Made In Japan

by Akio Morita

  I put it as simply as possible. “Under naval regulations,” I said, “we have to get up whenever the alarm sounds, put on our uniforms, and man the fire pumps. But since it seems almost impossible to get bombed in this location, I’m not going to wake you up even if the air raid alarms do go off.” They seemed to like that.

  “On the other hand,” I warned them, “if a bomb does fall here there is nothing we could do about it. In that case it would be the end anyway.” My colleagues accepted my reasoning with relief. And to show them that I meant what I said, I moved out of the hotel and very dramatically moved my gear into a second-floor room at our villa. It wasn’t a brave thing to do at all. I realized that there would be no point in the Americans bombing a place like this. At the end, we weren’t doing any really important research there anymore, and it seemed better to sleep during the night than to get up during each alert and drag through the next day suffering from lack of sleep.

  III

  In July and August of 1945, there were raids over the Tokyo-Yokohama area almost every day and every night. We could watch the big silver B-29’s passing overhead after their bombing runs inland and an antiaircraft battery nearby would open fire. Sometimes from our windows, we could see a B-29 being hit and falling into the sea. There were tracers crisscrossing the sky and spent shells all over the ground. During the raids, we could often feel the earth shaking, but we eventually slept through most of those raids. I guess I shouldn’t admit that, but it has been many years and I think the statute of limitations must have run out by now.

  The thing that concerned me a great deal then was that the military would not give up this war no matter how badly it was going and that the Miura Peninsula, where we were stationed, would become a bloody battleground, a last ditch battleground for the fanatical military, Japan’s Bataan. We know now that there was an invasion plan, called “Olympic,” that called for landings in our southernmost main island of Kyushu, but we all knew that the concentration of military targets in our area would be too important to bypass and that if worse came to worst, there would be a lot of fighting on the way to Tokyo. After the atomic bomb was dropped, I knew we were heading for the crisis. In the days following the bombing, many military people decided to take “official” trips to visit their families. But being duty officer I couldn’t leave, even though the situation was getting more and more worrisome and confused. One day I received orders to do some work in Nagoya, and since my family home was nearby I asked for a day’s leave to visit my parents. My request was approved.

  I remember that before leaving I announced to my fellow officers that it was quite possible the war would end while I was away. In that case, I said, no one could predict what would happen to our station—the navy might even order us to commit mass suicide. In that case, I said, I would not come back to join them as they obeyed that final order. It was not much of a joke, and I guess an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy should never have said such a thing to his superiors, but I just had to say it. One lieutenant got very angry and yelled, “Lieutenant Morita, what are you talking about? If you do not come back, you will be charged with desertion in the face of the enemy!” It was the worst threat he could think of.

  I turned to him and said calmly, “When this war ends, Lieutenant, the crime of desertion in the face of the enemy will no longer exist.”

  After taking care of my official business in Nagoya, I hurried back to our ancestral home in Kosugaya where my family was then living again. The city of Nagoya and most of Aichi Prefecture was targeted by the American Air Force because of the industrial plants located there, which included aircraft factories—the famous Zero fighter was built in Nagoya—and antiaircraft artillery plants. By July the bombing had destroyed or badly damaged half of the industrial buildings in Nagoya, and statistics released sometime later said that 32 percent of the population had been “dehoused” in the firebombing. It was simply not safe for civilians, so many people who did not have to be in the city moved away, like my parents. The bombing caused millions of people to flee. Actually Nagoya suffered less than Yokohama, where 69 percent of the population was homeless, or Kobe, where the number was 58 percent, or Tokyo, with 46 percent. This put quite a burden on the people in the smaller communities where the refugees sought shelter.

  My future wife remained in Tokyo with her father and one brother, and the rest of the family went to live with relatives in the countryside. In Tokyo they survived the bombing in the cramped backyard air raid shelter, but one night their fine old house was destroyed by incendiaries, and they lived for weeks in the shelter next to the rubble that was once their home. The house, which was brimming with books, smoldered so hotly for so long that Yoshiko actually cooked meals over the embers for many days.

  It was the evening of August 14 when I found my family at home. We had a fine reunion, but my father looked worried. He was concerned about the end of the war. Like most Japanese then, he had sensed for a long time that the war was lost, but he had no idea how it would end and what would happen after. He confided to me that he was considering evacuating to some other, more remote place. I told him that there was no point in doing that, because from what I knew and could see, they were as safe where they were as anybody could be, considering the uncertainty of everyone’s future. No one knew what to expect from the Americans. I told my father that I expected the war would not continue much longer. We talked until well past midnight, and then I fell asleep, exhausted.

  I was shaken awake by my mother in the early morning—it seemed that I had hardly slept at all. Mother was agitated, and with great excitement she said that Emperor Hirohito was going to make an announcement on the radio at noon. It was August 15. Even the announcement that the emperor would speak to the nation was stunning. Something extraordinary was to come. The emperor’s voice had never been heard by the Japanese people. In fact ordinary people were not allowed to look at him, and when he traveled by car or train, people along the route were required to face away. We all knew we were experiencing historic moments.

  Because I was, after all, a naval officer, I put on my full uniform, including my sword, and I stood at attention while we listened to the broadcast. There was a lot of static on the radio and a lot of background noise, but the high, thin voice of His Majesty came through.

  Although the people of Japan had never before heard his voice, we knew it was the emperor. He spoke in the highly mannered old-fashioned language of the court, and even though we couldn’t follow the words exactly, we knew what the message was, what he was telling us, and we were frightened and yet relieved.

  The war was over.

  PEACE: Our New Life Begins

  I

  Suddenly our world was different. The emperor, who until now had never before spoken directly to his people, told us the immediate future would be grim. He said that we could “pave the way for a grand peace for all generations to come,” but we had to do it “by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.” He urged Japan to look ahead. “Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the future,” he said. And he challenged the nation to “keep pace with the progress of the world.”

  I knew my duty was to go back to my station and do what would be required of me. Even though we all understood that the war was over, nobody knew what would happen next, and I was anticipating mass confusion. I could imagine the situation back at Zushi among the workers at our station, confused and uncertain about what had to be done. The civilians among them were all very young and many of them were girls. They were my responsibility since I was the duty officer, and I felt it would be prudent to send them to their homes as soon as possible. We didn’t know whether there would be a difficult occupation period or how the Japanese military would be treated. Would we all be arrested and thrown into jail?

  I told my mother, “Whatever happens, I must go back,” and I asked her to prepare some food for the road. She made a supply of cooked rice balls and wrapped them so I could ca
rry them in my bag. I thought it might take me three days to get back to my base if the buses and trains were not running. I assumed that most local transport would be at a standstill and that I might have to hitch rides to get there. Food would be scarce on the way. I rode a borrowed bicycle about four miles to the local train station, and because I was an officer I had no trouble buying a. ticket for the night train. I sat down and waited, expecting a long vigil, but to my surprise the train arrived precisely on time—very Japanese, I thought— and I got aboard expecting a difficult search for a seat, but I found the train had very few passengers. It was neat and clean and comfortable, so I had an easy trip back to Zushi and my station. And I still had most of a three-day supply of rice balls to eat.

  My mission was turning out to be easier than I thought it would be—or at least different. Although I was not seeing it firsthand, there was confusion and fear all over Japan, and as I had expected there were some military attempts to prevent the surrender, one of them very close, at Atsugi, where Navy Captain Yasuna Kozono, an air group commander, gathered his men and told them that to surrender would be treason. Several air units in the area threatened to stage suicide attacks on the American fleet when it entered Tokyo Bay to accept the surrender, and the military affairs bureau immediately took the precaution of ordering all aircraft disarmed and fuel tanks emptied. There were other incidents, as I feared there would be. None, however, turned out to be the major last-ditch fight I expected from the navy. We were to learn much later that there had been attempts to prevent the emperor’s message from being broadcast. Some young officers had planned to occupy the imperial palace to try to encourage the army to join in their rebellion against the surrender. A small band of rebels attacked the prime minister’s official residence, and only by some quick thinking did the prime minister, Kantaro Suzuki, escape by using an emergency exit from his private residence. The rebels also searched for the lord privy seal, Marquis Kido, but he was safely inside the imperial palace. Some army and navy aviators even flew over the Tokyo area dropping leaflets calling on citizens to resist, saying the emperor’s statement was invalid. Some army officers killed themselves to protest the surrender because technically the armies were still undefeated, although there had been grievous losses—no fewer than 2,750,000 Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen had died in the war. In the end even the military fanatics had to bow to the inevitable, “to endure the unendurable.”

  I was back on station by August 16, and some of my fellow officers reacted with surprise to see me—especially the officer I had taunted about not returning if suicide were ordered. He did not know me well, I thought. The officers all seemed to be in a kind of daze.

  Many Japanese soldiers were soon on their way home from their bases around Japan and were beginning to crowd the trains and buses. It was difficult for some of them to understand the surrender. Although most of the Japanese army in the field was still unbeaten, it was stretched thin all across Asia. The string of horrendous losses at Leyte, Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Okinawa and America’s superior air power against the home islands and the use of atomic weapons were evidence enough that the war could not be won. And then, of course, when the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan after the Hiroshima bomb, there was great fear that our old hypothetical enemy would take advantage of our weakened condition and try to occupy us. ‘Hie Soviets seized the southern half of Sakhalin island and four islands just north of Hokkaido—the closest one is in sight of the Japanese mainland—and they still hold them today. The United States returned Okinawa, which they seized in 1945, to Japanese sovereignty in 1972.

  In 1945 the Russians stormed into Manchuria—our buffer against them for so many years—when our forces were relatively small and weakened, unable to defend against massive Russian armor. There was chaos as Japanese civilians and soldiers tried to escape from the Russians, but in the end about five hundred thousand Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner and sent to labor camps in Siberia and other places in the Soviet Union. Some of them remained prisoners and virtual slave laborers for as long as twelve years. Many families of Japanese in Manchuria were split in the confusion. Orphans were taken in by Chinese, and in some cases Japanese mothers and fathers unable to escape were able to persuade Chinese families to take their children in and protect them. Even today, four decades after the war, each year Chinese citizens who believe they are children separated from their parents in the confusion of defeat are brought to Japan and helped in the search for their long-lost relatives. Amazingly, some still manage to locate their aged parents or other kin, sometimes through telling what little they remember of their lives before the separation or by some scar or distinguishing mark. But, of course, as the years go by fewer and fewer of those parents are alive. There are those who say to this day that the emperor’s decision to surrender was brought about almost as much by the fear of the Soviets—the fear that they might invade the home islands or partition the country, as had been done to Germany—as by the horrible events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  To most Japanese the end of the war was a great relief as well as a national tragedy. Japanese newspapers reported the beginning of the Occupation with breathless articles describing the Occupation and the occupiers in surprising ways. For example, the Domei news agency described a group of American navy fliers as being “very light-hearted and agreeable; they did not show any attitude, whether in speech or manner, of boasting of their victory… . The agreeable attitude shown by these pilots is something of which every Japanese must be ever mindful when coming into contact with the U.S. occupational forces from now on.” Some Japanese even toasted the arrival of the Americans, but most looked at them with some fear and suspicion.

  Meanwhile, we had no orders. We waited for days, with nothing to do but drink sake. The first order that came told us to burn our important documents, and I sometimes think we were much too diligent about it. I burned all my papers, including all my reports and all the data from our experiments. I had some personal notebooks and records, and I burned them, too, although I have often thought since then that they would be very interesting to have now and that I had been foolish to burn them. Later, we received a message ordering us to save some particular kinds of data, but it was too late—everything had gone up in smoke. Many people throughout Japan were burning their records in those days because no one knew how the Americans would treat us as a conquered people, whether they would look for incriminating evidence, or what. Newspapers burned their photographic archives; some companies did away with their records— all needlessly. Some people actually buried important papers and family records in their gardens. It was an example of just how confused things were throughout the country, not just at navy headquarters. We were also ordered to destroy any important machinery, but we didn’t have any special machines; we didn’t even have any weapons. Then finally an order came authorizing me to send the work staff home. It was the order I was waiting for, but carrying out the mission was more difficult than ordering it to be done. There was a lack of transport for ordinary workers. Some families of our staff were separated and living in evacuation areas far away from their normal homes. So I had to plan how I would get these people moved out, and quickly. How could we do it without transportation or food? The ensign who discovered the fish merchant who dealt with us for sake and bean paste came to me with a novel idea.

  We realized that the office furniture and laboratory equipment we had was valuable, perhaps worth more than money in a time of war shortages. We had been told to destroy it. In some units, men were taking this property home and selling it on the black market. Taking a cue from the profiteers, we went to the biggest trucking company in the area and bargained the many storage batteries we had been using in our experiments for the shipment of luggage to the homes of our employees. The company was badly in need of the batteries for their trucks and was glad to make the swap. We threw in some of the office equipment, lockers, and desks for good measure. The National Railways stationmaster at Zushi wa
s also very happy to get some used navy office furniture in exchange for most of the express train tickets and luggage transport we needed for our civilian staff.

  I sent the high school students and the young women home first. There were rumors going around that we navy officers might be declared war criminals, and the civilians might be arrested. I thought that would be unlikely and illogical since we had never even fought against the Americans, but this kind of fear was typical in the confusion that existed, and I believed it was best to get our people home quickly just to play it safe. We didn’t have any idea of what the behavior of the American troops would be so we wanted the women to be home. Because there was such a shortage of engineers during the war, our unit had been sent a group of third-year senior high school science students, about twenty of them, and these very young boys were also among the first ones I wanted to send home. But two of the boys didn’t have a home to go back to, since their parents were living in Korea or Manchuria, I can’t remember which, so I sent them to my parents. I gave them a letter to my mother, saying, “I cannot tell how long we will be kept here. We might even be killed by the Americans. So please take care of these two boys.” Later my mother chided me, saying, “Why did you send us two big eaters at a time when there was no rice?”

  We sat around doing nothing for many days before new orders came. After we had sent all the boys and girls home we didn’t have anything to do. With an optical telescope we had, we would inspect the American ships that kept arriving in Sagami Bay before they went up to Tokyo Bay for the signing of the surrender document on the USS Missouri. It was a remarkable sight—it looked as though the entire U.S. Navy had steamed into the bay right in front of us. I was eager to get out of there, and when the time came I took the first train home. It was quite a reunion, because both of my brothers arrived back home about the same time, all of us safe and sound, to the great joy of my father and mother. We had managed to do our duty and had come home without physical scars. We had also avoided the fanaticism that seemed to grip so much of Japan’s youth in those days, inculcated with worship of the emperor and the idea of glorious death. In Japan we often talk of a psychological climate or atmosphere that sometimes occurs and which seems to sweep people up into like-minded activity, as though everybody is breathing the same special kind of air. During the war the authorities took advantage of this trait by starting movements to volunteer—as happened in my younger brother’s middle-school class. Many eager young Japanese were caught up in this atmosphere and volunteered, but many young kamikaze pilots who were frustrated by not being able to make their final flight later lived to be grateful that they did not have the opportunity. When the emperor spoke to the people and made a tour of the nation after the war as the nation’s symbol, a kind of revered father figure instead of a god, a calming sense of normality began to return. To many people, now that the war was over, it was as though the country had suffered a gigantic natural disaster.