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MN: Yoshiko, when was it, where were you and what were you doing when you heard the news about the attack on Pearl Harbor?

YA: Well, I was doing laundry. I was at home, and my mother and sisters were evacuated in countryside. I was there with my elder sister, and my father was at work. My mother wasn't there, and I heard the news on the radio when I was doing laundry at home. I was so shocked and couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe what I heard on the radio. I saw the news printed in a big font in the newspaper the following morning. I read newspaper every day, and I was so shocked and cried out loud. I was heartbroken, heartbroken and sad, and --

MN: Why were you so sad?

YA: I believed we would win the war. The war against the United States. We endured and waited for the victory. We didn't have anything to eat or to wear. We didn't have anything we wanted to have. They simply weren't available anywhere. We were forced to go through hardship, and everything was tightly controlled, like food and clothes, even words we were allowed to use at school. We had a slogan to urge us to be patient until the victory comes. We couldn't do what we wanted to do and couldn't eat what we wanted to eat. We all endured, but it all ended up nothing. Nothing was rewarded. We lost the war, and everything was gone. I was just a child, but I was devastated.

MN: I was asking about before the war started, just the beginning. Pearl Harbor was --

YA: Oh, Pearl Harbor. I'm sorry. I was talking about when we lost the war.

MN: I was not talking about the imperial broadcasting when you lost the war.

YA: Right.

MN: I was asking about the news when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

YA: I was impressed by the achievement and thought that we also needed to join and do something. The media presented the nine soldiers who crashed into the battleship as the "Nine War Heroes." Their pictures were all in the newspaper. Their portraits in the paper were almost something sacred for me. I thought those soldiers were just wonderful. I was very impressed by the brave young men and thought we needed to do something too. I felt like even the newspaper article was something precious and carefully placed the paper on the table. I was so impressed. We had to follow their lead. We had to do something. I think that's what everyone thought. That's how it was back then.

MN: When did the controlled food distribution take place?

YA: Well, it was not so intense right after the Pearl Harbor. It was getting very tight after about three years into the war. I don't remember exactly when the controlled distribution started, but the control was pretty rigid. I initially wasn't aware of it though.

MN: Could you tell us how the food distribution worked?

YA: Each family was given a food distribution book, and it was just like a notebook. It had the name and the number of the family members. It had the family name, the street address and the name, and we went to a rice distributor with the book. A certain amount was assigned to each family, and that was all what we were allowed to buy. But the amount was not sufficient enough to feed the family of five, six or whatever people you had in your family. Food was distributed for a certain number of days, and we needed to stretch it over the period of time. Mothers were required to divide it into the daily amount to have it last for a week, for example. That left us with a very small amount to consume every day. We needed to do something to get extra food. We happened to have unused land by our house. It had an owner but didn't have anything planted. Everyone was drafted to fight in the war, and labor shortage left a lot of land unused and empty. My mother went to the owner, got permission to use it and planted sweet potatoes and vegetables. She supplemented our food with what she harvested in the field, but it was getting harder and harder. Rice was the main food, but it was hardly available. We mixed potatoes and beans with rice to cook. We had some rice grains among vegetable pieces. We didn't have white rice, and all we could get was so-called partially-polished, like brown rice. Retrospectively, that was health food, but the black rice was what we ate. We lived on the distributed food and potatoes and pumpkins that we harvested in the field around the house. We were not skilled farmers and didn't get beautiful crops, but that was what we did to survive.

MN: Your mother also brought a goat from somewhere.

YA: That's right. That was after the war now I think about it. I was in poor health then, and I don't know where she managed to buy a goat. [Laughs] She bought a goat somewhere in the countryside. Goats are herbivore. She went to a field and empty land to gather grass and picked weeds on the vegetable field to feed him. She milked the goat and fed me with the milk.

MN: Did military police tighten the control after the war started?

YA: Yes, I didn't see many of them in our neighborhood, but they came to schools and other public places.

MN: Did the military use classrooms at your school?

YA: Yes, we had military people at our school. It was not for a long period of time, but they had a temporary stay in a group and then left for war from there. We were crowded into a limited number of classrooms to make the others available for soldiers to use. They held exercise sessions in the school yard, went through trainings there and left for war. After one group left, another one came, went through the same training and left to fight in the war. We saw several groups coming and going. We performed a play at a farewell gathering to give blessings and send them away when they were ready to leave.

MN: What kind of food did the soldiers eat?

YA: I didn't have a chance to take a close look. We were in our classrooms, and they were in a different part of the school buildings as the facility was pretty large. I didn't see the details, but I saw them cooking rice in small pots over open fire. They didn't have a large kitchen at the school. They cooked outside camping-style and ate there. I noticed that they were eating white rice in a pot when I took a glance at it. I realized that the soldiers were adequately fed. I heard people made sure that the military had sufficient food supply. Not our village, but some farming villages sent their crops to the soldiers to keep the military food as decent as possible. I heard they delivered food to many soldiers.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.