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| Happy days in Mukden. |
She had had a very up-and-down life, some of it quite tragic and horrific, but when I knew her as an old lady she was serene and optimistic about life.
Her parents were from Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan, apparently originally from Miyajima, where some of her ancestors had been priests at the well-known Shinto shrine there. When Japan took over Manchuria in 1931, her father, a mining engineer, emigrated with his family to Mukden (奉天), now Shenyang (沈阳). She was born there in 1935.
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| Typical Mukden Street scene in the 1930s. . |
She recalls a happy childhood in a prosperous household, with frequent trips to the countryside for picnics and exploring. Her mother played both the piano and violin and her father was a connoisseur of all things French. She had private tutors for music, French and English lessons, as well as for Japanese etiquette, language and history. Her favorite novel was Natsume Soseki's Wagahai wa Neko de Aru. (吾輩は猫である). The winters were bitterly cold, but the streets and sidewalks were steam heated and people walked along them in summer yukatas quite comfortably.
This began to change when the war, which she was not aware was happening, began to go ill for Japan. Her parents warned her to avoid Chinese, whom they told her were jealous of the superior Japanese and would steal their children to raise as their own. One day, the Chinese household servants disappeared and she found her pet dog dead with a knitting needle jammed through its ear into its brain.
Food became scarce, their once toasty-warm house, the floors of which were steam-heated like the sidewalks and streets, grew cold and she slept under thick futons in her parents' bedroom. Her father never went anywhere unarmed, and Japanese soldiers with large rifles mounting fixed bayonets patrolled the streets and were stationed in front of her house.
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| Japanese soldiers outside a Mukden office. |
Soon word came that the Chinese Communist 8th Route Army had infiltrated the city and every Japanese was at risk. Her father decided to evacuate his family to Korea, but it was impossible to obtain transportation, and the family was still in Mukden when the war ended and Soviet troops marched into the city. Her father was warned that his name was on a list of technical experts whom the Russians intended to arrest and use for their own ends. His family would simply be left to fend for themselves, probably to be killed by the Chinese.
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| A Japanese machinegun squad defending Mukden. |
The trip south was uneventful until they entered Korea. There, mobs of Koreans pelted the train with bricks and stones and whenever the train slowed down tried to climb aboard and attack the Japanese refugees. When the train stopped to water and re-coal the engine, Japanese soldiers fought off mobs, firing into crowds of angry Koreans and bayoneting those who pushed forward anyway. The angry yells of the crowd, the bellowing of the soldiers, the gunshots and screams of those bayoneted were defeaning. During the entire journey south, there was no food or water or relief facilities for the Japanese on board.
At one point while the train was moving, it slowed suddenly for some reason and crowds surged against the train and began pulling Japanese off the cars and beating them with clubs, some Koreans even climbed aboard and began throwing children and old people off the train cars to the mob, which killed them.
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| Ship repatriating Japanese from Korea. |
Suddenly the train picked up speed, leaving the mob behind. She never saw her parents again, or knew what happened to them.
When the train reached Pusan, Korean militia soldiers chased the Japanese refugees out of the cars and drove them out of the train station. She found herself alone wandering strange streets, not knowing where she was or what she should do. She was terribly hungry. Finally she simply sat down where she was and gave up.
After a while, she heard the engine of a car coming and looked up to see what she would later learn was a Jeep. In it were some strange-looking soldiers. They drove past her, stopped, backed up, and one soldier got out of the Jeep and spoke to her in English. She knew English! She said she was hungry and wanted to go home. When the soldiers, who were American GIs, figured out she was a Japanese refugee, they drove her to an embarkation point where Japanese were being loaded on ships and repatriated to Japan. All she remembers of that is seeing what she called a circus flag -- so pretty! -- (the Stars and Stripes), being fed until she couldn't eat any more, including things she had never had before, like chocolate bars and buttered bread, using a shower for the first time, being dusted all over with some white powder (deloused with DDT), being given clean clothes, and feeling safe for the first time in a long time, with all those friendly American soldiers treating her like a princess and even asking her help interpreting. She felt important and knew the GIs would not let any Chinese or Koreans even get near her.
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| The circus flag -- 48 stars. |
She doesn't remember the ocean voyage to Japan other than that the ship was so crowded there was hardly any room to lie down. She spent the entire trip on deck.
When she got to Japan she was interrogated by Japanese officials, who determined her honseki (officially registered place of birth for establishing nationality purposes) and who her nearest relatives were. They gave her their address and put her on a train filled with other refugees and repatriated Japanese soldiers. The train was slow and stopped at every station, but eventually she arrived in the town where her relatives lived and walked about half an hour, asking for directions of people she met, until she found their house.
Instead of a welcome, the garden gate was slammed in her face and she was told to go away. They had no spare food to feed a stranger. After awhile she again simply sat down, not knowing what else to do, and waited. She waited all night. In the morning, the gate opened and a man stepped out. She stood up to speak to him, hopeful, and he threw a bucket of slops on her and told her to go away before he beat her with a club.
So she left. She didn't know where to go or what do do. She grew very hungry. When she approached people asking for food, they shunned her. Some threw things at her.
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| Repatriated Japanese troops. No GI bill for them. |
And so began a new life for her. The GIs took her in, basically adopting her, feeding her, clothing her and putting her to work for them, cleaning their barracks, shining shoes, running errands, interpreting for them. She had her own little room and was safe and comfortable. She learned idiomatic American English and grew fond of chewing gum and hot dogs.
Only one bad thing ever happened to her during what turned out to be a years'-long stay: when out playing among some ruins one day, a Japanese man grabbed and raped her. When she came crying back to her GI friends they went after him and "did for him" as one told her, but she was pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, about whom I will write later.
She never married, but raised her daughter by herself, with the help of her GI friends, and later, the families of occupation troops, including some of my relatives. At some point, she gave birth to a son, fully Japanese, but I don't know any details, other than that he grew up to be a "salaryman," the Japanese term for an office worker.
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| Sailor and Japanese children at Kamakura. |
At some point she moved to the Tokyo area, working for both FEN and the Stars & Stripes newspaper. She was friends with some GIs who pranked the country with a fake report about a sea monster attacking Tokyo. This incident was later turned into the movie Godzilla.
One of my grandfathers was in the Air Force, and at one point was based in the Tokyo area, the family living in the Washington Heights housing area, which was where the 1964 Olympic stadium facilities are now. She became friends with them, teaching Japanese in private lessons, as well as Japanese culture such as flower arranging. In return they helped her teach her daughter English.
As luck would have it, my other grandfather was in the Navy and was stationed for years in Japan and his family also met her and began a long-term friendship. Eventually, my mother sponsored her daughter to attend school in the States.In any case, I came to know this woman's remarkable story in bits and piece over the years. She is still alive, alert and active, ready to teach you about classic Japanese culture, language and arts. She loves American GIs still and thinks America is the greatest country in the world.
She actually visited the country once, around 1970, seeing Honolulu, San Francisco and New York. She especially wanted to ride on a New York City subway. She recalled reading detective stories about a "Subway Sam" when she was a little girl, but no one knows of such a gumshoe; maybe she is remembering stories written by a Japanese author in a Japanese magazine.
Her image of the country pretty much ends with her visits. Mostly, when she envisions the country, she seems to see it as it was reflected by the young Americans she was friends with circa 1950.
I would have fallen in love with that America, too.
