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MN: I would like to ask you about yourself now. Where were you born, Yoshiko?

YA: The place has a different name now, but I was born in Sodeshimura Village in Ihara County, Shizuoka Prefecture. It was partially a fishing village and very scenic. There was a river and a long beach. It looked like a resort area with mountains, and people lived their ordinary lives there. A lot of white collar workers lived there. Our neighborhood mainly had households of those people. There were fishermen living in another part of the village closer to the sea. There were also farmers, and we all lived in this half farming, half residential village. After the war, it became a part of Shizuoka City after a series of mergers, and it is currently named Shimizu Ward.

MN: When were you born?

YA: Well, I was born on November 29, 1930.

MN: You are the second child of six.

YA: Yes, I am.

MN: I heard you liked reading the newspaper as a child. Who influenced you?

YA: I am the second child, and my father used to take me everywhere he went. I was so-called "daddy's girl," I suppose. My father worked for a post office and sometimes stayed home during the day after a night shift. When my mother was cooking dinner -- it rains a lot in Japan, and he bought a lot of books for me. We couldn't go out to play on a rainy day. We had monthly subscriptions for children's magazines. We had them delivered to our house, and my father often read them to me.

My father always read the newspaper after work and also read books to me. It became my routine to read and check newspapers after my father. That's how I got interested in newspapers. My father read the paper, and I read it after he was done. I don't know why, but I liked checking newspapers even before I started elementary school and learned how to read. I continued to read newspapers when I was an elementary school student. I especially liked reading about current topics. I remember that his office had the union. My father was the head of the supporters for the baseball team, and I often went to the baseball field near a high school for games before I started elementary school. I spent a lot of time with my father and enjoyed a lot of things he did. After I started elementary school, I was still very interested in current topics. I clearly remember when The China Incident erupted when I was seven. We used to have newspaper extra editions. Delivery people distributed special editions wearing a happi coat and a headband, ringing a bell strapped around the waist and crying "Extra, extra!" That was when The Lugouqiao Incident happened. I still remember the Chinese characters for Lugouqiao as they were hard to read. The name was spelled in Chinese characters. They said something big happened, and I found the Chinese characters hard to read when got a copy of the extra. My father then told me that The Lugouqiao Incident triggered The China Incident. That's how I realized that a war started. I was seven years old. I became more interested in current news including the war. The attack on Pearl Harbor happened when I was at elementary school, and I was in the school yard --

MN: Before we go to Pearl Harbor, could you tell us about the education system in Japan before the war?

YA: Okay, yes.

MN: Every morning, students at school had --

YA: Yes. We had a morning assembly. We had an exercise session after that and went into the classrooms. We always prayed in front of the emperor's picture at the morning assembly. I imagine this was the case all through the county. Every school had a well-built shrine by the front gate with the emperor's picture placed inside. I cannot remember what it was called. We bowed deeply, clapped our hands in prayer and started our morning assembly. Next to the shrine was always a statue of Kinjiro Ninomiya who was known to be very studious. Every school had a Kinjiro Ninomiya statue, and we prayed in front of the statue and pledged our hard work. That was the system, and --

MN: What happened if you were late?

YA: What was that?

MN: If you were late.

YA: Oh, if you were late. Well, I don't think a lot of students were late. A few students ran to join the assembly, maybe. The rules were strict, and everyone was very punctual. I still remember that we got kicked out of the classroom to stand in the hallway as a punishment if we didn't follow the teacher's instruction. It is like what is called time-out here. I remember there was this punishment, and we had to be standing in the hallway and listening to the teacher through a window. Our school life was highly regulated, and we were expected to be polite with proper greetings and orderly schedules. I guess it was the military style.

MN: When did you recite the Imperial Rescript on Education?

YA: Well, that started when I was a fourth grader. The Imperial Rescript on Education had to be memorized. Everyone was expected to be able to recite it without help. We were graded and approved by the teachers when we memorized the entire text. If we couldn't, we had to stay behind after school over and over again until we had it memorized. Everyone was expected to recite the entire text. We recited the Imperial Rescript out loud in some mornings, not every morning, and we also had a short imperial poem called Gyosei. The poem is about pledging loyalty to Japan composed by the emperor, and we read the poem out loud before the classes. People were firmly united under the policy. Retrospectively, we were educated under a very tight militaristic system. It was strictly militaristic with a morning salute to the emperor and a pledge for working hard like Kinjiro Ninomiya. After the war started, teachers taught military songs in the music class to raise the morale of the students. The songs were devoted to soldiers who were leaving for the war and fighting a brave fight. Through the system, militarism quickly swept the entire country.

MN: When did English classes and English words start to be banned?

YA: When the war against the U.S. started, the Ministry of Education immediately sent orders to all schools. That was like the Department of Education here, and the instruction was sent by the ministry. They banned all the English classes and English words.

MN: You couldn't use English words like "baseball" then.

YA: That is right. Not at all. For example, we use a lot of English words when we talk about volleyball. Words about the rules. We had to replace all those words with Japanese ones.

MN: Did you clean your school every day?

YA: We took turns to be on cleaning duty. The leader of the group filled buckets with water, and we worked in shifts to wipe all the desks clean in the morning. After lunch, we all mopped the classroom floor and hallways. We of course swept the entire floor too. We cleaned the classrooms and bathrooms. We were all assigned to a section. We worked in shifts and cleaned the assigned area every day.

MN: Did you bring your own rag?

YA: Yes, we brought a rag from home. We recycled old clothes to make individual rags and embroidered our names. We replaced an old one with a new one. Everything was kept very clean as we all had our shoes off in the school building. It got dusty with the doors and windows open. We all picked up trash and threw them away. The blackboards were always wiped clean after each class. It was an old building but kept very tidy. Our shoes were all lined up after we took them off. We were supposed to keep them organized by arranging them. The shoes were always neatly lined up. It was also done at home. We had signs up to remind us to be tidy, and the message was thoroughly followed.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.