N09, Shin’ichirō Tanaka ‘07, Ryūji Katayama, Grandfather, 1931, Kanagawa: Fujisawa-shi, Aichi, Tōkyō
My grandfather’s name is Ryūji Katayama. He lives in Fujisawa city in Kanagawa. I interviewed him on October 27, 2005.
Q. What is your age? How old were you during the Second World War?
A. I am 73 years old. I was born on October 30, 1931. My 74th birthday is next week. I was ten years old when Japan started war against the United States, which was in 1941. So I was in fourth grade in elementary school. When the war ended in 1945, I was in the second year of middle school. At that time, the school system was different from today. There were six years of elementary school, and after that, boys could go to Kōtōka (higher elementary school) for two years or to Chūgakkō (middle school) for five years. If you were a girl, you could go to Kōtō-jogakkō (girls’ higher school), and if you were a boy, you proceed to Kōtō-gakkō, which was called higher school.
But the system changed after the war. I became Shinsei-kō-ichi (first year of high school in the new system) when I was in the middle of my fourth year of middle school.
Q. What was the school like? What did you do?
A. In the second year of middle school, which is when the war was about to end, I was sent to a factory to make parts of a combat plane in Tōkyō. Just about when the war ended, I went to Aichi in August. There, I helped with the farming of salt.
Q. Did you evacuate to the rural area?
A. I didn’t go to the rural area, because gakudō-sokai (children going to rural areas in a group to escape the damage of war) was for elementary school kids. I was already in middle school when they were evacuated from the city. The elementary school kids went in groups of classes in their grade.
Q. Where did you live?
A. I lived in Suginami-ku, Tōkyō. There was no bombing in the area, but an elementary school nearby got burnt by incendiary bombs. Those bombs were tubes with oil in them. They were in a batch, which opened up, and the oil spilled out, causing fires. The Japanese houses were made of wood, so they were very easy to burn.
Q. Were you there during the bombing in Tōkyō?
A. I wasn’t at the place, but I saw the red sky. It was at night. I also saw the B-29 planes going back after the bombing of Yokohama. It was a cloudy day, and the clouds were low. The planes were flying over the clouds. If you were walking on the road to go to school, these P-51 combat planes chased you and tried to shoot you, so you had to get into a ditch to hide yourself. There was an air alert (keikai-keihō) when the bombers and combat planes were about to come and a red alert (kūshū-keihō) when the planes were overhead. The sirens were different for each one.
In those days, at night people turned off the lights, and a black curtain was used to make the place invisible. This was not so effective, because the pilots in the combat planes could see by moonlight, and if they saw the rivers, they could detect the place using maps.
Q. Did you use the aid shelter?
A. Yes. At that time people dug holes and made shelters. The shelter had a ceiling of dirt, and it shielded you from the bombing. I had one made of reinforced concrete. My father got it made. This was not so common, and its size was the same as an eight-tatami room. Sometimes other people came in for shelter too.
Q. What were the difficulties during the war?
A. That would be the bombings, because they were about life and death, but food was scarce too. The rations got smaller and smaller. There was no more rice, so we ate soy beans after the oil had been taken out. These were previously food for horses, but we ate them because there was nothing else. We also ate millet. Everything needed a ration coupon for purchasing. So, even though you had the money, you weren’t able to buy things unless you had a coupon. There were also some people who went to the farmlands to buy food. They didn’t use money, but they took clothes to barter for food, because money wasn’t what the farmers wanted. The people were all thin, unlike now where there are fat people too.
When I was making the motors of the combat planes at the factory, I got lunch. The plate was the size of a tuna can. It had many soy beans, so it was good enough to satisfy your stomach. But, it was not enough, so I used my soldier’s hat, which everyone wore, and placed it on top of one of the plates to get extra rations to eat later on. The seats were all in one long row, and the people giving out the plates didn’t care much, so there were no problems. I ate the extra lunch with some others. The lunch at the factory was a big help.
For food, the school grounds were made into fields. At that time, even in Tōkyō there were many fields, and people grew crops. In the field at school, you got your own area of land, and you ate what you grew. My father was also growing a kitchen garden on land that he rented. He had been a farmer himself when he was a child, so he was able to do farm work. At that time, he was a merchant and sold buttons, and he was also a wholesale dealer of school uniforms. Two years after the war started, he gave up his job and we went to the rural area in Aichi.
Q. What had the greatest impact on you during the war?
A. That would be the war itself. At the beginning, Japan was going wild. The people didn’t think of stopping the war. People were happy and making noise when Japan was winning. But there were not many good memories during the war. People were dying. The people who were left had many troubles. How would they live? Now [in 2005] this is happening all over again in Iraq. The people who are left will have many problems, and a hard time for survival.
Q. Did your family go to war?
A. Yes. My father went to war, but he came back. My uncle was captured by the Soviet Red Army and imprisoned in Siberia, but he also came back after two or three years.
Q. How do you feel about the war?
A. It’s something you shouldn’t do, whatever the reasons are. The leaders just say “let’s go to war,” but the people who die are ordinary people. The leaders just tell the soldiers to go and fight, and the soldiers are the ones who died. At that time it was the trend to serve the Emperor. People wanted to join the Army or the Navy. I myself would have joined the preparatory school for the Naval Academy in the second year of middle school if the war hadn’t ended. You were able to become a soldier when you were in the fourth year of middle school, at the age of 16. You would be a star if you joined the Naval Air Forces.
Japan went too far. Japan attacked Java, Sumatra, Vietnam, Burma, Manchuria, and other places. This news came from the radio from the Daihon’ei, which was the military headquarters of the Army and Navy. It told the truth for the first half-year, because Japan was winning, but when Japan started to lose, it told lies. They said only one or two of their ships sunk when actually five did, and said they sunk five battleships, when they really sunk none. So we thought Japan still had lots of military power, but when the war ended, we suddenly found out that there were hardly any left.
The war in the Philippines and in Burma was very bad. Many people died, and especially in Burma, Japan lost badly. The Battle of Okinawa was also disastrous. Ordinary people were involved, and very many people died. In Saipan too, many people died. In these wars, hundreds of thousands of people died. Now, in the war in Iraq, there is news about 30 people dying, but during the war there were many more deaths. You should not wage war, whatever the reasons are. People need a good perspective for themselves, a perspective that everyone would agree to. This is a very difficult thing, but if this is achieved, I think there won’t be wars.
Q. How did your life change after war?
A. There were more and more products. The washing machines were invented. The refrigerator which uses electricity also emerged. Before, we had a fridge using ice cubes. So, we had to make pickles to preserve the food. The socks were not nylon, so holes were easily made, and it was hard for mothers to fix them. So, the improvements of these goods were a big advantage. The houses were just left broken at first, because too many of them were broken down.
Japan has become very rich. We didn’t have cars, and if you had a bicycle, that was a luxury. You normally needed a pushcart to take to the fields. It was very difficult for the farmers to transport the food they harvested, because you had to take it by yourself using a cart. It was hard on an upward slope, because you need more strength, but it was also hard on a downward slope, because you needed to make sure that the food didn’t fall off. Now, you can use a car or truck without any problem.
The umbrellas too became better. Before, they were made of bamboo and paper with oil, but they were very weak. The lights were incandescent lamps which used a lot of electricity and were dark, unlike the fluorescent lamps commonly used now. There were no vacuum cleaners, so we had to use wet newspaper cut into pieces and scatter them all around to get the dust, and then we swept the newspaper with a broom. Dust cloths were also used to clean the house. Telephones only became common when my daughter went to elementary school. The communication tools were letters and telegrams. Japan has become very wealthy.