Yoko's Diary Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  A girl in Hiroshima

  Finding Yoko

  Moriwaki Family Tree

  Opening Yoko’s diary

  The hole that Yoko left

  Second-generation hibakusha

  Little sisters

  Back at Kenjo

  The diary of Yoko Moriwaki

  Map of Japan in the Pacific

  Map of Hiroshima, circa 1945

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  Tribute from a brother

  The letter from Hatsue Ueda

  Yoko, rest in peace

  Acknowledgements

  About the authors

  Copyright

  A girl in Hiroshima

  Finding Yoko

  by Paul Ham

  She was just like you or any other twelve-year-old child who got up every morning and went to school. She loved her mum and dad. She laughed at some of her teachers. She worked hard. She enjoyed school and her friends and holidays. But Yoko Moriwaki was unlike you in that she lived in Japan, not far from the southern Japanese city of Hiroshima, during the worst war the world has ever known.

  Yoko and her family lived on the lovely mountainous island of Miyajima, home to one of the most beautiful religious shrines in Japan. They shared a small house made of traditional Japanese paper. Her father was a music teacher.

  Until 1941, when the war broke out, her life was fairly typical of most Japanese girls. She went to school, learned the piano, was cared for by her family, she performed her ceremonial duties. She was taught to believe in a religion called Shinto, the ancient Japanese faith. At the heart of Shinto in the mid-twentieth century was a belief in, and worship of, the Emperor as a living god.

  When the war came, Yoko’s life changed completely. Slowly the towns began to lose their young men, as brothers and fathers left to fight in the Pacific. In 1944 Yoko’s father was called up. As Japan began to lose the war, food started running out, and by 1945 even rice, the Japanese staple diet, grew scarce. She and her family ate sweet potatoes and berries and anything they could find in the forests.

  Her school uniform changed too. Japanese girls loved their sailor-suit uniforms, but due to wartime austerity, junior students had to go without them. In some places the authorities believed the white uniforms made children visible to enemy planes, and banned them. Instead girls had to make their own uniforms. Many happily sewed their own clothes, often during class time. Yoko’s mother found an old kimono, took it apart and sewed it into a small dress for Yoko. As the war worsened and Yoko and her classmates were mobilised to work as labourers, she was compelled to wear the drab grey trousers and shirt called monpe.

  Towards the end of the war, Yoko worked as a student labourer on one of the house demolition sites. She was one of about 7500 student workers in Hiroshima aged between twelve and eighteen. One of her jobs was to clear debris from demolished homes to create firebreaks and thus prevent fires from spreading after a bombing attack. By mid-1945 most big Japanese cities had been heavily bombed and reduced to ashes. The people of Hiroshima were warned to expect the same. But as late as July 1945, Hiroshima and four other Japanese cities remained eerily untouched. In fact the American forces had set them aside as targets for the atomic bomb.

  On the night of 5 August, Yoko prepared for another day as a mobilised student worker: ‘From tomorrow morning we are joining the home demolition groups. I am going to do my best,’ she wrote.

  The next morning she got up early, travelled to the city, reached the demolition site, took off her dress, and put on her monpe. At 8.15am a plane flew overhead. A large object fell out. It was the first atomic bomb ever to be dropped on human life. Suddenly there was a great flash and the temperature shot up to many times that of the surface of the sun. Then a tremendous shockwave convulsed the city and blew apart most of the buildings. Anyone standing within a 2-kilometre radius of the blast was horribly burned or struck by flying debris. Yoko stood 700 metres away, in the open air, without any protection. Her little body was blown into the air and dreadfully burned. But astonishingly, she survived the immediate blow. She began crawling on her hands and knees to a place of safety. An army truck picked her up and drove her out of the city centre. A volunteer housewife found her near lifeless body in a village school that was doubling as a relief centre near Hiroshima, and tried to ease her agony.

  I came across the story of Yoko while researching my book on the atomic bomb, Hiroshima Nagasaki. In 2010, I stayed in Hiroshima and met Yoko’s half-brother, Kohji Hosokawa, now in his eighties (Yoko and Kohji had the same mother, but different fathers). I recall him holding up Yoko’s handwritten notebook. ‘This is her diary,’ he told me, his voice still shaking at the memory of his little sister. ‘You can see that it begins from the day she entered school … and how happy and proud she is to become a student.’

  Yoko’s brother, Kohji, showed me the pen Yoko used to write her diary. It has an old-fashioned nib, which she would dip into an inkpot. He pointed to a black trace and said, ‘The ink remaining on the pen is the ink she was using on 5 August. I don’t touch that part of the pen.’ And he showed me photos: of a little girl sitting at the piano; of the same girl in a pretty dress wearing a hat.

  In 1996 Kohji published Yoko’s diary in Japan. He had been encouraged to do so by a teacher from Hosei University Girls’ High School, Hiroshi Kamei, who for many years had been bringing students from Yokohama, across the Japanese island of Honshu, to Yoko’s old high school, on a field trip to the location of the world’s first atomic bombing. Yoko’s diary was one of the objects his students examined, and Kamei encouraged Kohji to publish it as a record of the time, which would be available to everyone in Japan. The diary had already been used poignantly in a documentary, Girls in Summer Dresses – Hiroshima – 6 August 1945. As you will read in his introduction, Kohji decided he would indeed publish Yoko’s diary and he gathered contributions from old school friends and family to provide some background to Yoko’s short life and to document the wider effect the bomb had on the families who survived.

  Until this time Yoko’s diary has never been published in English. I have added some information of my own in boxes throughout the text to explain aspects of Japanese life that would not be familiar to modern Western readers.

  The diary is a class project and bears the stamp of a conscientious little girl who is always trying to do the right thing. She wants high marks for this work! She comes across as extremely diligent – whatever the circumstances – never questioning or disobeying. At home she seems a model child: always helping to prepare meals; helping her mother in the kitchen; helping wherever she can. ‘I want to try hard and do my best every day,’ she writes.

  The reader might assume she was indeed such a very good girl. But that assumption should be taken with a grain of salt, given that the diary is a school project. Yet she does make some observations of historical interest. She records the war around her – the planes overhead, the chronic lack of food, the exhausting work, and her daily errands. We learn that the children had no holidays during the war – they even had to work on Sundays, gathering food and wood, labouring, and practising home defence in case the Americans invaded. Her little routine is laid bare.

  Yet, despite this grim existence, Yoko always seems to find something to be happy about: ‘Today was the day of working at home. Yesterday my uncle came and so the house was very lively. I wished every day would be like that.’ She writes this on 5 August 1945, the day before America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Then her diary abruptly ends, silenced by the weapon to which she was horrifically exposed.

  Yoko’s story is one of many thousands. Nearly all of the students in
her year at school, as well as their five teachers, died instantly in the atomic blast. They were among more than 6300 children who perished immediately. Others died of lingering wounds or radiation sickness.

  Yoko’s diary represents one Japanese girl’s impressions of the world around her, at a time when that world was about to end. Yet if the Japanese regime treated her death as ‘lighter than a feather’ – as the Samurai code of bushido exhorted the Japanese people to view death – it was the heaviest thing on earth for her parents. According to Kohji, Yoko’s mother never smiled again after she discovered her daughter’s body.

  This English translation of Yoko’s Diary brings to a wider world the story of a young Japanese girl living in Hiroshima during the last months of the Pacific War.

  Moriwaki Family Tree

  Other people in Yoko’s life

  Hatsue Ueda – nursed injured Yoko

  Hiroshi Kamei – teacher from Hosei University Girls’ High School

  Kazuko Kojima (nee Fujita ‘Fujita-san’) – in the year above Yoko in school, travelled on ferry with her from Miyajima

  Masafumi Yamazaki – recent Kenjo teacher who contributed to the book

  Masako Kajiyama (nee Nakamoto) – one of few survivors from Yoko’s class

  Matsumoto-san – friend from Hatsukaichi

  Okayama-san – Yoko’s best friend from national school

  Shizuko Oka (‘Oka-san’) – in the same year as Yoko, travelled on ferry with her from Miyajima

  Yamashita-san – friend from Yawata

  Teachers

  Headmaster Oka – moral education and headmaster of Kenjo

  Hori Sensei – mathematics

  Kawakita Sensei – calligraphy

  Kimura Sensei – biology

  Kurita Sensei – physical science

  Mitsuya Sensei – accompanied Yoko to Kannon Village School in Saeki District after the atomic bombing

  Mizuiri Sensei – original homeroom teacher

  Munekuni Sensei – practical studies

  Nagahashi Sensei – music

  Sasaki Sensei – geography and form master (Year 7), supervised students at Dobashi

  Sekiyama Sensei – household management

  Tsuji Sensei – Japanese

  Tsukiji Sensei – replacement homeroom

  Opening Yoko’s diary

  by Kohji Hosokawa

  On 6 August 1945, Yoko Moriwaki, my little sister, bore the full brunt of the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast while she was doing housing demolition work in the Dobashi area, approximately 700 metres from the hypocentre (the point on the earth directly below the explosion in the air). That evening, at an evacuation centre located 10 kilometres away in the suburbs of Hiroshima, she passed away. She was thirteen years old. This book contains Yoko’s diary.

  The diary begins with the Kenjo school entrance ceremony. Yoko writes, ‘The 1945 school entrance ceremony was held today. At last! I am now one of those girls I have long admired – a Kenjo student. I am going to be mindful of how I lead my daily life and work really hard so that I won’t shame myself as a Japanese schoolgirl.’

  Yoko’s short sentences are overflowing with the joy she felt about entering high school, but the war quickly intrudes. One week later, she describes her shock and fear at having seen an enemy fighter plane for the first time. ‘I saw one of those blasted B-29s for the first time today. It circled Hiroshima, trailing a long, beautiful contrail and then flew away.’

  Yoko Moriwaki aged eleven. This picture was taken in 1944, the year before she entered Kenjo. (Kohji Hosokawa)

  After that, B-29s would occasionally fly over Hiroshima and fly away without dropping any bombs. Now, when I think about it, I feel sure that they were monitoring the city in preparation for 6 August.

  Day by day, Japan’s war situation deteriorated and warning sirens became a daily occurrence. There was no time for classes; students were required to help in the war effort. I can almost see Yoko, gritting her teeth while labouring, trying to do her best, berating herself for feeling tired and comparing her situation ‘to what our soldiers are going through …’ and ‘to Father fighting in the war …’ and to the fierce battle ‘being waged in Okinawa. I mustn’t be outdone by the British and American schoolgirls …’

  As Japan entered the last days of the war, apart from those times when she travelled the long distance to and from school, Yoko had to go everywhere on foot. Whenever she did farm work at the Kenjo agricultural plot, demolition work, labour service or visited shrines to pray for the soldiers at war, she got there by foot. ‘I went to Hara Village to help with farm work,’ (round trip 16 kilometres) she writes on 11 June. Three days later she ‘walked to Yoshijima Airport and planted sweet potatoes and soybeans,’ (round trip 7 kilometres). But her tiredness catches up with her: ‘We marched to Yagi Training Hall to put valuables belonging to the school in safe storage. On the way there, I simply wanted to throw them away! I did my best though,’ (round trip 25 kilometres).

  Sundays ceased to be holidays at that time, and the few days children had off were not called ‘holidays’, but ‘days of working at home’ or ‘home training days’, so that people would never forget that they were at war, even while they were resting at home. I counted the number of home training days that Yoko noted in her diary and compared them with the number of holidays Japanese schoolchildren have today. There were only twelve. Of course, there were no summer or public holidays either. In the same period today, Japanese schoolchildren have about forty days off including summer holidays.

  Holidays were few, yet Yoko continued to toil with her malnourished, exhausted body in the midst of an extreme food shortage. In her diary, my little sister complains about her poor physical condition, saying, ‘I have a fever …’, ‘I feel sick …’, ‘My whole body feels really weary.’ As I read those words, I sighed heavily, because Yoko was not such a frail person by any means.

  Our grandparents, who lived in the countryside, would occasionally attempt to supplement our diet, however slightly, sending rice, eggs and other things from their farm to Hatsukaichi, a market town which was 10 kilometres away across the sea from our home in Miyajima. They would mix such supplies with coal so that they could pass undetected beneath the watchful eye of the strict authority of the time. However, only the meagre amount of food that could be carried home by my mother and sister as they travelled from Hatsukaichi on the train and boat to Miyajima Island could ever reach us in this way. In her diary, Yoko sometimes mentions food, making comments such as, ‘The ohagi sticky rice sweets were delicious,’ or ‘We ate peaches.’ I vividly remember eating peaches with Yoko, as we hardly ever got to eat such things. When the peach season arrives each year, I remember that time and a lump forms in my throat.

  Yoko records the first time she experienced planting rice at our grandparents’ home. She felt so lonely being in the countryside far away from our mother and spent days impatiently waiting for Mother to come and get her. I really understand how she felt.

  On those days that Yoko was able to attend school, we see her delighting in learning new things, as she looks up words in the dictionary, learns how to use a slide rule, peers through a microscope and makes her own summer uniform – in the lessons that weren’t interrupted or cancelled due to air raids. The diary gives us a glimpse of young schoolgirls joyfully singing ‘Natsu wa Kinu’ (Summer is Coming) and rolling on the floor laughing at the funny stories told by their biology teacher, who must have been quite a character and features frequently in the diary.

  They were very impressed when their household management teacher told them, ‘One day you will be mothers and raise children. Teaching children manners is very important, you know.’ But none of them would ever become mothers.

  Once the student mobilisation order was issued, Yoko mentions the loneliness and even tension as, one by one, the older students were mobilised. She writes, ‘Today, the Year 10 students were sent to the manufacturing battlefront. We will hold the fort while they are gone,
’ and ‘We Year 7 students stood at the school gate and clapped as they left. I nearly started crying.’ And later ‘… because only the Year 7 students are left now, the playground seems strangely bigger than before.’

  Then the order was given for the Year 7 students to do labour service clearing away some houses that had been demolished. The area that was allocated to the Kenjo schoolgirls was Dobashi, a place close to the hypocentre of the atomic bomb, and 6 August was the first day of work.

  As I read the diary, things that I had forgotten were among some of the small things that Yoko mentions in passing, and I was consumed by nostalgia. Yoko writes, ‘I tied up my hair for the first time today.’ I remember making fun of Yoko, telling her that, as she had forced her bob-length hair up with a band, it looked as if she had a small tail growing out of the back of her head.

  ‘On the way home, the wind blew my hat into the sea. It is just too bad!’ I will never forget Yoko’s dejected expression as she said in a small voice, ‘My poor hat! Floating all alone out there on the ocean.’

  ‘I made dolls out of wool.’ The two small dolls that Yoko made that day were kept in a doll case for a long time. However, when my mother and father died, I placed one in each of their coffins.

  Yoko with her older brother, Kohji Hosokawa.

  At times, Yoko mentions that she has written letters to our father, who was away fighting in the war. Years later, after our father had been repatriated, I asked him about this and he told me that not one of Yoko’s letters had reached him.

  Here and there in the diary, we catch a glimpse of Yoko’s sweet and gentle nature. ‘I feel sorry for my classmate Hamadasan, whose father has died. I am going to comfort her.’ Four months after Hamada-san’s father died, she herself was killed by the atomic bomb.

  ‘Today, a girl called Asako Fujita, who survived a major air raid on Osaka, joined our school. I am going to be her friend.’ Asako Fujita survived the Osaka air raid only to be killed in Hiroshima by the atomic bomb. Many of the friends and teachers who feature in Yoko’s diary were killed by the atomic bomb.