Yamamoto Shigeichi. A Long Way Home: Growing Up Nisei in Japan During the Pacific War

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This is the story of two Japanese-American sisters whose father had emigrated to the United States

at the turn of the century. Fate led them to Japan where they experienced World War II on enemy

soil. Their family was back in the U.S. and suffering because they looked Japanese while these two

girls suffered from severe hardships brought on by the war and from bombs dropped by their own

country. Their remarkable story was culled from a family history, a newspaper article, a U.S. military

interview, a personal interview, telephone interviews and letters. I am indebted to Mary Yamamoto

and Leila Myers for sharing their story with me so that I can share it with you.

In the 37th year of Emperor Meiji's reign (1904), Yamamoto Shigeichi* left his home in the small

village of Hashirano in Yamaguchi-ken, Japan in search of the promise of wealth offered in America.

He stopped briefly in Hawaii before moving on to earn a wage helping to build a railroad in Wyoming.

The contractor of the railroad went bankrupt however, and Shigeichi, who by now had adopted the

American name Harry, went to Colorado where he worked as a cook in a restaurant before finding a

laborer position in the sugar beet industry there. After being in America for some nine years of

struggle, Harry Yamamoto started a small farm of his own, and he began to look for a wife. He

exchanged pictures with Urata Moto, a young woman ten years his junior who was living in his home

town of Hashirano back in Japan. After encouragement from her parents, Moto boarded a steamship

that brought her to Washington where she met her husband, Harry (Shigeichi).

[*complete Japanese names are rendered here as they are in the Japanese context with the surname preceding the given

name so in this instance the family name is "Yamamoto".]

Harry brought Moto back to Colorado where they farmed and started a family. The Depression era

was approaching and before long the family moved to farm along the North Platte River at the

border of Wyoming and Nebraska. They moved a few times and life was difficult yet the family grew

to include nine children by the end of 1935. The next year tragedy struck when Moto died in a farm

fire. About this same time, Harry's father became fatally ill in Japan. Harry liquidated his farm, and

took his nine children to Japan to return their mother's ashes to her homeland, and so they could all

begin a new life. His father passed away before they ever reached Japan. Harry (Shigeichi) was the

eldest surviving child (his younger brother Taichi lived in a town called Marifu located near

Hashirano and was a president of the local Shinyo-Kunsai, or Agricultural Co-operative Bank; and his

younger sister, Chika had moved to Hawaii sometime earlier).

Yamamoto Shigeichi had left Japan thirty-three years earlier in search of prosperity and with a belief

that he would return home someday possessing a fortune to live out his years in comfort. When

Harry Yamamoto returned to Hashirano he was neither wealthy nor the same man who had left. He

had struggled and persevered through difficult times in America, but he was unprepared for the

reality that he was presented with when he returned to the land of his birth. Harry's stay was brief:

he had arrived with his nine children when the rice planting season began and he left accompanied

by only three of his four eldest children (Lily, Yutaka, and Tadashi) when the rice had been planted.

A photo pregnant with meaning from Harry's aborted return to live in Japan appears in the

Hashirano Shogakko (grade school) class picture from Showa 12 (1937) where his son, Kuni,

appears seated with his teachers. Kuni sat in the teachers' row rather than with the other students

because he had broken tradition by not conforming to the rule that male students have their heads

shaved (this rule seems to have lasted at Hashirano Shogakko until about Showa 39). A year after

Harry had returned with three of his children, four more children (Coralee, the eldest, Kuni, Jack,

and Irene, who was three years old) returned to America. The two remaining daughters: Mary, (the

twin sister of Jack) who was then twelve years old, and Leila, who was six, were left in Japan to help

care for their aging grandmother. It's not known when Harry was going to send for his two girls, but

geopolitical events in the form of the Second World War intervened. Mary and Leila would spend the

next eleven years, until 1948, in Japan being Japanese while across the Pacific their father, brothers,

and sisters lived in America, land of the enemy.

Harry Yamamoto had given all but one of his nine American-born children a Japanese first or middle

name, and both he and his wife had made an effort to teach them about Japanese culture. Their

older children were also enrolled in Japanese language courses during the summers. Mary's

Japanese name was Takeko and Leila, who had not been registered with a Japanese name, adopted

the name Hinako. These were the names they were known by when they lived in Japan and this is

their story:

The girls lived with their grandmother in her house which stood along the main street of Hashirano

with perhaps a hundred other dwellings. The o-benjo (contemporaneous term for "bathroom") was

located down a hallway from the rest of the house. The toilet itself consisted of a hole in the floor

that partially concealed a basin for human excrement. Periodically this basin was emptied into

another, larger basin that was then topped with straw. When this larger container got full, Takeko

and Hinako would attach a pole horizontally to the container which was suspended from it by ropes

and hike to their fields to fertilize them being careful not to splash themselves along the way. Of

course this was a foul smelling enterprise and not very hygienic, but was a common practice of the

day and they had the sense not to eat their vegetables they raised in the fertilized fields until first

cooking them.

Wet-rice farming is a highly labor intensive endeavor and even the six year old Hinako was enlisted

to help after completing her school day. On the weekends she had to help her grandmother gather

kindling and larger logs for three wood stoves and a fire place that lay beneath the o-furo

(traditional Japanese bath) at their home. They had to climb up into the nearby mountains to do this

and Grandmother Yamamoto had arthritic knees, but in those first few years she could still make it

up into the mountains without complaint.

Leila's recollection of this time is vivid:

"One day Grandmother Yamamoto told me to stop working in the field and go home to cook rice for

everyone. I was only six years old and I didn't know how to cook rice properly. It came out like soup,

but everyone ate it without a word of criticism. After that first mistake I learned to cook rice

properly.

"It seems very strange to me now, but we were not allowed to speak during meals. I probably didn't

think much of it at the time because I was so tired from working out in the field or gathering the

wood. I would often fall asleep in the middle of a meal while my hashi and chawan [chopsticks and

bowl] were still in my hands. Grandmother Yamamoto would gently nudge me and I would continue

eating."

Hinako's grade school years were difficult because her heavy burden of chores interfered with her

ability to play with other children. Typically when she found time, Hinako would entertain herself by

fishing, carving wood, painting and making her own toys. She also had a tree swing. There was a

room in the large Yamamoto house where rice and wheat were stored, and before Grandfather

Yamamoto Itsukichi died, livestock had also been housed there. A beam ran across the ceiling

supporting the rooms which were above this storeroom area. The beam itself was a tree trunk that

had been stripped of its bark and cleaned but not planed smooth. Using Grandmother Yamamoto's

best rope, Hinako made a swing that attached to this "tree-beam" and so she had her private tree

swing inside the house. Spending money was not easy to come by. On occasion she would go to the

mountains with a classmate and fetch three bundles of wood on her back to sell to a businessman in

the village for go sen (five cents) or kick and shove a log down a mountain for jissen (ten cents)

which would be enough to buy a whole bag of candy. Finally, Grandmother Yamamoto also taught

Hinako how to make zori, a footwear made from rice stalks. Hinako learned to wet the rice stalks

before pounding them with a mallet to make the stalks softer for weaving into footwear while

holding this "rope" with her toes.

Hinako would also fish either by laying traps catching the fish by hand as she waded in the stream,

or fishing with a fishing pole that she made herself. She would use a female bamboo stick as her

pole because these sticks were small and flexible. Then she would add string and gather some earth

worms before going to the river to fish. Sometimes when she would sleep walk at night she would

use her pillow to act out those times when she waded in the water patiently attempting to catch a

fish near the rocky bottom.

Fate also led Hinako to begin developing her intellect. Uncle Urata, a millionaire who dealt in

automobile parts in Tokyo, decided to send his daughter back to the village of his youth to protect

her against the tuberculosis which had already taken the lives of his son and another daughter.

Hashirano was a small village without a library to speak of, a solitary, tiny doctor's office, and the

only phones that existed at the time were located at the post office and the policeman's office which

doubled as his house. Yasuko, lived with Grandmother Urata Hatsu in a house that had a large

library consisting of hundreds of books. Hinako began borrowing half a dozen books a week and

read them from cover to cover.

Takeko and Hinako's maternal uncle, Akimoto, who was the sonchoo, or mayor of Hashirano. He was

respected as an important official and the girls were taught to bow to him if they ever crossed his

path on the street. The younger Hinako remembers seeing her uncle while she was riding her bicycle

down the street. When she approached him she jumped off her bike, straightened up, and politely

bowed.

Learning how to properly be Japanese began with the language. Takeko's comprehension of the

Japanese language when she arrived in Japan was so poor that she had to enroll in first grade all

over again even though she had already completed the fourth grade in America. (Takeko's class

picture in Showa 15* (1940) shows her towering above her classmates with a hair style that

distinguishes her from her grade school classmates and their "bowl cut" hair styles). She labored

hard and caught up to the rest of the girls in her age group after a few years by completing the first,

second, third, and fourth grades in half of the required time. Hinako had not begun school before

she arrived in Japan so this was one less hurdle toward acceptance by her peers.

Because they were not born in Japan and their father had decided to return to the U.S. with his

family after such a brief time, Takeko and Hinako had never been added to the official family

registry that acts as a record of citizenship in Japan. In contrast to the difficulties encountered by

the girls during their years in Japan the impact of this may seem insignificant, but it added to the

trials they faced. When vaccination shots were being administered to her classmates, Hinako was

excluded because she wasn't recognized as a citizen since her name did not appear on the family

their grandmother, came to the rescue and convinced the school principal to give Hinako her shots

and to treat her like the other children in the future.

[Even to this day, Japanese officially record the date of the year by the reign of the current emperor.

Showa marked the reign of Emperor Hirohito. Showa 15 was the fifteenth year of the Showa

Emperor's reign which began in 1925]

TAKEKO'S Report Card & 6th Grade Diploma from Hashirano Jinjo Shogakko

Showa 15 (1940)

Takeko had completed six

grades in four years.

School terms were divided

into three semesters and grades

were allocated as such:

C=4-5, B=6-8, A=9-10.

Takeko attended school for

236 days in her 6th grade,

missed only one day of instruction

and left early one day.

Takeko and Hinako kept in touch with their family in America through frequent letter writing, but

mysteriously their letters started to be returned without any explanation near the end of Showa 15

(1940). About this same time they heard rumors that people were not being allowed to return to the

U.S. The girls had had no real concept of the expanse which separated Japan and America. At first

they thought they could easily return to their father and family in the U.S. as soon as possible, even

"next Saturday," but as time passed the realization of their predicament became clearer to them.

The week beginning December 8, 1941 was surreal for the Yamamoto girls (December 7th in the

United States was December 8th in Japan which is across the international dateline from the former).

At school, Takeko and her classmates were given small, hand held Japanese flags and told to march

in a victory parade through town to celebrate the attack. Then the military police came to

Grandmother Yamamoto's home and confiscated a small American flag and any documents, papers

or books that they could find which were written in English. They even confiscated some Bing Crosby

records and newspapers that had been sent to Hinako by an older sister because it had doll cut-outs

that Hinako was particularly fond of. It had become clear that they may never be returning home.

They may never see their family or America ever again. Moreover throughout the war they had to

work to prove that they were Japanese while keeping their feelings about America and the war

secret even from their grandmother who believed that Japan was the country of God (Emperor

Hirohito) and that Japan could never lose a war. Beginning with this farewell week when the world

was turned upside down, Takeko and Hinako would cry in secret and try to console each other when

they could. Their strength, what helped them through the contradictions of their lives during the war,

was their hope that they could someday return to America.

At times, Takeko and Hinako heard propaganda that the Japanese in America were having their

noses and ears chopped off by the Americans, but they didn't believe these outlandish stories.

Though they were born in America, they were not harassed too often because they looked Japanese,

had Japanese names, and spoke Japanese fluently by the time the war had started, but it did occur.

Some of the other kids would call these girls from America "whites" or some other derogatory names.

When the American B-29s were dropping bombs, some would say "those might be flown by your

brothers." The kids who said these things seemed to feel sorry afterwards, but the pressure to blend

in was enormous.

Despite the fact that being Americans made life in Japan difficult at

times, simply being Japanese during the years surrounding the war

was an extreme hardship in itself. After the second year of the war

with the U.S., rationing was implemented in Hashirano for such

essential items as shoes, clothes, and food. The zori that Hinako

made were a helpful alternative to new shoes and they could be

replaced anytime it was desired.

Rationing for other goods could not be

so easily remedied though and this

added to the difficulties that had

already confronted them before the

war. Produce was confiscated by the

village elders for "equal distribution"

based on the number of individuals in

each household. Grandmother

Yamamoto and the girl's Uncle

Akimoto had the largest holdings of

land in the village, but this meant

nothing during the war. Grandmother

Yamamoto no longer received bushels

of rice in payment for the extensive

land holdings she possessed (which

included land on three mountains!).

She was now given a small, ten-day

ration of rice which she had to share

with her two granddaughters. They

would divide it into ten individual portions only to look at one of these

small handfuls, probably no more than a quarter of a cup, which they

had to subsist on for an entire day (rice fills the role in Japanese

meals which may be filled by either bread, potatoes, stuffing, or rice

in a comparable American meal). On several occasions, Takeko would

get rice from the black market. She would go to a farming area that was known for its rice

cultivation so she knew she could barter for rice there. There she would exchange a kimono (a

traditional Japanese robe worn as everyday wear by both men and women until the second decade

of the Twentieth Century) that was in good condition for one issho of rice. This was about as much

rice as she could hide in her obi (a wide styled sash for the kimono) to bring home. Other times the

girls would sell kimonos to a seamstress in the village for hard currency until there were none left in

the household.

The sugar ration was a meager three tablespoons for one month. This they could do little to change,

but salt was something they could work to supplant. Hinako and one of her classmates would tie two

empty sake (rice wine) bottles, about four liters in size, together and sling them over their shoulders

with one hanging on their front and one on their back before taking a forty-five minute train trip

followed by a forty-five minute walk to the coast where they would wade in the ocean to fill the two

bottles with sea water. After returning home, the water was boiled to kill any bacteria and used in

place of table salt.

On their one day off from school, Sunday, Takeko and Hinako would help Grandmother Yamamoto

with raising their own vegetables to supplement their diet with taro root, potatoes and yams. Hinako

would beg her neighbors who owned a sake brewery, to allow her to pick peas from their plants.

After the peas were eaten, the pea pods were saved to be ground and eaten later as well. In Fall,

they would gather mushrooms, which were taken to a canning factory for cash, and pick chestnuts

to sell. There wasn't much to buy with the little cash they earned because most of the stores were

Iwata Toshiko, Hinako's

classmate from Jogakko.

During New Year's Day or

during a wedding, girls would

wear beautiful kimonos like

the one Toshiko is wearing

here. Hinako and Takeko had

several kimonos for such

occasions.

Okada Etsuko, another

classmate from Jogakko.

Okada san had a beautiful

voice leading her to be

chosen frequently to sing

solo in music.

closed down by this time. In the Springtime they would go to a bamboo forest and dig for bamboo

shoots. They would fish in a nearby river whenever they could and submerge baskets during the

Summertime to trap eels. Sometimes they picked edible dandelions and azaleas which could be

found at the base of hills. In the most difficult times, Grandmother Yamamoto would call the girls to

pick nana kusa (the seven [edible] weeds) and they would briefly boil them until they bulked up into

a stew that would fill their stomachs. They were fortunate that various foods could be found on the

land they owned, but their ability to grow foods and secretly hide these foods was severely

restricted by the fact that they had no men to help them.

Hinako worked in the garden along with her sister and grandmother and the harvest was all given to

the village elders in spite of the fact that they could not produce much. Other families had a male

head of household and the means to hide a portion of their harvest, but not the two girls and their

nearly crippled grandmother. Every night Grandmother Yamamoto and her two granddaughters

would lay down on their futons (Japanese style bed) in a "T" formation with their feet joined

together on the top of the kotatsu (a small radiator filled with hot embers of wood or coal) hoping

that they would fall asleep before the heat was all gone. In the pitch darkness of the cool country

evening, Hinako snuck out of the house and after hiking for several miles to reach their fields, she

dug up some of their potatoes to bring back home [Hinako had plowed these fields herself by

walking backward with a plow in her hands; some of the other villagers had horses that they would

harness their plow to]. Grandmother Yamamoto never questioned Hinako because she knew why her

granddaughter was "stealing" the potatoes, but Hinako still felt like a criminal even though they

were produce from her own garden.

In the small village of Hashirano, village elders managed local affairs. These village elders required a

representative from every household to participate in village meetings and other matters concerning

the community. Takeko's schooling caused her to spend increasing amounts of time in Iwakuni and

Grandmother Yamamoto's mobility was limited by her arthritic knees. As result, Hinako became the

household representative for many community affairs even though she was only in her fourth year

of Shogakko. The elders never said that Hinako was too young to attend the village meetings, but

the fact that she was filling the role most adult men held, gave some school bullies another reason

to tease her with "your father doesn't love you that's why he left!" These meetings were held in a

village elder's house where the shoji screen walls had been removed from the interior house to

create one big room and Hinako would sit in the back of the room where she could be inconspicuous

as she passed the time during the boring meetings by reading.

During the war rationing, the village elders would organize the community to collect rice from

farmers in an adjacent rice growing region. Hinako represented her household on some of these

expeditions which included some fifty other villagers. They would hike up narrow mountain paths to

a neighboring village where they were given rice which they carried back to Hashirano on their backs.

Hinako's responsibility to the community as the representative for her household also led her to

grave digging. Whenever there was a death in the village, one member from each side of the street

had to go and dig a grave in a village cemetery. Hinako's turn arrived. The bodies were put in a

sitting position with the knees tied against the chest before they were put in square boxes. Hinako

was in a deep hole pitching dirt up for one of these coffins when she hit something hard. When she

realized it was the leg bone of someone who had been buried earlier she nearly fainted. She tried to

scream but nothing would come from her mouth.

While they were students in Japan, Takeko and Hinako wore sailor outfits when attending school.

They wore blue uniforms during winter, and white uniforms during the summer. Even before the

Pacific War began, the Japanese people were only allowed to use a limited supply of electricity so

the girls would place their pleated skirts under the futon (Japanese beds) which lay directly on top of

the tatami mat floors so that their skirts would look freshly pressed for school. By this time kimonos

were seen less and less frequently in public and were worn commonly only at home. The fashion

was to wear a light yukata in the summer and an awasae, which had a lining, in the winter (photos

from the centennial celebration of Hashirano Jinjo Shogakko, the elementary school in Hashirano,

show that kimonos were replaced with the sailor outfits in Showa 5 [1930], male students

exchanged kimonos for Western clothes three years earlier, but the adult males had done so

sometime before).

POST-WAR JOGAKKO SEMESTER SCHEDULE

Monday

English

Gym

Social

Studies

Literature

Home

Economics

Social

Science

Tuesday

Math

Biology

Music

Physiology

Agriculture

Self

Improvemt.

Wednesday

Math

Government

English

Government

Sociology

Social

Science

Thursday

Study

Period

Japanese

History

Biology

Social

Studies

Physiology

Friday

Math

Government

(Foreign)

Gym

Government

(Functions)

Sewing

Physiology

Saturday

Music

Math

Art

Before Showa 23 (1948), Japanese children were required to complete six years of education. After

completion of these six years the students could sit for an extremely competitive entrance exam to

be admitted to a four year school program in Jogakko(middle school for girls). In their sixth year of

school, they were given the option to take a test to begin Jogakko the following year or to return to

the grade school for an extra year. School in Japan was rigorous. When Hinako sat for the week-long

Jogakko entrance exam their were 2,000 girls sitting for 200 places at one of the two Jogakko

schools in Iwakuni. The results were eventually posted on a school building wall. Each student was

identified by a number only so that those who failed would not be embarrassed. Those who failed

the entrance exam could apply to different, less rigorous schools. All during the years that the

Yamamoto sisters lived in Japan they only had one month of summer vacation per year during which

time they were expected to complete mountains of homework. They also had to attend school half-

day on Saturdays. Before Showa 23 Japanese boys and girls were taught separately throughout the

ten years of education. In Showa 23 co-ed instruction was introduced and twelve years of schooling

was mandated which increased secondary education to six years. Hinako, who attended school in

the U.S. after attending school in Japan believes that she developed excellent study habits while in

Japan and argues that "if you look at the rigorous study schedules which were imposed on each and

every student, a Japanese 10th grader's level of education far exceeded most 12th grader's in the

U.S. We did pose questions during classes if we did not understand a particular lesson, but none of

us ever argued with a teacher and we always obeyed their commands. If the students in the U.S.

were half as polite and obedient, they would learn a lot more." She adds that her classes in Jogakko

were typically large with about fifty students.

Hinako's years at Jogakko in Iwakuni were much happier than the ones she spent at Hashirano

Shogakko. "Because I spent so many hours at school in Iwakuni, which was far from Hashirano, I no

longer had to skip school to attend to village business. I couldn't have been happier. I met new

people who were wonderful and quickly became my best friends. We all had passed the test and we

all started on an equal footing. No one at the new school felt any jealousy towards me because of

our family holdings or my name. This had been part of the problem during my years at Shogakko.

Our house and our Uncle Akimoto's house were the only two homes with running water. Everyone

else had to pump their water. As long as I can remember, this was a sore spot with some of my

classmates in Hashirano. After attending Jogakko, I didn't have to carry my family burden with me

and I belonged completely. It was a refreshing change! All my good memories are from those years

I attended Jogakko."

The two sisters' education extended beyond the formal education of the classroom. Grandmother

Yamamoto, Obaasan*, taught the girls traditional Japanese values based on haji, and respect. Haji

can be translated as shame or disgrace. The girls were taught never to bring haji or shame to

themselves or their family by misbehaving. There were certain rules of behavior governing such

things as the way they talked and dressed that had to be learned. It did not matter if your kimono

was an expensive one, for instance you had to look the best you could, "not like a beggar," by

keeping it clean and neat. The kind of respect Obaasan taught the two girls was not simply reserved

for teachers or titled people, but also for elders and men. Men, for example, were accorded the right

to bathe first, to eat first, and the male head of a family always sat at a seat specially reserved for

him nearest the tokonoma (an alcove where a flower arrangement and a hanging scroll were

formally placed).

[*"Obaasan" is the Japanese form of "grandmother" used when speaking about someone else's grandmother. Typically when

used within English text it is not capitalized, yet we chose to do so here because it refers throughout to one specific person,

Grandmother Yamamoto.]

There were times when Obaasan's traditions and understanding of the world conflicted with her

granddaughters who were raised in America before coming to Japan. She was born in a generation

when it was common for married women to dye their teeth black. Though she had long since

dropped this practice, it helps to illustrate the gulf separating her world from her granddaughters.

Obaasan led a life that conformed to traditional Shinto beliefs of cleanliness and purity as well as

Buddhist beliefs concerning killing. In an incident exemplifying this clash of cultures, she had

become extremely angry when before the war, Coralee, Harry's eldest daughter, butchered chickens

that she had raised after bringing the chicks in an incubator from America. Obaasan believed that

killing and butchering were things that only the lowest class of people did. Because of this, the girls'

diet consisted of a reduced variety of protein from what they had beend accustomed to though they

ate soy bean products and fish whenever they could both during and after the war.

A source of conflict grew out of the fact that Obaasan's life centered on the practical knowledge

essential for her generation of farmer's wives while her granddaughters were being educated in new

ways with a matter-of-fact understanding of new technologies. Obaasan could not read and so it was

common for her to mispronounce words associated with these new technologies. Denki (electricity),

for example, became "renki" and denwa (telephone) became "renwa". When her granddaughters

would try and correct her she would get upset and tell them, "No, this is the way I have pronounced

it all my life and it is correct." Nor could she understand the true significance of her granddauthters'

report cards when they were placed so proudly before her. New technologies would remain a

mystery to Obaasan throughout her later years as when she walked outside and looked up at a

telephone wire expecting to see something moving along it. Because she had a simple, practical

education, Obaasan mistrusted the new medicine that doctors practiced and never visited one for

treatment. The medicine that Obaasan had faith in was symbolized by two scarred indentations she

had on her shoulders. She would have Hinako wad up a small amount of a weed of some sort and

place it in the furrows on her grandmother's shoulders. These furrows were marked shiatsu pressure

points where nerve endings were located. Then Hinako would light the wadded up weeds with a

burning incense stick. She never complained when she applied this treatment to herself to alleviate

the gnawing pain caused by her chronic arthritis.

Obaasan had a near reverent respect for snakes. Snakes ate the mice who otherwise did damage to

house and field. Takeko and Hinako were afraid of snakes and yet Obaasan would not even permit

them to say anything bad about the snakes which could be heard slithering along the attic floor.

Sometimes one would be seen slithering in the house perhaps with a bulge in a portion of its body

revealing the undigested mouse it had caught. Obaasan would gently kick the snakes out of her way,

but Takeko and Hinako stayed away from them. Ironically, one of the few times that the sisters'

limited protein diet was expanded involved snakes. Prompted by the difficulties encountered during

the war, Uncle Taichi fileted a snake for the girls and served it telling them it was an eel. When after

eating the snake he confessed that it was indeed a snake, Hinako promptly regurgitated the meal.

Obaasan was raised to believe that a woman's responsibilities included learning the tea ceremony,

flower arrangement, and to serve her husband so these things were passed on to her

granddaughters. She spoke sparingly. So much so that whenever she did say something its meaning

was always amplified in Hinako's mind. One day Obaasan met Hinako on the porch of their house

after Hinako had just returned home from working in their fields and said, "I was watching you come

down the hill and I was so proud of you!" Such simple comments and gestures held a world of

meaning her granddaughter who understood her. When Hinako would wake up in the morning, she

would see Obaasan holding her school uniform in front of the fireplace so that it would be warm

when she put it on.

If hate is passed on and transformed from one person to another in a never ending cycle then

certainly it must also be true that love has its own equal cycle. Sometimes it is difficult to articulate

the love you have for someone or the respect and compassion that they draw forth from you, but

your actions often speak more than anything. In this way it may be more useful to describe some of

the attention that the young Hinako gave to her grandmother in such a loving and selfless way that

may in some way reflect the love that she was attempting to return. Every night after her school

work was finished, Hinako would spend two hours massaging Obaasan's arthritic knees. She also

had the responsibility of relieving her grandmother's constipation with the aid of three chopsticks. In

these days there were no practical ways to relieve constipation that the elderly suffered and it was

the duty of the sons and daughters or grandchildren to manually assist mother nature. The

embarrassment of both parties was extreme, yet it was also a simple necessity, and Obaasan's

embarrassment was such that she asked Hinako never to tell her elder sister.

In keeping with Obaasan's understanding of a woman's place in society, her granddaughters were

not expected to have a social life though they were permitted to join the seinendan, Community

Youth Group, through which members volunteered as a group to clean, and maintain Buddhist

temples and Shinto shrines. They also helped families whose husbands, brothers and sons were off

fighting the war by assisting in harvesting crops and other labor-intensive activities. A woman's true

place was at home and so she was expected to pursue the art of flower arrangement and the tea

ceremony. Takeko, the older of the two girls, had to meet boys for "dates" in another town so that

her grandmother would not learn of such meetings. The five year age gap between Takeko and her

sister often meant that they led different lives. Since Takeko learned and had to deal with matters

first, she may have had a more difficult time in coping with the cultural, generational, and

technological gaps that existed between her grandmother and the two sisters and her maturity also

provided her with the opportunity to escape from this conflict. Hinako, on the other hand, had the

advantage of being young, having more time to reflect on the situation, and less mobility than her

sister due to her age. As a result of these differences that were intertwined with so many factors,

they often led two completely different lives.

In spite of the restrictions placed on Takeko during the vital teenage years, she was popular and led

social life that may have helped her remember these years with more happiness, even in the

difficulties, than her young sister could summon.

There was another force which had an important influence on the girls' lives during the war years.

The militarists who had taken over the government ushered in an authoritarianism that reached

down to the grade school level. Much as if they themselves were in the military, students had to

stand in rigid attention whenever they asked a question about a lesson or to be excused to go to the

restroom. Twice annually, there were school assemblies to honor the Showa Emperor (Hirohito):

Tencho, the emperor's birthday which fell on April 29th, and Kigen, the day used to commemorate

the foundation of the Empire which fell on February 11th. The students assembled before the school

principal on these sacred days and bowed as he raised an altar that housed a portrait of the

Emperor behind its closed doors. The altar doors were slowly opened with a creaking sound made

louder by the silence, so that the Emperor could symbolically look out over his subjects. Everyone

remained bowed throughout, that is save one, Hinako. Her curiosity got the best of her and she had

to steal a peek at the Emperor's picture which she did. She remembers that he wore a sash that was

draped across his chest and he held a sword in one hand. Takeko, like most of the other students,

never saw the photo in those days.

"I just wanted to see what 'God' looked like," recalls Hinako. "Before the war, it was drilled into our

heads that our Emperor was God himself. I will bet that others also looked, but they would never

admit to it. Anybody caught looking would have been severely punished."

The bombs that were dropped by the American planes during the war were often incendiary bombs

that proved fatal to the traditional wooden homes when they hit them directly. One of these bombs

landed in the street near Uncle Taichi's home in neighboring Marifu. Fortunately only debris from the

explosion hit his house though this still destroyed part of roof and a portion of the main structure,

but no one was hurt.

Not surprisingly, the heaviest brunt of the war was felt by the two increasingly larger municipalities

in the region, Iwakuni and Hiroshima. Near the end of the war the air defense of this part of Japan

was completely gone and American fighter planes flew low to the ground. There were oil tanks in

Iwakuni that were targeted by these low flying American planes and a Shogakko was located in their

path. On several occasions newspaper accounts would tell of grade school students who were

injured or killed as they tried to run for the cover of the forest in the hills near their school after the

air-raid siren went off.

While she was attending school in Iwakuni, Hinako she saw American B-29s fly overhead. The

students were instructed to run for cover in the trees of the mountains. Hinako, who was standing

out in a clearing, saw one fly close enough to the ground that she could make out the "USAF". She

stood there and thought to herself, "please take me home!" One of the teachers ran up to her and

pushed her against a wall for her own safety while reprimanding her for daydreaming.

Another time the girls heard an American pilot had been shot down nearby. The pilot bailed out of

the plane avoiding instant death but a crowd of angry villagers beat him severely. When Takeko

heard the story she wondered if it was someone she knew or even a relative, but had to keep her

thoughts to herself. Such were the complexities of war and the predicament fate had placed the

sisters in.