a child who just wanted to meet and play with her friends and go to school normally, living in wartime Japan was not an enjoyable experience, but life was still bearable. It was compulsory that a certain percentage of the rice yield from their farm went to the government, but they still had enough to feed everyone in the family.
Furthermore, for most of the duration of the war, only the victories of the JapaneseArmy were announced to people on the radio. All of the news on the radio was manipulated by the Daihon’ei (Japanese Imperial Army Headquarters). When, for example, the army lost ten of their battleships, the Army would only report one; and when one enemy ship was sunk, it would be exaggerated into ten. Therefore, my grandmother had no idea how much losses the Japanese Army was experiencing. She thought that Japan was going to be one of the victorious countries in the war. She had no other choice but to celebrate the “victories” anyway. If she didn’t, she feared that she would be taken away by the police. Even without that fear, she saw the words of the Army, which was deemed as high and mighty, as sacred and true.
However, around the end of 1942, living in wartime Japan started to get increasingly difficult. The percentage of rice required by the government started to increase. The government said that they needed to send it to the soldiers fighting in the war in other countries. Since my grandmother also had to buy clothing and other necessities, there was barely enough rice for the family to live on. Due to that, my grandmother spent most of her days on the farm. She had to work harder in order to increase the yield of the farm and hide as much rice as she could. She also received less help from her neighbors, who were also trying to meet the requirements of the government and still feed themselves. These years became the hardest in her life. Food was getting more scarce, so she was always hungry. She even bought cheaper foods like pumpkin and potatoes, and mixed that with the little rice they had left to compensate for their lack of rice. But it was still not enough to satisfy the hunger. Her area also started experiencing an increasing number of aerial bombings. When before she could only go to school from time to time, she didn’t go to school at all anymore. Not only did she have to work on the farm day and night, school was always cancelled due to the bombings. She remembered going to school and after just half an hour the sirens started ringing, signalling an incoming bombing, so the students were forced to evacuate.
Around 1943, she and many people in their village were sent to work in the warfactories nearby. Since she was 11 years old, she was sent to a medical factory to make medicines for the soldiers in the army. Some of her older friends and schoolmates were sent to factories that built ships or artillery. Since she wasn’t there to take care of the farm, they had less and less food than ever before.
She was very surprised by what was happening around her. If the army was actually winning, just like what they said on the radio, then why were there bombings and shorter food rations? By then, she did not just dislike the war, she absolutely loathed it. Around 1944, many people in their village already had a feeling that it was not going to end well for Japan. She just wanted the war, which took her father away and caused her so much suffering, to end as soon as possible. The stories of the army’s victories did not matter to her anymore, because the only thing in her mind, and the minds of the people around her, was how it would feel to eat to their heart’s content again. But she feared that if she said something critical about the war or about the Army, she would get into trouble.
During the final days of the war, she remembered American airplanes landing near her house on the big road nearby. She was very scared, because it was the first time she had ever seen white men and because of the stories of rape she heard from the other people in the village. So when the airplanes landed, she ran to the air raid shelter, built by their village, where the people evacuated during the times of bombing. Some of the women would even dress up as men to avoid getting raped.
When Hiroshima city was bombed on August 6th, 1945, she thought that it was the worst and most unexpected event ever to happen in Japan. She was in a state of shock. It was still unbelievable for her that Japan had lost the war. But most of all, she was worried for her relatives in Hiroshima. Although she lived in Hiroshima prefecture, she lived quite far from the city, so her town was not affected at all. However, after hearing the news, all she could think about was her uncle and aunt, who lived in the heart of Hiroshima city.
So a week after the bombing, my grandmother decided to head to the city. The only thing which she brought with her were some onigiri (rice balls) for herself, and also some which she planned to give to the people there. From her village, she walked for around 30 minutes to Matsunaga Station, where she rode the train on the San’yō Main Line. Since no trains could go in Hiroshima anymore, she remembered getting off quite far away from the city (approximately three or four kilometers).
When she got to the city she knew she couldn’t stay for more than a day. Everywhere was destroyed beyond comprehension, and there was no place to stay. Even one week after the bombing, the wooden remains of the houses and buildings were still glowing and sending off smoke from the fire. By the Enku river, which she remembered walking along for most of her journey, she saw burnt corpses by the river. The injured ones were also trying to get to the river, trying to escape from the heat.
After walking for a while, she headed towards the place where her uncle lived. She only had a rough idea of where it was, and since almost all of the buildings were destroyed, it was difficult to find. During that time, Red Cross volunteers were also there trying to help the injured victims by putting bandages and various sorts of medicine on their wounds. She asked for their help to find her uncle, and they helped her locate the few buildings which withstood the bomb. Since there were almost no buildings, it was not hard to find. When she went in, she immediately found her uncle and aunt sitting in the corner of the hall. They were very surprised to see her, and immediately went to hug her. They were among the lucky ones who had been in a concrete building during the time of the bomb, which saved them from the explosion.
Unfortunately, not many of the people of the city were as lucky as her uncle and aunt. She didn’t expect that she would one day witness something like this for herself. Near the building, there were neatly piled corpses lying on the ground. Most of their skins were completely black at this point. Some parts of their bones and skull were sticking out; their faces and bodies were beyond recognition. Some of those who were burnt managed to survive, but their suffering was heartbreaking. Their skins were burnt into different shades of red, purple and black; some of them only had half of their bodies burnt. Their clothes stuck to their skin, so when some of the rescuers tried to take off their clothes, the skin would come off with it. She remembered their pleas for help; how they cried about how hot it was. It was the most traumatic experience she had ever suffered.