U03, Rei Kokubu ‘20, Kanbei Kokubu, Grandfather, 1939, Hyōgo, Tōkyō
My grandfather, Kanbei Kokubu, is 79 years old. I interviewed him on November 4, 2018, at my house where we live together.
Rei (I): When were you born?
Grandfather (G): In 1939 (Shōwa 14).
I: So were you born just before Japan went to war against the U.S. I want to hear about your experiences during World War II.
G: Before the end of the war, I was evacuated to the Kansai area. Then I came back to Tōkyō. During that time, my father, your great-grandfather, was in Korea (Chōsen) as one of the soldiers.
I: I know you were really small at the age of six, but can you remember details of when you were evacuating?
G: When I was evacuating, I was in Ashiya, in Hyōgo. At that time, I was living with my grandfather, my mother’s father. I was evacuated to the village of my mother, and my father was out to war in Korea. The house is not there right now, but it was not hit by the bombs, so we were all saved. But the B29 air raids of the American army attacked us, so we ran away into the air-raid shelter.
I: The attacks came to the place you were evacuating?
G: Yes, around Kōbe and Hyōgo, it came. However, because the atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the war ended with Japan losing, the bombing stopped. But until that time, B29s were dropping bombs on us.
I came back to Tōkyō with my father after he came back from Korea. Then I entered elementary school, when I was six years old—pretty small. (You also entered elementary school at the age of six, right?) At that time, Tōkyō was burnt out, but luckily this house was not.
I: Wait, did this house exist before the war?
G: We rebuilt it once, but the former house was safe from the bombing. At that time, from Shinagawa Station, there was the Toden streetcar running. It’s called the romen densha right now. That’s how I went to school. Tokyo was burnt out, and we did not have anything to eat or wear, but eventually, the Japanese economy recovered and we had enough to eat. Because Japan lost to the U.S., the U.S. Army was occupying the country. You’ve heard of General Douglas MacArthur, right? He was the leader of the army. In 1950 the Korean War started. The U.S. and China fought in the war and Japan was the frontline base; therefore this helped the Japanese economy to recover.
Right after the surrender, we did not have anything to eat or wear, so barter trade was common. For example, you brought a kimono and got food in exchange. This was called yamiichi (black market).
I: But did you not have food to eat every day? How were you supplied with food?
G: We got support from the U.S., so when we went to school we had lunch with powdered milk and koppe-pan bread. Because the school was burned down too, there was a barrack built. It was a coarse wooden building, and we were studying there.
I: Then when was the school standing today built?
G: The original one was built by Fukuzawa Yukichi about 150 years ago. Then it was burned in the war, and the barrack was built, and we studied there. I do not know when the new building that is there right now was constructed.
Then the Japanese economy recovered, and the country was succeeding, which connects to Japan today. Right after the war, everyone suffered: they lived, studied, and worked, but we did not have anything! No food, shelter, or clothes. This was a time when all the Japanese people were trying to survive.
I: Around how old were you when your living conditions mostly recovered?
G: Because my house was not burned like the other ones were, I had a place to live, and I did not have to live in the middle of a burned area. But most of the places in Tōkyō were burned, and it took ten to twenty years to fully reconstruct the area. At the end of the Occupation, we declared independence, and the U.S. accepted it. The Japanese people tried hard, and Japan recovered. It’s already 73 years since the war ended in 1945, because it’s 2018 right now. I am 79 years old now, so I was only six when the war ended. After we lost, it was peaceful.
I: What do you think of the technology right now, like the iPhone that you are holding in your hands?
G: Science and technology are improving extremely quickly, and it will progress more, so well I hope that the country will stay in peace. I wish your generation will make an effort for peaceful uses of technology. In the war, four million people died. But around me, almost no one died. Many of my relatives went to the war as soldiers but almost all of them came back alive. So we were a lucky family. Your grandmother’s father, too, went to war but came back alive.
I: Don’t you have anger against the U.S.?
G: I don’t feel anger against the U.S., but towards the Japanese leaders at the time, like General Tōjō Hideki, who led the country into the war. I think of their mistakes. I did not really understand the reasons for the war, because I was so young. I entered elementary school just at the time the war ended. Also, we got support from the U.S. after the war, so I do not feel anger against the U.S.