Densho Digital Archive - Aiko Tengan Tokunaga Interview (denshovh-taiko-01-0005)

<Begin Segment 5>

MN: Now, your family returned to Okinawa. Why, why did they return to Okinawa?

AT: My mother said that war was beginning, and my father got a notice, the induction paper, that he felt that he'll probably be called very soon, and it might be safer for them to move back to Okinawa where the family are. So that's how they all moved back to Okinawa.

MN: So your family was, were they living in Naha when the war started?

AT: Yes.

MN: And what year were you born?

AT: I was born in '43.

MN: So you were born when the war had already started.

AT: Right, but hadn't arrived in Okinawa.

MN: And what is your birth name?

AT: Birth name's Tengan, Aiko. Aiko Tengan.

MN: And where were you born? Were you born in a hospital? Were you born, delivered by a samba-san?

AT: I believe in hospital, but again, I'm not sure, you know, by samba-san that delivered, but I think it was in a hospital meaning like clinic.

MN: Now, the war is going on, it hasn't reached Okinawa yet. But you mentioned that your family didn't think you were going to survive. Why is that?

AT: Well, because the very shortage of food. My mother was very, very undernourished, malnourished, and my... well, I was told that when I was born, I was very, very, almost gaikotsu, bone with the skin hanging. [Laughs] And so, and my mother didn't have any milk to give, and so my grandmother said she couldn't give me a bath because as though the skin would just come apart. So she said had to kind of tap on the body to keep the skin from falling. So that's, so I think, gee, it was the nourishment that my mother wasn't getting. But I have a lot of classmates, so everybody survived. [Laughs]

MN: Your parents lived in the city, the capital. Do you think the people living in the country had more to eat, or were the Japanese soldiers already there taking food away?

AT: No, I'm sure they had, they had food. Okinawans, if we had a potato, we can survive. So I'm sure they had, before the bombing came, they had the hatake, their fields, so I think they were, yeah, able. Probably make, other than what they grow, they probably couldn't buy a lot of things. But I think they were able to survive.