Nagasaki

by Susan Southard

  Nagasaki Station, the hub for trains entering and leaving the city, ca. 1930. (U.S. Army Institute of Pathology/Courtesy of Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum)

  In August 1941, the Japanese Ministry of Education released Shinmin no michi [The Way of Subjects], a manifesto that condemned the West’s world domination throughout modern history and commanded the Japanese people to embrace a vision for a new world order ruled by Japan’s benevolent emperor. The proclamation contextualized Japan’s invasions of Manchuria and China as steps toward a world restored to peace based on Japanese nationalistic moral principles. Japanese citizens were pressed to purge themselves of “the evils of European and American thought,” acquiesce to a systemized military state, and demonstrate absolute loyalty to the emperor by forgoing their individual needs and desires. Even as they felt the impact of the U.S.-led embargo of oil and other natural resources, many Japanese supported the government’s refusal to withdraw from China, particularly because a withdrawal order from the prime minister would have likely resulted in his assassination.

  But the Japanese people could not have imagined their country’s next step. On December 8, 1941 (December 7 in the United States), Prime Minister Tojo Hideki stunned the nation when he announced in a live radio address that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, initiating a war against the United States and its allies. “The key to victory lies in a ‘faith in victory,’” he said. “For 2,600 years since it was founded, our Empire has never known a defeat. . . . Let us pledge ourselves that we will never stain our glorious history.”

  Fourteen-year-old Wada heard the announcement on his father’s radio. As a child, when Japan was invading China, he had dreamed of enlisting as soon as he was eligible. Before her death, however, his mother had taught him that “Banzai!”—the Japanese battle cry in the name of the emperor—was wrong. Hearing the news of his country’s attack on Pearl Harbor, he now “questioned a little whether Japan was truly fighting to save people in the world.” At that time, protest was severely punished, so Wada kept his misgivings to himself. Meanwhile, Japanese soldiers battled farther into the Chinese interior and simultaneously raced into U.S., British, French, Australian, and Dutch-held territories in Southeast Asia, fighting against inevitable loss at the hands of a far more powerful enemy.

  • • •

  It was, in the words of historian John W. Dower, a “war without mercy,” in which both Japan and the United States promoted racist, dehumanizing language about and perceptions of each other. In the United States, a Time magazine article reported that the “ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing . . . indicates it.” Within this climate of racism and political fear-mongering, the U.S. government rounded up and interned an estimated 120,000 Japanese American citizens and “resident aliens” deemed high risks for espionage and sabotage. In Japan, American and British enemies were portrayed as terrifying demons, and everything “Western”—including literature, English classes, music, and political philosophy—was purged from Japanese education and society. In Nagasaki alone, an estimated twenty to thirty foreign monks, nuns, and priests were suspected as enemy spies and interned in a convent on the outskirts of the city. The indoctrination of Japanese soldiers intensified: Chanting the slogan “We’ll never cease fire till our enemies cease to be!” they were trained to believe that the destiny of the empire depended on every battle. Military personnel were forbidden to surrender or become prisoners of war; they were ordered to kill themselves instead as an act of honor for their families and their nation and to avoid any trace of shame.

  Day-to-day life became more and more austere and controlled, focused solely on compliance and economic survival. The government granted stowed enormous contracts for production of weapons and war supplies to Japan’s zaibatsu—massive privately owned business conglomerates such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui—while most other commercial industries and family businesses were forced to redirect their labor and production to serve the vast needs of the Japanese military. Nagasaki men who lost their jobs because of government closures joined the factory labor teams of Mitsubishi’s four major industries (shipbuilding, electrical machinery, munitions, and steel), which now employed an even larger percentage of the city’s workforce. Consumer goods disappeared, and messages via radio, newsprint, teachers, and ever-present military personnel pummeled the Japanese people with refrains of “Luxury is the enemy!” and “Let’s send even one more plane to the front!”

  Over time, nearly every Japanese citizen was required to work for the war effort—an attempt to offset the extreme imbalances between Japan and the United States in both coal and steel production and the manufacturing of aircraft, tanks, and ammunition. Initially, the Japanese government ordered all men not serving in the military to manual labor, manufacturing, communications, and transportation jobs that in some way supported the government’s mission. Eventually, young unmarried women, jailed convicts, and malnourished, weakened, and often lice-infected prisoners of war were similarly assigned. Married women were urged to bear as many children as possible to increase Japan’s population. Korean and Chinese men, forcibly recruited from their homelands, toiled in Japanese mines and factories; in 1944, nearly sixty thousand Koreans and one thousand Chinese worked in and around Nagasaki, living in minimal barracks near their worksites and eating thin gruel three times a day. On the eighth day of every month—designated “Imperial Edict Day” to commemorate Japan’s entry into the war—workers were sometimes given an extra onigiri—rice ball—to fuel their determination. To further boost Japan’s domestic workforce, “education” was redefined to include labor service; at first, students fourteen and older were mandated to participate in part-time labor projects around food and coal production. By 1944, the national government ordered these students to cease their education and part-time labor, and work full-time for the war effort. Children over ten were mobilized into volunteer labor corps.

  The Japanese people surrendered clothing, jewelry, every possible metal household item, and even gold teeth to help the government fund the war. Most of all, they sacrificed their fathers, sons, grandfathers, uncles, and brothers, sending them off to the front without protest, only to receive their ashes back in small wooden boxes. Publicly they could show no grief or remorse and had to passively accept their neighbors’ congratulations for their son’s or father’s honorable death in service to the nation. Local branches of national women’s organizations made care packages for soldiers overseas and senninbari—thousand-stitch belts—for new recruits leaving for war, a symbolic gesture to protect them from harm. Every family was required to belong to a tonarigumi, through which Japan’s military police monitored not only public obedience and resistance but also every individual’s private enthusiasm level or “treasonous” attitudes toward the war. Nagasaki alone had 273 tonarigumi, each with five to ten families. Those in the minority who expressed disbelief in the emperor’s divinity, the government’s political ambitions, or Japan’s military aggression were imprisoned, tortured, and often killed. Even at work, disobedience to one’s supervisor could result in extreme physical punishment.

  Eventually, Wada’s European and American friends were expelled from Nagasaki, and again he questioned the government’s intentions. “I was told that America, England, and Holland were evil, but I wondered how that was possible when the families I knew had such nice parents.” It was also clear to Wada that despite Japan’s pronouncements of superiority, his life was getting worse. He had been ordered to withdraw from school to work for the war effort and was paid with a loaf of old bread at the end of each day; later as a streetcar driver, he earned only half of what the adult workers were paid. Wada’s grandparents sold their kimonos and other precious items for a small percentage of their value. He was always hungry. When his older friends left for the war, he and everyone else knew they weren’t likely to return, especially by 1945, when many recruits were “invited” into the kamikaze corps. “I thought somet
hing was wrong,” Wada remembered. He later wished that he had spoken out publicly against the war. “But to tell you the truth, I was scared. I worried that I might be killed.”

  As his own draft age drew near, Wada faced a serious decision. Not only was he against the war, but he also knew that if he went away, his grandparents would have no one to support them. In an act of subversive resistance, he deliberately failed his pre-service physical examination. “I wore glasses at the time, which was not an automatic disqualifier,” he said, “but at the examination, I pretended that I was nearly blind.” Wada was dismissed from military service, but even with a medical justification, he was labeled an antiwar student and was verbally berated, slapped, and beaten, often by police officers. He survived by working overtime, allowing him to double his wages and better support his sister and grandparents, and he spent time with his friends whenever he could. “From the time I was very young, I was not one to give in,” he explained. “I had to manage on my own. No matter how hard things got, no matter how difficult things were, there was always tomorrow. If tomorrow was hard, there was always the next day.”

  On the morning of August 9, Wada drove his streetcar north past Nagasaki Station into the Urakami Valley. Thick white smoke rose from the smokestacks of the Mitsubishi factories that lined both sides of the river. On either side of him, Wada could see thousands of tile-roofed houses huddled close together. More than 150 shops, pharmacies, tailors, and furniture stores were now closed or serving as ration stations. Staircases ascended into the hills, leading to more closed shops and houses with narrow balconies. Nagasaki Medical College and its affiliated hospital stood at the base of the eastern hills. Farther north, the redbrick Urakami Church with its twin bell towers overlooked the entire valley.

  By eight a.m., Nagasaki’s streetcars were packed with adults and children heading toward their assigned worksites. Those who couldn’t fit into the jammed cars walked—often for more than an hour—to arrive on time for their shifts. Some skipped work to search the hillsides for edible plants and weeds—risking the punishment of having their names posted on a board at their worksite that would identify them as enemy collaborators. As Wada steered through the Urakami Valley, he received word of a streetcar derailment elsewhere in the city that caused him to change his usual route. He had no idea that this accident would save his life.

  ____

  Earlier that morning, another Nagasaki teenager, Nagano Etsuko, awakened and joined her family in morning calisthenics. “Physical exercises guided by someone on the radio,” she explained. “I really hated it! Even in the winter, my father made us throw open the windows and exercise.” Despite his strictness, sixteen-year-old Nagano loved and respected her father, a small man who, at just over forty years old when the war began, had aged out of the draft and worked instead at Mitsubishi Electric. Nagano felt less warmly toward her mother. “She was a little bit self-centered,” she recalled, “and she was always irritated with my siblings and me.” Still, Nagano appreciated that her mother had taught herself how to make clothes. During the war when clothing was rationed and no fabric was available, her mother had taken her own kimonos, undone the stitching, and made dresses for Nagano and her younger sister, Kuniko. “My friends thought I was lucky.”

  Nagano’s memories before the war centered on her family—her parents and three siblings—who lived in a single-family home in the Urakami Valley, just north of Nagasaki Station. “My older brother was kindhearted,” she said. “Because I’m his sister, it’s strange for me to say this, but—he was handsome. My girlfriends would beg me to introduce them to him, and they’d come over to my house for no particular reason just so they could see him.” Nagano thought her younger sister, Kuniko, was very pretty, with her huge eyes and fair skin, though the two girls often quarreled. Before the war, Nagano sometimes walked to the book rental store carrying her baby brother, Seiji (whom her family called Sei-chan), on her back. “I could stand and read, and my mother wouldn’t say anything because I was babysitting.” Their yard was filled with pomegranate, fig, mandarin orange, and loquat trees, and as Sei-chan grew older, he, Kuniko, and Nagano climbed them to pick the fruit and eat it. “Ah,” Nagano sighed, “they were so delicious. We were so happy.”

  Nagano Etsuko, age fifteen, ca. 1944. (Courtesy of Nagano Etsuko)

  Nagano was eleven when the Pacific War started, and over the next two years, as she and her family faced increased challenges, she watched her city transform. By 1943, as the Allies began to push back Japanese advances in the Pacific and use bases in China to launch air strikes on Japan’s main islands, Nagasaki officials implemented the city’s first defense measures against possible Allied attacks. Ten sites—mostly schools and other public buildings—were chosen to serve as first-aid stations. During mandatory tonarigumi air raid drills, everyone dropped what they were doing—or rose from their sleep—to report to designated locations where attendance was taken. People of all ages practiced bucket relays and other firefighting exercises. Near City Hall and in the older sections of Nagasaki, entire city blocks were razed to create firebreaks and evacuation routes, forcing schools to relocate and countless families to move in with relatives or friends in the Urakami Valley or in areas outside the city. Every family was required to remove the wooden ceilings in their houses to help slow potential fires. Someone—usually a woman because most men were either drafted or working—had to be at home at all times to prevent the spread of fires in the event of an air attack.

  Company employees and members of civilian defense corps dug underground air raid shelters beneath large factories, offices, city prefectural buildings, and schools. Others carved hundreds of primitive, tunnel-shaped shelters into the hillsides surrounding the city; some shelters could hold as many as a hundred people, though many leaked and puddled after every rain. Families were also required to dig shelters beneath their homes. “We lifted the tatami and dug a hole just big enough for all of us to squat inside,” Nagano remembered. “We placed our valuables and food into oil drums and put them in the hole, then covered it with a door and put buckets of water on top to use in case of fire.”

  Neighborhood residents gather for a wartime fire drill beneath the torii gate leading to a shrine. After 1943, these mandatory drills were practiced monthly throughout the city as a defense against air raids. (Courtesy of Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, Committee for Research of Photographs and Materials of the Atomic Bombing)

  Most mobilized students worked at railroad stations and in armament and shipbuilding plants situated on the bay and along the banks of the Urakami River. Nagano was assigned to the production line in a Mitsubishi airplane parts factory built inside a college gymnasium over the eastern hills from her Urakami Valley home. Every morning she rode a streetcar to the stop in front of Suwa Shrine, then walked three-quarters of a mile north to the factory. In mandated silence, she operated a lathe alongside adult employees. During her time off, there was virtually nothing to do. “Movies were not allowed,” she remembered, “and restaurants were closed due to lack of food. To entertain ourselves, my friends and I took photographs of each other and swapped them back and forth. I was still a child, and I wasn’t able to think very deeply about the war situation.”

  Nagasaki was bombed for the first time in late 1944, part of the first U.S. test raids of nighttime incendiary attacks on Japanese urban areas. Physical damages in the city were minor, but twenty-six people were injured and thirteen people died, becoming Nagasaki’s first civilian deaths. By the end of that year, U.S. troops had claimed victories in Guam and the other Mariana Islands, providing them easier access to Japan’s main islands and allowing the United States to intensify its targeted bombing attacks on Japanese military, industrial, and transportation sites. U.S. bombers flew over Nagasaki day and night en route to targets across Japan.

  Nagasaki prepared itself for another attack. To fortify citywide defense measures, municipal leader
s reinforced antiaircraft, searchlight, and radar brigades, repaired hillside shelters weakened by rainfall, kept water tanks full, and secured emergency telephone communication systems. In a multitiered firefighting strategy, thirty-seven teams totaling nearly 3,300 workers were deployed throughout the city to lead emergency fire brigades, each with its own pumper truck, and some with gasoline-run pumps as well. Civilian bucket brigades remained trained and ready. In the event of an attack, auxiliary police and fire units were prepared to direct pedestrian and vehicle traffic, support first-aid and epidemic prevention efforts, and oversee the disposal of the dead.