Yamamoto Shigeichi. A Long Way Home: Growing Up Nisei in Japan During the Pacific War
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Uncle Taichi was a retired naval officer and wasn't called into active duty during the war. Most of the
girls' classmates' fathers were similarly too old to be called into service. Another uncle, Urata Tetsuo,
who became an Akimoto also served in the war. Tetsuo was their mother's youngest brother. Their
mother's oldest sister had married Akimoto, who became sonchoo of Hashirano. Akimoto never had
a son and so when Tetsuo married his daughter, he adopted the Akimoto name through the tradition
of yooshi. Small Imperial Rising Sun flags were once distributed to Hinako's class and they were
instructed to write on them, using a fude (calligraphy brush in this era before the ball point pen was
introduced in Japan), a brief message to someone in their family or whom they otherwise knew was
fighting in the war. Hinako, reflecting more of the fact that she was impressionable rather than her
true sentiments, wrote "Death is Honorable." She never did learn about Tetsuo's war experiences
because it wasn't considered polite to ask, even after the war, and such stories weren't shared with
teenagers or children in any event.
Inspite of the secrets of the war, the fate of some was made clear. Grandmother Yamamoto rented
out a couple of rooms to a sensei (teacher) who happened to be a fervent nationalist during the war.
After he enlisted in the army, he was seen off at the train station by the two girls and their
grandmother. He held a shiny sword in his hand and saluted the three women as he left for
Manchuria never to return again. And then there was a neighbor of the Yamamotos. There were two
girls in this household that were about the same age of the Yamamoto girls and they had a brother
who served in the war in the South Pacific. He never returned and later it was learned that he had
died of starvation.
To protect themselves from the bombing, Obaasan organized the two girls to dig a large hole in their
backyard which they covered with wood and then placed straw, dirt and weeds on top to conceal it
from up above. "We used this hole when there was an enemy plane in the vicinity to protect
ourselves from direct gunning." They would rush to the hole at all hours of the night, and since
Obaasan's knees were nearly crippled from arthritis, sometimes they had to carry her: "I can still
see grandma with tears running down her face when we had to take her with us into the dug out."
The hole was not large enough to be very comfortable for the three women when they tried to
huddle in the hole, but it provided some sense of security.
The monsoon of Showa 20 must have been comparable in Grandmother Yamamoto's mind with only
one other natural disaster, a volcanic eruption in Kyushu during the latter part of the nineteenth
century when ashes fell on Hashirano for days. The downpour of the monsoon rains was such that
the villagers expected a flood and the Yamamotos started raising some of the household items
several feet off the ground as a precaution. When the flood came, it was more devastating than
anyone had expected. The torrent coming down from the mountains broke the village levee
changing the river's course. Obaasan was sick when the flood hit and so Hinako carried her
grandmother on her back as she ascended the stairs. The water was rushing into the house at such
a speed that it seemed to be a race between Hinako and the water to see who would reach the
second floor first. Hinako and Grandmother Yamamoto beat the water, but it had reached within
inches of where Hinako and her grandmother had made it to safety. Others lost their homes and
even their lives. The village elders called for each household to help look for bodies. Hinako went out
for two days in search of the bodies by herself and Takeko, who was now a teacher, went to make
sure her school and students were okay. On the third day they teamed up in their search that took
them to neighboring communities down the river:
"By the third day, the bodies we found were maggot infested, bloated and unrecognizable," recounts
Hinako today. "I had nightmares for days after that search operation. We had even less food after
the flood, but I couldn't even eat what little we had. My stomach turned to jello at the thought of
eating. My skinny body became even worse and my arms and legs looked like chopsticks...not a
very pretty sight. Then came the clean up operation. I was unable to attend school [in Iwakuni]
because the railroad bridge had been torn down by the rushing water and debris causing the one
and only train to stop running for a time. We had three feet of stinking mud in our house which
needed to be carted away by hand. I drilled a hold on one side of a flat piece of wood and tied a
rope on to it. Then, I piled the board high with muddy dirt and pulled it out of the house. By the
time all of us [from the neighboring houses] dumped all the dirt and mud into the main street,
portions of the street reached up to the second story of our building. Eventually many convicts were
put to work removing all the dirt into what used to be the old river [from where it had changed
course], creating new fields for those who lost their own when the river changed course. My 'big
shot' Uncle Akimoto who lost more land than others was also the biggest recipient of this new land."
This natural disaster seems to have foreshadowed a far greater disaster that was coming.
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Just before the atomic bomb was dropped, Hinako saw dozens of planes flying very low in the sky
filled with silver strips (radar blockers) and millions of leaflets drifting down to the ground. The
school children were taught that if such a thing occurred, the class president and vice president were
to gather up the leaflets and hand them over to their homeroom teacher. "We were forbidden to
read any of them. However, again I was curious and read everything. The leaflets said that if we did
not surrender, something terrible would befall our country. They did not specify what exactly was
going to happen."
As the war raged on and the prospect of Japanese victory seemed more and more desperate, school
children were enlisted into the war effort. Some thousand students were enlisted to help grade a
new airfield that had been built over mulberry fields (mulberry leaves are fed to silkworms and these
fields were expendable whereas the rice fields were considered too valuable throughout the war to
sacrifice even for an airfield). The students marched about stomping the ground to level it while
singing war songs for rhythm, with little concern for the meaning that lay behind the words. The war
ended before the airfield was ever finished.
Takeko worked in a factory welding oxygen tanks
in her last year of Jogakko along with 1500 other
classmates. "Putting all my thoughts behind me as
an American citizen, I worked hard just to prove to
the other students that I too was a good student. I
had pride in what I did (I was president of my class
of 150 students). I had no choice but to do the
best work... My thoughts were of only one thing
and that was to return to the United States where I
belonged with my family. I worked extra hard so I
could meet that goal one day. I can say, one good
thing came out of all this work at the factory was
that I did learn how to weld quite efficiently."
Hinako's school was turned into a factory for
grinding lenses. Her job was not to work on these
lenses, but to go into the mountains where she
would cut open a pine tree and set a can at its
base to collect pine tar. Later the pine tar was
refined into airplane fuel, however it was never an adequate replacement for petrol. Whenever
Hinako would hear a Japanese war plane fly over head and the engine seemed to make an unusual,
sputtering noise, she would say to herself, "Uh oh, he's using your pine tar Hinako!" On August 6,
Showa 20 (1945), she was walking through a valley meadow on her way to collect pine tar from the
trees in the mountains, when in the broad daylight there was a bright flash "one thousand times
brighter than any lightning flash." She was frightened, but it went away just as fast as it had come
so she continued to walk on her way when a loud thunder, that matched the lightning flash of earlier
in intensity shook the earth beneath her. She jumped into an irrigation ditch as fast as she could
fearing that the world was ending. From the valley ditch she saw a black cloud appear over the other
side of a nearby mountain. After awhile the top of the cloud turned white. Hinako ran home and
everything looked fine except for some tiles which had fallen from the roofs of houses here and
there. Of course she later learned that the cloud was much further than she had initially surmised.
Beginning in Showa 19 (1944) Takeko had started teaching in a town called Mishyo Mura east of
Iwakuni. She taught third grade children for two years and fifth grade children for one year.
Fortunately the war was not formally propagandized in the classroom so Takeko was never put in a
position of talking about the war to her pupils. One morning she was in the school auditorium where
the teachers and student body were assembled to listen to the principal when a bright flash of light
filled the room. Nobody knew what it was but it was daylight outside and it was a sunny day so it
couldn't have been lightning. A few minutes passed and so the principal began to speak again.
Suddenly a loud thunder sounded and the windows of the auditorium shattered. Everyone scrambled
to get under what chairs there were in the auditorium since most of the students had simply sat on
the floor. Suddenly sirens signaling that the enemy was attacking sounded and the teachers began
to assemble their students to take them to class-assigned dugouts. Everything was quiet except for
the sirens as Takeko lead her thirty-seven students to the dugout. After the sirens stopped they
began to cross a field that separated them from the school building and everyone noticed an
enormous cloud in the direction of Hiroshima but no one knew what it was. [Iwakuni is
Takeko at the time
she was mobilized
to work in the
factory welding
oxygen tanks for
the war effort.
Her headband indi-
cated which group
she was working
with, and her arm-
band was an
identification for
security purposes.
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approximately 18 miles from Hiroshima. Hashirano is another 2-4 miles or so from Iwakuni-Shi.
Mishyo Elementary School is about the same distance south east of Hashirano.]
On the third day after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, Takeko learned that a
request for volunteers had gone out for assistance to help in that city. Takeko and another teacher
volunteered to go. They took a train in the direction of Hiroshima, but the train would go no further
than Hatsukaichi, which was three station stops prior to Hiroshima. It was a very hot day and they
continued on by walking until they reached the outskirts of Hiroshima where they saw scorched
trees. They decided to turn back however when they were overcome by the terrible putrid smell that
filled the air and the sight of dead bodies floating in a river. After the war, a blister raised on
Takeko's lower leg for no apparent reason, when it healed an unusual scar was left behind. She
attributes this scar to her experience because there was no other logical explanation for it.
When the emperor spoke to the Japanese people over the radio to announce the surrender, it was
the first time they had heard him speak. Although his announcement was in a dialect reserved for
the Imperial Court, the Japanese people could still understand his message. Takeko and Hinako
never blamed the emperor for the war. They reasoned that the only time he spoke to the people was
to surrender, and that all the other war pronouncements were made by others, the military. Looking
back now, they say "He was just a figurehead."
Even after the war, the food shortages that afflicted Japanese families did not disappear for some
time. During the American Occupation, Douglas MacArthur promulgated the "Land-Lease Law", a
landholding reform law, Grandmother Yamamoto was no longer allowed to lease her land. As a
result, Takeko, Hinako and their paternal Uncle-in-law, Uncle Nishikawa, tried their best to plant and
harvest rice on one of their fields for their own consumption. Their inexperience proved to be an
enormous burden to overcome (Uncle Nishikawa had lived in the city and knew nothing of farming)
and the yield from the harvest was dismal.
Hinako would trade matsutake, pine mushrooms, which she had gathered from the land her
grandmother owned on the mountains surrounding Hashirano village for rice grown by her
classmate's family. Her friend lived in a rented house during the week when she attended school,
but Hinako would have to travel over seven miles and up the side of a mountain to this friend's
house during the weekend to consummate these transactions.
Yamaguchi Ken-ritsu
Iwakuni Dainichi Kooto Jogakko
Due to shortages during and after the war, students were not able to
obtain the cloth for their serge skirts so they gradually began to use
material from kimonos to make pants. This became practiced
throughout the country and is noticeable in the unusual patterns of
pants in this picture. Pictures in the centennial anniversary of the
Hashirano Shogakko show that the girls began wearing these pants
around Showa 16 (1941) and the serge skirts only begin to
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return in Showa 23 or 24 (1948-49).
After the sisters had survived the war impediments to their hoped for return to their home of
America continued to arise, not the least of which was serious concerns of mortality. While still a
teacher, Takeko fell ill with pneumonia. In their concern for their teacher, her students came and
visited her. Her illness was so severe that her friends prepared for her death by weaving her a straw
futon as was the custom of the time. In the fever of her illness she revealed secrets to her younger
sister that her conscious reserve would have otherwise kept secret, but Hinako was still surprised
when a male teacher that Takeko visited and in explaining his concern for her welfare added that he
wanted to bring issho-sake. Issho-sake was always exchanged at the time of marriage engagements
so his meaning was clearly understood. Hinako feared that this would mean she would not be able to
return to America with her sister so she tried to convince her sister's suitor that such a thing was
impossible. When her efforts seemed in need of support she asked another teacher who was renting
a room at their house during this time to explain their situation to the man. In the end she was
successful.
Marriage, in fact, had twice threatened the sisters' return to America. Obaasan believed that it was
right for girls to be married at a certain age. In preparation for that time she had negotiated with
Takeko's maternal aunt, (Urata) Akimoto, to have Takeko marry her maternal cousin whom she had
met in seinendan (the Community Youth Group). Aunt Akimoto believed strongly in maintaining the
purity of the blood through intermarriage and consolidation of wealth that the Urata, Akimoto, and
Yamamoto families possessed and such a marriage would support this goal. Issho-sake were
exchanged by the two families and Takeko was engaged. Her fiancй went off to fight in the war and
in retrospect it can be said that he miraculously returned.
In Showa 22 (1947), Takeko began working as an interpreter for the British administered Iwakuni
Liaison Office that was set up at a former Japanese military air base in Iwakuni. She was earning
more (her salary was Ґ800 a month!) than she had been as a teacher and had hope that this
position would aid her and her sister in getting back to the U.S. Takeko paid for Hinako's Jogakko
education and the bulk of the household expenses which were also met in part by the money earned
from renting out a room in their house. The British soldiers helped Takeko as they could and she
eventually received a postcard from her family in America with a photo on the obverse side. Takeko
sent three or four replies to her family which were eventually forwarded by the American Red Cross,
but it took months before her letters were finally acknowledged. Grandmother Yamamoto was upset
by Takeko's efforts to return to the U.S. with her sister, but Takeko was determined and finally
earned the support of her Uncle Taichi who had initially sided with her grandmother. Takeko went on
several trips to distant Yokohama and Osaka to make travel arrangements to get new passports for
herself and her sister so they could go home (Takeko and Hinako's birth certificates were lost at the
beginning of the war along with all the other documents, papers, and books that had English words
on them, and their passports were virtually destroyed in the flood). When in Osaka, Takeko would
visit her elder sister, Lily's brother-in-law who was stationed there as a member of the U.S. military
occupation forces. Aunt Akimoto and Obaasan suspected some sort of impropriety because they
didn't believe that he was married, though he was, and the marriage between Takeko and her
cousin was called off.
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In writing the following about their farewell to Grandmother Yamamoto, their friends, and to Japan
some fifty years before, Leila's (Hinako's) emotions overflowed and she began to cry:
"My school principal and homeroom teacher did something unheard of in Japan at the time. They
gave my entire class permission to give a farewell luncheon, with food cooked by my classmates, in
my honor a week before I left school and Japan for America. And then my classmates got a half day
off from school just to see me off at the train station. Some fifty classmates and several teachers
came to the station to wish me farewell. As the train pulled out, my grandmother tried to run along
with the train with her crippled knees. As her figure got smaller and smaller my sister Mary and I
broke down and cried so hard that a total stranger put her hands on my shoulder and comforted me.
We must have cried for an hour or two before we could compose ourselves."
Yamamoto Mika (Obasaan in the story) died on July 15, 1952.
It was only after returning to America that Mary (Takeko) and Leila (Hinako) learned what had
happened to their family. In March, 1942, Harry Yamamoto was told to report with his family to an
assembly center by the War Relocation Authority. They were given the option of relocating
somewhere beyond the coast (of California, Oregon, and Washington) or be sent to camps set up by
the government. Since Harry had lived in Nebraska for several years, he decided to move the family
there once again. They lost everything they had including a gardening business they had set-up
upon their return from Japan. Coralee, Mary and Leila's eldest sister, married George Fukasawa on
March 31, 1942 and they reluctantly chose to be sent to a relocation camp to wait out the hysteria
that had by then even possessed the nation. They were sent to Manzanar.
The Yamamoto saga of difficulty probably started sometime before Yamamoto Shigeichi first left
Japan, but Mary and Leila's experience are unique by any standards. They haven't been hardened by
their experience, but they have been strengthened. Leila says that she no longer understands
Japanese fluently like she once did. That it was a horrible period in her life and she just wanted to
forget about it when she returned to the U.S.
Leila's readjustment to American society was extremely difficult for her. After spending some of her
most formative years in Japan (from the time that she was six years old until just before she turned
seventeen), America's customs and language were completely foreign to her. She could not even
communicate with her younger sister or her nephews. After having been at the top of her class
throughout her academic career she was devastated by her "ignorance" in the home she had
returned to. Her friends from Japan wrote frequently to her making it even more difficult to break
from her past which she believed was necessary to hasten her adjustment to this new life. She was
to graduate from 10th grade the year that she left and now her elder sister, Lily, was forced to
enroll her into the 6th grade. Her younger sister, Irene, was already attending the 7th grade and
she was four years younger than Leila. Recalling this trying time she remarks:
"Fortunately I was short and looked their age so I didn't standout too badly. Once I made up my
mind to learn English and all that goes with it, I had no time to look back and lament. Before long I
determinedly packed my suitcase and headed for Denver [from Wyoming]. Mary was already there
and had arranged a place for me to work as a 'school girl.' A 'school girl' was a young woman who
worked as a maid in exchange for room and board while she attended school. My first job paid a
mere $15 per month. After school I had to care for three young children, clean and cook. This was
the only way for those without money to get an education in those days. My determination paid off
though because I was able to complete Junior and Senior High School equivalency courses in two
years before I set out for college with a scholarship in hand from the University of Denver. "
When asked where her father was during all this time, Leila comments that he was "happy-go-lucky"
in an offhanded way that suggests she has come to terms with this long ago. Then she adds, "you
know, I can only remember him sending us one postcard the entire time we were in Japan."
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Yamamoto Hinako with
her sensei in Math, Nagao
Osamu.
Poses such as this were
considered very risquй
at the time, but Nagao
sensei was willing to
break tradition for a
favorite.
In this letter to Leila
(Hinako), her former
sensei makes a request
that she try and assist
him in the purchase of
streptomycin to aid him
in the cure for the
tuberculosis he had
contracted. There was no
relief from economic
hardship in Japan for the
several years following
the war, and it was
natural to think that a
friend in America, where
the streets were
practically "paved with
gold," might be able to
help him out. He had no
concept of the difficulties
that Leila herself was
confronting. Osamu died
from tuberculosis.
Something of the trials that these two girls, now mature grandmothers, experienced as a result of
the war years have helped them persevere through other difficult times in their lives.
"I not only treasure [my experience in Japan], but those difficult years made me what I am today. I
can't help but count my blessings with thankfulness. No matter how rough and deep the waters may
seem, I have gained the knowledge and confidence in rowing to the calm shores by true experience.
"My experience in Japan gave me the strength to survive! I am happy and consider myself very
fortunate now. I have a loving and most understanding husband of 37 years. (I was left a widow
with two small boys when my first husband died of cancer in 1955). I have two wonderful children (I
lost my eldest son 11 years ago in an unfortunate hospital accident), and four beautiful
grandchildren which I dearly love to spoil. Although I retired from work after 29 years with the
Federal Government, at the moment [70 years old], I am working with the seniors at the Brighton
Senior Center. It gives me great comfort to be able to give some compassion and love to others
which Leila and I missed so much for such a long time."
-Mary (Takeko) Yamamoto, January 17, 1997
"For about five years after my return from Japan, I was too busy to sleep more than four hours a
night. Due to my hectic schedule I was not able to write to my friends in Japan. I barely had enough
time to attend to my English studies. I never did believe in doing things half way. Something had to
give and it turned out that it had to be Japanese which took back seat to my English. I can still read
and write Japanese, but not to the extent of my ability when I first returned home. Since it has
become "half way," I tell others that I forgot everything.
"Despite the horrendous experiences of growing up in Japan during those difficult times which were
my most impressionable years, I know that the building blocks of my life were laid years ago in the
small village called Hashirano. It was only years later that I realized what a tremendous effect those
years Mary and I spent in Japan had on my life. I believe I am a stronger person because of the
experiences of that time and that I am more tolerant and understanding of others. I have faced
many, many hardships since my school years, but faced them head-on and survived. Now I am at a
point in my life where very few things bother me. In other words - I am a happy person."
-Leila (Hinako) Yamamoto Myers, February 5, 1997