Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Muriel Chiyo Tanaka Onishi Interview
Narrator: Muriel Chiyo Tanaka Onishi
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: June 2, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-omuriel-01-0014

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TI: And you mentioned your group was kind of a secret group. Did you guys have a name? Did they name your group a certain thing?

MO: It was the Beppa.

TI: And what would that mean?

MO: Beppa means a separate building. So they would say, "Are you from the Beppa?"

TI: And in general, how were you treated? It sounded like you were, you said you were paid, you were the highest Nisei paid...

MO: Because I was translating also.

TI: And was that pay in relationship to, say, the Japanese workers there?

MO: I'm not sure how much they were getting, but we had a second-class accommodation whenever we wanted to travel. We had vacation time, too. But whenever we wanted to travel, we had second-class accommodation, nitousha. In fact, I wanted to go visit my -- we knew the war was getting close to Japan, and we had to get out of there. And so I was telling, "I think I better go and say goodbye to some of my relatives in Hiroshima and Yamaguchi," my father's relatives. So they said, "Oh, go ahead," and so they gave me the tickets, the second-class tickets. And then I went, I caught the plane -- the train -- and then went to Yamaguchi. But, of course, on my way back from Yamaguchi, the bomb fell in, near Nagoya. And so the train went, going back to Tokyo, they were coming from Hiroshima to Nagoya, and then they called it orikaeshi unten. You just, reverse comes, go right back. So in order to go back to Tokyo, we had to walk from one station into Tokyo side. But that happened once. And here, when we go to the country, we all buy, my relatives would give me sweet potato and daikon and vegetables that we cannot buy in Tokyo. So we had knapsacks full of vegetables, and so heavy, and so I felt like throwing them out, you know. But I said, no, no, it's just a few more of my friends that -- not my friends, but people who traveled with me, they said, "No, mou sukoshi dakara," "Go ahead and take it." So we all came back to Tokyo that night, and the night we arrived in Tokyo, there was a big bombing in Tokyo. And the Americans were bombing. But I'll never forget that night of the bombing, because it started to shine, and then the bombs were falling. So I have written a little article about, "Why me, God? How come I was spared all this?" In spite of all these bombing, and I was able to escape from this. I have written a little message for myself, and I'm going to share that in church one of these days.

TI: Because during this bombing in Tokyo, this large bombing, many people were, were killed and wounded during this time period? Lots of people died?

MO: Oh, yes, uh-huh.

TI: And did you see lots of people dying during this?

MO: And why I was so lucky to escape from all that bombing.

TI: And what did you do to try to be safe during the bombing?

MO: Well, because I was working in a place that was, they left Pearl Harbor time, the fighter bombers, five hundred fighter bombers left... what's that island? That we knew by a certain time, they're going to be hitting Tokyo, so we could go into the shelter. And the shelter at the General Headquarters is so deep. And then nobody, the Americans, the enemy, they... one thing we found out, that they dropped bombs around the General Headquarters, this is where I worked, but they never dropped into our headquarters. Because they wanted to preserve all the things that they needed when the war ended or whatever time comes. So in a way, I was lucky. And I always tell myself God was protecting me from all the miseries that I would have faced.

TI: So there's a lot there. Let me see if I can understand this. So one, because you're monitoring the radio broadcasts, you knew pretty much when the big wave of planes were going to come. The other thing was that they had deep tunnels or rooms in the basement that you could...

MO: Escape.

TI: ...escape. And then the third thing, you worked General Headquarters, and they never really bombed right on General Headquarters, they just bombed around, because they wanted to save the records, buildings, those kind of things. Interesting. You mentioned coming back from Hiroshima to Tokyo, and that plane, or that train journey.

MO: They bombed the station.

TI: Yeah. Was this, how close was this to the actual atomic bomb of Hiroshima?

MO: They bombed the station so the station was all exploded. But people were traveling to get on the train from that station to go to Tokyo, back to Tokyo, couldn't get on because the plane was, train was not going back to Tokyo. So we all had to walk.

TI: So let me make sure I understand this. So the atomic bomb had already dropped at...

MO: At that one station, yes.

TI: At Hiroshima?

MO: No, Numazu. That's near, past Kyoto station.

TI: Okay, so this wasn't the atomic bomb, it was just a bomb.

MO: No, no, just a bomb.

TI: Just a bomb.

MO: That exploded the station, exploded the train.

TI: Okay. But this was all happening towards the end of the war.

MO: That's right.

TI: And so I'm just curious, or I just wanted to note that you were actually in Hiroshima just close to the date of the actual bombing, or the atomic bomb? Within probably weeks of that?

MO: I'm trying to remember those days. Atomic bomb was...

TI: It was like August 6th.

MO: Yes. I was going to, they told me that... it was a little confusing for me.

TI: Yeah, so lots of things were happening.

MO: Yes, uh-huh. But I went to, they dropped the first bomb, and then we knew that the second bomb was going to come again because they announced it through the secret service. They were talking about having a meeting, and the Japanese warlords knew that they were going to come back and bomb the third bombing in Tokyo. But before that happened, they wanted to make sure that they didn't do that. And so, but that's when -- I'm jumping again -- before the third bombing, Japan announced the unconditional surrender.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright ©2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.