H18, Yukiko Yamaguchi ‘00, Mieko Oda, Grandmother, 1926, Kyōto
On November 8, 1998, I interviewed my maternal grandmother, Mieko Oda, who is 72 years old. My grandmother was born and raised in Tango, located in the northern part of Kyōto prefecture, and that was where she was living during World War II. Japan officially became involved in the war on December 8, 1941, when she was about 15 years old. However, this was not really the beginning, because a war against China had been going on since she was a sixth grader in elementary school.
It goes without saying that times were tough during the war. One of the greatest difficulties that everyone faced was the lack of food. Food rations were distributed to each family, according to the number of family members, but there was never enough to make anybody full. My grandmother’s mother mixed any food they had with some rice to increase the volume, but the amount was still insufficient, especially for growing children. Sometimes they even ate green leaves mixed with rice, or anything else that wasn’t poisonous. Every time a B-29 bomber plane from the United States was heard, they made emergency onigiri (rice balls). Money was of no use, and they had to trade for anything they needed. Any metal objects they possessed, from their senmenki (washbowl used during baths) to hibachi (charcoal brazier, made of bronze), were collected and melted for making weapons. Every night a cloth had to be put over the lights so as not to allow any light to leak outside, for fear of being seen from the planes which might pass overhead.
When my grandmother was 17 or 18 years old, she quit school along with most other students her age and was forced to go to work in factories and other companies to be of some use to the country. She did paperwork for a company called Nihon Yakin, which was a producer of weapons and other equipment needed for war at that time. The factory still stands in the same place today, but now it is a manufacturer of stainless steel bowls. Rows of buildings where prisoners of war were put to work stood near her company, and some of the prisoners even worked at Nihon Yakin as well. There were approximately 700 POWs in that area: 500 of them Americans and the rest Chinese. All of them were carefully watched over by guards. It was very common to catch sight of a skinny and unhealthy looking POW limping around and rummaging through garbage for even the tiniest stub of a cigarette. The POWs obviously received very little food, which was not surprising, because there wasn’t even enough food to go around for all of the Japanese people. Many of them died of sickness and starvation and were buried in the mountains, without being burned or cremated. After the war, those bodies were dug up and sent back to their homelands.
My grandmother’s heart went out to the POWs, most of whom had committed no crime except to be of American or Chinese nationality and a soldier for their country. On one occasion, she felt so sorry for the POW foraging for cigarettes nearby that she threw a cigarette stub which was lying at her feet into his path, being too afraid to go up to him directly. His face lit up when he saw it, and he picked it up with joy, as if that was the only thing worth looking forward to anymore. The next day at work, however, my grandmother was scolded severely for her actions because she had done a good deed for the “enemy.” Someone had apparently seen her the previous day and had reported the incident to the company.
My grandmother frequently made trips to a clear stream near Nihon Yakin for a drink of water during lunch breaks. She was always accompanied by other fellow workers, because they didn’t know what kind of POWs might be there as well. One event which she recalls clearly is the time that Americans washed cups for them with sand and offered them water from the stream. My grandmother was so moved by their kindness that she felt sorrow for them all the more.
On July 30, 1945, my grandmother set off for work as usual. As always, she wore a bōkū-zukin (a cushion covering her head as protection, in case of bombings and air raids), and she had an identification tag with her name, address, and blood type. During the 25-minute walk to work, huge B-29 planes began flying overhead, looking ready to drop bombs any minute. She managed to arrive safely at work but was immediately met with the sound of sirens warning of possible air raids. Everybody was quickly evacuated to air raid shelters, each of which fit 10 to 20 people. In the shelter, my grandmother heard distinctly the sounds of planes whizzing by at fairly low altitudes and bombs being dropped somewhere in the distance. Sobs could be heard all around her, and one young woman cried that she would have treated her parents with more respect had she known that she was going to die so soon. At that moment, it dawned on my grandmother that that might be the last day of her life. Fortunately, however, she was able to climb out of the shelter unharmed later. That day she heard that five or six houses only two kilometers away had burned to the ground. A huge hole was made in the middle of the asphalt road. somewhere between Miyazu and Amanohashidate stations, where a U.S. plane had been shot down. That evening my grandmother’s mother said to her four children “Today may be our last day,” and made each of them a couple of onigiri (rice balls) to pack into their emergency bags along with some clothes. That night everyone slept with those bags beside their pillows. At a little past 9:00 p.m., a B-29
My grandmother was at work when she heard the Emperor’s speech over the radio, on August 15, 1945. However, his voice was not clear, and she could not understand what he was saying. Later that day she heard from her boss that the war was over and Japan had surrendered. My grandmother was 19 years old.