<Begin Segment 4>

[Translated from Japanese]

NM: Let's go back to the wartime. You mentioned your father was already gone. Did he pass away during the war?

TF: Let's see. He passed away on July 20th, about one month before the war ended.

NM: One month before?

TF: Yes.

NM: Did he die in battle?

TF: No, that's not how he died. My father was a leader and served as a chairperson of the neighborhood association. He was a leading a project for a mandatory produce sale to the government and talking to people in the village. He believed the project was crucial and convinced each villager to volunteer to save a portion of their produce for the government to purchase at a lower rate. Our family was the first to achieve the goal. He wanted to celebrate the achievement with the supporters and held a big party at our home. He also invited farm workers who were leasing his land. The workers brought some sake to as a thank-you gift for him. My father enjoyed sake, and they brought some for him. It turned out it was made with methyl alcohol, which was widely used those days. It was a chemical for industrial use. The toxic chemical was mixed in, but no one knew about it. They bought it somewhere in a nearby town and brought it as a gift. He drank it, and that was it. He didn't know what he was drinking or how toxic it was. He enjoyed drinking sake.

NM: I would imagine it was hard to find high-quality sake made by professional sake makers during the war.

TF: Everything was distributed by the government. He thought it was a nice gift to enjoy with his guests. The one who brought the gift also liked sake. Both he and my father passed away on the same day. The other people were not big drinkers. They quickly got sick and threw up. That's why they survived. Our family had a large silkworm room and storage. We were offering the space to host temporary classrooms. Schools were trying to relocate the classrooms to avoid massive casualties just in case they were targeted with air raids. School officials requested land owners in the area to offer empty rooms. Our family was no longer running sericulture and had a big nice room available. We hosted one class room in our storage and another three or so in the silkworm room. We had four or five classrooms.

NM: I see.

TF: The teacher was also invited, but he was not a drinker. He threw up and survived. That is how my father passed away.

NM: It must have been so difficult.

TF: I was a freshman at a girls' school. That is when my life changed forever.

NM: You lost your father, the head of the household, while the war was still going on.

TF: I did. His death did not trigger immediate changes. It forced my brother to leave his college of engineering and to take over the household though. My mother didn't think it was appropriate for me to pursue higher education while my male sibling was not. She was old-fashioned, and that was how she thought.

NM: So you were forced to leave your school because your brother did.

TF: I was told I was allowed [to graduate from the girls' school] but not allowed to go to higher education institutes. I didn't know how my mother felt. I heard about it from my teacher and my sister some time later. I was aware of the situation though. It was unusual to even attend the girls' school in those days. Nobody else did in the village.

NM: The girls' school you were attending, was that a middle school or high school?

TF: It was a high school equivalent. I could have received either a high school or girls' school diploma when I graduated. I received the girls' school diploma.

NM: Potential higher education for you would have been a university then?

TF: University or community college, if any. I think we had a community college thee. There was a technical school. It was like community college, and people attended the school to obtain teaching certificates.

NM: You graduated from the girls' school, but your path to higher education was blocked. Was that after the war?

TF: That's right.

NM: I see.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.