survivor
We sat at the same Wednesday table, the four of us, talking of war because today was the day the battle in Okinawa ended. She started to speak, the oldest and shyest of the group. In halting sentences, she talked about her past, the whole time with a smile on her face but only knowing how to proceed because I asked her questions.

I had no idea.

*****
I was fourteen years old during the war. In the second year of a girl's high school. But for six months, we had no class. Instead, we were forced to come to school to make nuts and bolts for army airplanes (using a lathe). It was boring work and we didn't get paid. Instead, we recieved two slices of bread.

There was very little food those days, especially no rice. In the morning, we ate gruel and sometimes rice porridge. But all the sugar and fats were sent to war for the soldiers. No, I didn't think the war was frightening. I didn't think about things like that. But none of us thought Japan would win the war.

After the war we could eat canned goods given to us by American soldiers. The first time I met American soldiers they kept asking me questions and asking me questions but I wouldn't answer. I wasn't angry at the occupation because it was all a matter of due course. But we all thought that the soldiers were cruel and might hit you or rape you if you were a woman. So we stayed away from them.

In school, we were taught that the American soldiers would stop at nothing. We had started to learn our ABCs but the teacher had to stop us midway because it was the language of the enemy. The truth is that even though Western things were forbidden, I still loved Western fairy tales and especially comics. I still love them today.

I lived in Nagasaki prefecture during the war. Yes, my family's house was in Nagasaki city. On the day that they dropped the A-bomb, I was visiting with my aunt and playing with the children at their house. I heard the plane fly by so I ran into the hallway to look. Suddenly, everything became very, very bright and my skin felt very hot. As I watched, it seemed that the world had turned red.

I considered falling to the ground and covering my head and that I might die. But when I thought I might die, I decided that I would rather do it standing up, so I held on to the beam in front of me. That's when I heard my aunt calling me from the closet, "Yoshiko, Yoshiko, come here!" They had all hidden in the closet. When I went in, things started to fall down around us and all the windows in the house were broken.

We were about three kilometres from where the bomb struck. There were some small mountains between where I was and the blast. But I heard that if the pilot had correctly dropped the bomb, I probably would not be alive today. My parents were in the city... but they survived.

Afterwards, I had some diarrhea and bleeding from my gums. My hair fell out in chunks. But I have never had any problems after that, not even having children. I think I'm really lucky. At the time, even the A-bomb didn't really scare me. I never knew the extent of the damage until long afterwards. People didn't tell me these things.

*****

It's different hearing these stories in person. What surprised me the most wasn't listening to the account of someone I know, but rather seeing the way she retold it. I wasn't sure how to react, especially given that she told the story as if she was talking about drinking tea with a friend on Friday. The questions just kept on coming, ironically minutes before the end of the last group lesson and to the one student who has always spoken least.

I was going to write about cultural regression in Japan today-- did YOU know they have Pepsi Blue here? I was going to write about how I made an ass of myself. I was going to write about returning my health insurance or maybe about calling the post office to make sure they correctly labled my package. I've been planning to write a long piece explaining my current emotional state. But somehow all that seems trite at the moment. I keep picturing that image of a fourteen-year-old Yoshiko Hasegawa clinging to a hallway strut as the sky turns red.