Reflections on the Anniversary of the End of the War (Part 2): My Mother's Story

Last year I wrote about my father's war experiences, so this year I would like to write about my mother and the war.

My mother rarely spoke about the war, and if the sounds of air raids or air raid sirens came from the television, she would quickly turn it off.
She seemed to avoid dramas and movies themed around the war, and I have no memory of watching such programs with her when I was a child.

I will try to summarize what I learned by piecing together the words that spilled out from my mother over many years, and what I learned by asking her questions from time to time.

My mother was born and raised in Shinagawa, Tokyo, and she told me her house was burned down in an air raid.
She was about 19 at the time (I never asked which air raid it was).

She said she fled through the fire, holding the hands of her mother, who was about 60, and her brother's children, who had lost their parents.

She told me she survived because she followed her intuition when she chose which way to run.

Her sister, who was 14 years older, had married into a family in Ome, and although my mother had sent her important belongings there to be evacuated, when she went to check, she found they had been traded for food.

She said that her Hina dolls and beautiful kimonos were all gone.
She seemed to hold a bit of a grudge against her sister, but I suppose that was just the reality of the food situation at the time.
(My aunt helped us out in many ways later on, and I believe she sent me many lovely clothes when I was born.)

My mother said that because she had lost everything, she felt incredibly free!
Everyone around her was in the same boat. She also said that everyone was kind and helped each other.

When my mother talked about that, her face would light up—she must have been remembering it fondly.

I'm not sure if it was before or after the war ended, but after losing their home, my mother and her family relied on relatives and evacuated.
In the evacuation area, the farmers were indeed resilient.
However, since her workplace was related to food distribution, she said she was relatively lucky and didn't struggle too much for food.

She walked many kilometers to work every day and would arrive first thing in the morning to clean. She was a frail person, but perhaps that is what made her a bit stronger.

There are also memories of her having a good time with other women who had evacuated from Tokyo.

It was there that she met my father, who had returned a little while after the war ended (having been a prisoner of the Dutch army in the South), and they eventually married.

My father used to say proudly that it was a great romance.

Back then, it was the era of arranged marriages.
I imagine there was a lot of opposition to him marrying a girl from Tokyo who had been burned out of her home and came with dependents.

Whenever I asked my mother, she would act aloof, so I always thought it was only my father who felt it was a great romance, but at my mother's memorial service, my niece (my mother's granddaughter) told me, "Grandma said it was a great romance."
Was she being a 'tsundere'? Or not?

Come to think of it, when I was cleaning up after my mother passed away, I found a photo of my father in his military uniform riding a white horse displayed on the bookshelf in her room.

She used to say, "Your father looked cool because he wore his military uniform and cap in the beginning." (It seems he wore his uniform even after he was demobilized.)
It was a shame, though, that she would follow that up by saying, "But when he took his cap off, he had a big forehead. I was disappointed." 💦

Perhaps she had a thing for military uniforms.

Besides, looking at the photos, my father, who had survived starvation in the South, had sunken cheeks and was indeed the slender type my mother liked.

As a daughter, I felt relieved after my parents passed away to learn that my mother, too, had experienced a great romance.

My parents lived with my grandmother, as well as their nephews and nieces, in their first home after they were married. I suppose that was just how things were in the post-war era.
My eldest brother was born, and it seems raising children while relying on rations was very difficult.

(My father must have been alive until around the end of the war, but my mother never spoke of him except for the time before the war.)

If it weren't for the war, my father and mother would never have met like this.
They met because they both survived.
And now, there is a peaceful Japan, my brothers, and me.

People have no choice but to live through the times they are born into.
Although there are painful and difficult moments from time to time, if you keep living, you can also grasp happiness.

Those who died in the war had that taken away from them.

Because we are alive... that is precisely why we must never have war. I want to protect these happy days.

This year, I watched the National Memorial Service for the War Dead on TV more intently than ever before and offered a silent prayer.
Perhaps I felt compelled to do so because we are in the midst of this pandemic.
I thought about those who died in the war, and I felt that I wanted to live in the present, cherishing the Japan that recovered from the devastation of war.

And the stories of the war that I hear from my own family, even if they are fragmented, feel special. It is our family history, and I feel that it connects to who I am today.

If there is someone you can ask, why not try listening, even just a little?
...Though there may be some who simply do not want to talk about it. That is because they feel the cruelty of the war so deeply...

I sincerely pray for the repose of the souls of all those who perished in the Pacific War.

*The full header photo↓

This was taken when they went on a boat trip with friends from their workplace where they had been evacuated.
It seems my parents were already dating. I believe the women with them were also part of the evacuation group.

I wanted to post a photo of my mother in her Women's Volunteer Corps uniform with her hair in braids, but I couldn't find it.
Instead, this must be from after the war. Perhaps in the garden of their workplace during the evacuation. I think the clothes were likely remade from kimono.
Is she wearing a perm!?

My mother's Prince Charming.

*Something I didn't write about last year: my father was on a ship heading south when it came under attack, and he said there were other ships around them that were sunk.
He said that while the ship was rocking violently from the attack, he and the others were drinking sake with their legs hooked around the pillars.
He spoke of it lightly, saying there was nothing else to do, but it is a story he can only tell because he survived. I believe it was their final toast, not knowing if the ship would sink.*