M02, Tatsuya Kotake ‘06, Yoshiko Kitano, Grandmother, 1929, Tōkyō, Niigata
When World War II began, my grandmother, Yoshiko Kitano, was twelve years old. She had been born in 1929 (Shōwa 4). She was living in the working-class shitamachi area of Tōkyō with her family. Her neighborhood had a narrow street with five houses on each side, built close together. When she left the house, there was a small shopping arcade, where she bought cheap sweets or went to the public bath.
When air raid attacks began, all of the people went to the air raid shelter and helped each other out. My grandmother ran away with her family, wearing a futon mattress on her head that had been soaked with water, to prevent her from catching on fire. She said that she was so scared! “It was very windy, so the fire spread quickly and burned everything. But the areas on the opposite side of the city (the upper class yamanote area) weren’t burned as much because of the direction of the wind, so I felt sorry for the people in our neighborhood.” The bombs did not hit directly, so she survived the attack, but the blast was extremely strong, and her house was destroyed.
During the Tōkyō Air Raid of March 9-10, 1945, my grandmother was working at the factory of Shiseidō, a major cosmetic company, because she had to perform “labor service” to help the country and the soldiers. She was making soap and toothbrushes, since make-up and cosmetics were banned during the war. She saw thousands of the U.S. B-29 Superfortress bombers in the sky, and she heard the harsh sound of their engines. The B-29 planes dropped incendiary bombs, and she remembered that they looked like fireworks in the sky. Each bomb blasted a large area, and after the raid ended, Tōkyō was changed to a wilderness, with nothing left standing.
One bomb hit the big water tank in the factory where she was sheltering. The blast threw one boy many meters away. He wasn’t killed but badly injured. She and her friends had been talking together as the bomb dropped, and they ran away as quickly as possible since they were so scared. However, afterwards she and her friends were scolded by an adult for running away.
After the war ended, there was nothing left in Tōkyō, and there was no food. There was some distribution of food rations, but not enough. So her mother and grandmother traveled to the farmland outside the city to get food. They went on a coal-burning train, so their faces were black and sooty. The value of money had dropped because of inflation, so they had to sell their kimono to buy rice, which had become very expensive. However, the police tried to crack down on the black market. To avoid the police, her mother and grandmother walked to a deserted train station while carrying large pumpkins, but they were too heavy, so they decided to leave a pumpkin by the side of the road. It was a waste of food, but they needed to get to the station. Even the food that they bought from farm areas was tasteless, since there was no oil or soy sauce to cook it in. My grandmother said that “we used the oil from pears to cook the food, and it was baked nicely, but it had no taste.”
After a few years, my grandmother went to Niigata, where her father had evacuated after the end of the war. She had very delicious rice, since Niigata is famous for its rice. However, she could not forget her memories of the war. She saw a thousand bodies floating on the Sumida-gawa River after the air raid, while she was walking to get food. She said “I was very lucky. Many people died in that war. I never had to face a situation of life or death, but I felt fear all the time throughout my body. That war was very horrible.”
After my grandmother finished talking, my grandfather, Haruyoshi Kitano, described his experiences. He saw people who died because of the bombing and fire, right in front of his eyes. When I listened to their stories, I felt horrible too. Both of my grandparents had experienced the fear of war and had seen dead bodies. I can’t even imagine that. I’m sorry for the people who died, but I’m very happy that my grandparents survived that horrible war.