by Paul Ham
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21 June (Thu) Weather: fine
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
Today was my third day at Yoshiwa. How time flies! Even though it feels like I just got here, I do sort of miss Kenjo and keep imagining my teachers’ and friends’ faces and the school grounds. Good old Kenjo – how I miss you!
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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22 June (Fri) Weather: fine with intermittent showers in the evening
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
Today I took care of my relative Mineko. Her mother is staying at Amano Hospital in Tsuda at the moment because she is ill. Even though Mineko is only two years old, she isn’t fussing because she misses her mother. She is being a good girl and just waiting patiently.
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Woke up: 5am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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23 June (Sat) Weather: rainy
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
Today was windy and it poured with rain. It actually felt quite cold. Grandmother planted rice and Grandfather tilled the fields with his cattle-drawn plough.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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24 June (Sun) Weather: fine with intermittent showers in the evening
School
Today I did farm work, and it was a home training day.
Home
Today for the first time ever I planted rice. It was awful as my feet kept sinking deep down into the oozy mud. But who cares about that, compared to the benefit that this rice will be to our country?
The rice we are cultivating will be distributed to people all over Japan. With that thought firmly in my mind, I put everything I had into the job at hand.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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25 June (Mon) Weather: fine
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
Mother set out at about 6am this morning to walk home to Miyajima, so I felt sort of lonely today. She will get back to Yoshiwa on about the twenty-ninth, so I will have to wait about four days before I see her again. I hope she comes back soon!
Mother, come back soon!
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Woke up: 5.30am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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26 June (Tue) Weather: fine
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
I felt sort of lonely again today. I hope Mother comes back soon; it’s on my mind day and night. I keep reminding myself that many children younger than me have been separated from their parents and evacuated to the countryside, but then I just start feeling lonely again.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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27 June (Wed) Weather: fine with intermittent showers in the evening
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
Mother is finally coming back either tomorrow or the day after and I just can’t wait to see her again! Grandmother and Grandfather dote on me fondly, but of course Mother is the one I love most of all.
I’ve heard that Yoshiwa has a tradition called Dorootoshi, which celebrates the end of rice planting on 30 June. Everyone will take a one-day holiday.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: did farm work
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28 June (Thu) Weather: fine
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
I hoped that Mother would come back today and waited for her, but she never came. She will definitely come back tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to seeing her. It feels like the last time I saw her was so long ago. I can’t wait for tomorrow to come!
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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29 June (Fri) Weather: rainy
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
I am beside myself with worry because Mother was supposed to come back today and she didn’t. Why, oh why, didn’t she come? She promised she would be here on the twenty-ninth. I was so happy and excited today because I was sure she would come back. Now I’m lonely all over again.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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30 June (Sat) Weather: Rainy then fine
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
I waited for Mother to finally arrive today. The regular bus service comes every other day, so it was supposed to come today. The bus arrived at lunch time. Just as I was thinking, ‘She’s actually here!’ Mother appeared. I was so happy to see her.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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Yoko and her mother in 1944. (Kohji Hosokawa)
July
1 July (Sun) Weather: rainy
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals, planted sweet potato
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It rained today, so Grandfather and I put on our straw rain gear and planted sweet potatoes. The rain had eased off slightly when we finished, so I pulled up weeds in the garden with a friend.
2 July (Mon) Weather: fine
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
Today was a simply glorious day – totally unlike the weather we have had recently.
It was calm and not too hot, with a pleasant breeze. It was the kind of day that reminds you of spring. The day after tomorrow I will go home to Miyajima. I’m so looking forward to seeing my teachers and friends again – it’s been ages since I last saw them!
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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3 July (Tue) Weather: fine
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
I have mixed feelings about finally going home tomorrow. I do miss Miyajima but at the same time I don’t want to leave Yoshiwa. As I sign off here today, I’m hoping against hope that there will be a bus or a truck tomorrow.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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4 July (Wed) Weather: fine
School
Today I did farm work.
Home
I heard that a truck would leave between nine and ten o’clock this morning, so I quickly got ready and waited out the front of the Union building. It arrived at 8.30am. I got on, changed to a bus for Hatsukaichi at Tsuda and caught the 5.47pm ferry back home from Miyajimaguchi.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: none Chores: prepared dinner
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5 July (Thu) Weather: fine
School
I was too tired to go to school today so I rested at home.
Home
I didn’t go to school today because I was so tired from all the farm work I have been doing right up to yesterday. There is a holiday until the seventh for the farmers’ busy season, but when I told Mother I would go to school she told me that I would end up having to rest at home for a long time if I went out when I was tired. So I decided to stay home instead.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared dinner
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6 July (Fri) Weat
her: fine with evening showers then cloudy
School
Today we marched to Yagi Training Hall to put valuables belonging to the school in safe storage. The books that I was given weren’t all that heavy, but by the time I got halfway there I didn’t care how light they were, I simply wanted to throw them away! I did my best though.
Home
I caught the 6.30pm ferry home. When I got home, Mother was waiting for me and making dinner, which tasted wonderful because I was absolutely famished!
Even I was impressed that I walked 25 kilometres today. To think that I will be able to walk really long distances from now on – even 25 kilometres!
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Woke up: 5.20am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 30 minutes Chores: prepared dinner
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7 July (Sat) Weather: fine
School
Yesterday I walked over 25 kilometres, so my legs are a little sore. But who cares about that compared to all the marching our soldiers do.
We cleaned in the first lesson hour. Then, just when we thought we had finished, the warning siren sounded, so we all lined up and the students who live outside the city took the school’s books home to keep in safe storage.
Home
Just as the train was about to pull into the terminal, the ferry pulled away from the jetty. It was too bad! Because the 11am ferry had left, I had to wait for about one hour and fifteen minutes – until 12.15pm – to catch the next ferry.
When Oka-san and I suggested that we eat lunch, Fujita-san, who is a senior girl, told us to go ahead and eat. So we did.
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Woke up: 5.20am Went to bed: 11pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared dinner
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8 July (Sun) Weather: fine
School
Today was a home training day.
Home
Today was a home training day. My grandparents sent us some charcoal from their home in the countryside, so we went to Hatsukaichi last night to collect it. Because I went to bed at about 11pm, I felt sort of sleepy today.
But Japan is fighting a war, so it doesn’t matter how sleepy I feel – I must do my best at all times.
TSUKIJI SENSEI: I’m proud of you for all the hard work you did helping your grandparents on the farm. But you seem to have fallen slightly behind with your studies, so make sure you work hard from now on.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 11pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared meals
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9 July (Mon) Weather: fine
School
Today Yoshimura Sensei gave us a lecture about incendiary bombs and showed us an empty oil bomb. He told us that incendiary bombs are not really all that scary, because if they are extinguished quickly there is nothing to worry about.
I think he’s right.
Home
Today, Tsukiji Sensei taught us how to make a substitute for rice or wheat. First you steam potato over a bed of rice. Then you mush up the potato, fry it with a little oil, put some yellow pickled radish or vegetables in the centre, and then roll it up just like sushi. Next time we get potato, I am going to try making it.
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Woke up: 5.20am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared dinner
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False Hope
The firebombing raids that had been occurring in Japan went on for five months, and by the end of July about sixty-six Japanese cities were in smoking ruins. The people of Hiroshima expected that they would suffer the same fate, but it never came. The reason? Hiroshima was being preserved. The American commanders had marked it, along with four other Japanese cities, as a target for the nuclear bomb. To bomb it beforehand would not show the devastating power of the new atomic weapon to best effect. As Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister said, it would simply ‘make the rubble dance’.
It seemed strange to the people of Hiroshima that their city had not been the target of US aircraft. The people had heard rumours that the Americans were going to spare their city. In Nagasaki, where the second atomic bomb was dropped on 9 August, the people wondered if their city was being spared because of their large Christian community. The truth was cruel.
– Paul Ham
10 July (Tue) Weather: fine then cloudy
School
Today in our fifth lesson hour we were told what each walking group should do if our school or homes burn down. If that happens we are to meet at Koi National School.
Home
I had dinner as soon as I got home today and then started working on my household management homework, which was to make a toy for a small child to carry or play with using natural materials. I made a bag that hangs from the waist.
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Woke up: 5.20am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: cleared away after dinner
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11 July (Wed) Weather: cloudy then rainy
School
Today the headmaster did not come to our national moral education class, so Sasaki Sensei took the class instead. Our name tags are going to change. ‘Kenjo’ will be printed horizontally in the upper 2-centimetre section of a white 8-centimetre-long by 3-centimetre-wide piece of cloth, and our name and blood type will be printed vertically in the lower section.
Home
The warning siren sounded just as I finished eating the food in my bento box, so I came straight home on the 2.20pm ferry. Then I made some dolls out of wool. I prepared for tomorrow’s classes and went to bed.
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Woke up: 5am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared dinner
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12 July (Thu) Weather: rainy
School
The train was late today, so our first lesson had already started when I got to school. In biology class, Kimura Sensei read us a letter he had received from Hiroshima Prefectural Kure Girls’ High School. Apparently, their most important job is putting clothes in safe storage.
Home
I came home on the 12.15pm ferry. After I finished studying, I played a game with my friend Oka-san. It was great fun even though it was just the two of us.
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Woke up: 5.30am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared dinner
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13 July (Fri) Weather: fine
School
Water had collected in the bomb shelters so we scooped it up and poured it away. I used a bucket to bail out the water in bomb shelter number one. It was not an easy job but I did my best. I was tired but felt great when it was all finished!
Home
Although we were supposed to study until our fifth lesson hour today, lessons were suspended until lunchtime, so I did some cleaning and then came home on the 2.20pm ferry.
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Woke up: 5.20am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared dinner
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14 July (Sat) Weather: cloudy
School
On 1 May we farewelled the Year 10 girls who have been sent to the manufacturing battlefront. Next, we will farewell the Year 8 girls. One hundred girls will be sent to the Hiroshima Printing Company, another hundred to a school factory in Kouchi Village which produces military supplies, and sixty to Hiroshima Air Base. Most of them will be mobilised on the eighteenth. They will be just like our brave soldiers.
Now we Year 7 students are the only ones left, so we must do our best at all times.
Home
Tomorrow is a special home training day, so we planned to go swimming at Nagahama Beach with the Year 8 students who live in Kusatsu and Itsukaichi. But as luck would have it, it is pouring with rain right now; really awful rain. I wish it would hurry up and stop raining!
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Woke up: 5.20am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared dinner
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15 July (Sun) Weather: fine
School
Today was a home training day.
Home
It rained last night, so I woke up expecting that today would be
a disappointing day. But to my surprise and delight the weather outside was glorious!
When I went out to meet the 9.47am ferry, everyone was already there. We all headed to Nagahama together and had great fun swimming there. After that, we all returned home on the 3.30pm ferry.
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Woke up: 6am Went to bed: 9pm Study: 1 hour Chores: prepared dinner
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16 July (Mon) Weather: fine then cloudy with occasional showers