Passing on My Grandfather's Atomic Bomb Picture Book [Part 3] - The Night of Repatriation. Luggage, Prayers, and the Sound of Water.

One midnight in February 1946.
The order for 'repatriation to begin' finally reached my grandfather, Ben Sakaguchi, and my grandmother.
The couple prepared rice balls, shouldered as much luggage as they could carry, and began to walk quietly along the pitch-black road.

In the procession, there were families, women alone, young bachelors... all kinds of people.
Along the way, the sound of water splashing would occasionally echo.
It was the sound of people who could no longer carry their belongings throwing their personal items into the creek (waterway).
I can picture the people who moved forward while choosing what to 'give up' in order to carry their lives.

The place they arrived at was Shanghai.
People and luggage were packed tightly into trucks to head to the port, where they were gathered in a laundry factory.
While waiting for departure, a communal life lasting ten days began there.

In the ten days of communal life at the laundry factory, all sorts of people were huddled together.
I heard that one person spent their time holding one of their twin babies in front and carrying the other on their back.
Another woman was separated from her husband because he had been a military policeman, and she had no choice but to return home alone.
Even when someone passed away, they could not even give the body a proper send-off, and sometimes they were buried in the ground in the corner of the factory.

On the day of departure, my grandparents were put on a cargo ship.
It was not a facility for transporting people, but a ship's hold with only 'straw mats' laid on the floor.
Even in those conditions, life continued.
It is said that someone even gave birth on the ship.
Thinking of a new life being born into this world amidst the anxiety and chaos of the journey home makes my heart ache.

The hope of being able to return home and the reality of life being whittled away.
I think it must have been a time that existed in the gap between those two things.
Even so, perhaps the mere fact that they could 'return home' was what sustained everything.

Eventually, the ship arrived in Kagoshima, and my grandparents took a train again, heading toward Nagasaki.
On the way, they saw the burnt ruins of the atomic bombing in Urakami.

To have finally made it back to their hometown only to have that scorched wasteland jump into their eyes...
I wonder what they must have felt.
I could never hear about that moment from my grandfather's own lips.

What did he talk about, and what did he leave unsaid?
I am writing this record now while imagining those 'things that were left unsaid'.

🙏 Sources and Acknowledgments

This article is based on the records in 'Kikigaki: Ben Sakaguchi-sensei' (written by Hiroshi Suenaga).
I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude for the many lessons and insights I have gained as a valuable resource in tracing my grandfather's footsteps.

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[Part 4] From the Mountain School Back to the Lectern | The Children My Grandfather Watched Over, and the Beginning of Speaking Out