Showa, Men Had It Tough 117: Back in My Hometown

This is the story of Tsugio (my father), who was born in a farming village in Kagoshima in the early Showa period and lived out his entire life there as a farmer until he passed away at 82.

As the only son of a farming family, Tsugio was attending a prefectural agricultural school during the war when he developed a longing for airplanes (military aircraft), and without telling his parents, volunteered for the Army Youth Pilot program, where he studied aircraft maintenance at flight school. He started at the Hokota Army Flight School, went through the Nasuno Airfield, and reached the end of the war at the Keijo Airfield in Korea. In the previous section, I described what it was like when Tsugio finally arrived back at his small village in his hometown.

After being demobilized, Tsugio might have taken it easy for a while to "settle down," but depending on when he returned, he probably couldn't afford to relax for too long. After all, there were only three people in the family. He had to continue the seasonal cultivation of the fields that his father, Kichitaro (my grandfather), had built up from scratch, regardless of the war or its end.

Even if that weren't the case, while Tsugio was away at war, his parents, who were already approaching old age, had been managing the fields on their own with the help of relatives and neighbors. Every household was always short on male labor. Tsugio's return was a godsend not only for his family but for the entire village.

Of course, the most important thing for the "family" was that their only heir had returned alive. Moreover, he had come back in one piece, without being wounded on the battlefield. There was nothing more joyful than that.

Therefore, both Kichitaro and his wife Haru (my grandmother) must have felt a mix of wanting Tsugio to rest and wanting him to join in the farm work as soon as possible. They might have wanted to hear about his time during the war, but they didn't know much about the distant flight schools or military life, and even if they had heard a little, they probably wouldn't have been able to imagine it.

Fortunately, Tsugio was still in the prime of his youth, not yet 20. After a little rest, he recovered enough to get out into the fields. There was nothing to do at home, and since it was a small village, there wasn't much in the way of entertainment. In the first place, there was a shortage of all kinds of supplies. Other men of his generation who hadn't volunteered for the war were helping out on their family farms. It was a natural progression for Tsugio to head out to the fields.

With the defeat in the war, it was expected that many things that had continued until then—systems, customs, and so on—would change. With everything in a state of "uncertainty," most ordinary people prioritized maintaining their daily lives above all else, unable to think even a few weeks ahead, let alone months.

As for the farming village, every household at least had food to eat, and their way of life and interactions with neighbors were not much different from before or during the war, so it wasn't particularly chaotic. In a sense, they just had to continue the life that Kichitaro and the others had been living since the Meiji era or even earlier. Tsugio's family also had enough to eat. Just having a young man around made him valuable, and when he was called to help neighbors, he would be given crops they didn't grow themselves, small food items, or in some cases, sweets or cigarettes as a token of gratitude.

Tsugio, who had spent his late teens bound by the strict discipline and hierarchy of the military, constantly on edge, felt as if he had finally returned to a life appropriate for his age. His father was as unsociable as ever but seemed happy about his return, and he had a mother who was always looking out for him. He had childhood friends, and the people in the village and the region treated him just as they had before he went to war.

This, in itself, was not a bad life.