Child of War

By Paige Taeko Pierot

A Japanese World War II survivor has learned to live after being surrounded by death.

On a sunny Saturday, I pull up to a normal, suburban, quaint Irvine house that I have visited many times before. Even though I am welcomed by the familiarity of the lush, succulent-filled front yard, this visit feels different. On the front porch, a plastic bag full of tangerines sits on an old, wicker chair. I am anxious to see the woman inside. She detests posing for pictures; I know I have to catch her off guard. Seconds after I ring the doorbell, my grandmother answers the door.

Taeko ‘Joanne’ Higashi is a far cry from the stereotypical, subservient Japanese woman. She is an assertive, blunt, and eccentric ball of energy, standing at 5’1”. She has short, wiry gray-white colored hair and a beaming smile that shows often as she makes crass jokes.

An entirety of Higashi’s living room wall is taken up by three large, dark wooden bookshelves packed with Japanese books about World War II. Many are on the subject of the fire bombings in most of Japan as well as Hiroshima.

Higashi slowly lowers herself into her plush reading chair. A tiny, orange and white cherry blossom print teacup sits on the coffee table in front of her. Today she is drinking peach white tea, her “favor.” She happily scoops two teaspoons of sugar into her cup.

“I’m being bad today!” Higashi squeals as she adds a teaspoon of honey to her tea. “I like to treat myself once in a while to these things.” She takes a sip of her tea and her smile fades. “After all,” she whispered with eyes lowered. “I did not always have.”

Higashi grew up in the midst of World War II Japan. She lived in Yokohama, a port city south of Tokyo, with her mother, father, two older sisters and two younger brothers. Her early childhood was relatively normal; she enjoyed playing dolls with her school friends and listening to her father’s improvised bedtime stories.

Being a child did not make her oblivious to the harshness of war, however. “The Japanese government was fascist,” Higashi hissed. “They brain-wash their people everyday. They sent 15 year old boys off to die. If you complain once, somebody would snitch you to the government and it would be jail for life…we were starving and they did nothing.”

Yokohama seemed to be a relatively safe place, until the last two years of the war, when Higashi was in 3rd grade. Firebombs dropped by B-29 aircrafts became more and more frequent. According to Factsanddetails.com, the fire bombs dropped were “more destructive than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the raids destroyed more than 100 square miles of inhabited land, razed more than two million buildings, killed 500,000 people and left 13 million people homeless.” On May 14, 1945, Higashi’s family home was destroyed in the flames. They fled to her aunt’s countryside home, located in a small, rural beach town that was a two-hour train ride from Yokohama.

On May 29, about seven square miles of Yokohama were decimated in the single firebombing raid, historynet.com reported.

“After we moved, I believed we were safe. We lost everything, but we were safe.” Higashi said.

She was wrong; the B-29s had followed her. “We did not even have time to unpack before bombs began to drop,” Higashi remembers. “I was in disbelief…they were unrelenting. We could not escape.”

Every day at 5–6 am, the bombers would fly in from the massive naval ship off the coast. Higashi would be awoken by the sound of sirens and screaming people. Her father had built a large shelter that the family would take refuge in every day, for hours at a time. “The bombs would drop in a circular motion,” she said. “They would begin at the edges of the town, then drop hundreds in the very middle.”

Food became increasingly scarce. “If there was a weed growing in the crack of the street, that is what we would eat. We did not have meat, sugar, flour, rice, nothing. How could we farm? Everything was set on fire. The men could not fish; the planes were always near the coast.”

Higashi and her siblings continued to attend school in various temples, since the schools had already been destroyed. Everyday, there would be fewer children in her classroom. “I look around and I see my friend so-and-so is not there…I eventually figured out that they were dead.” She began to dread waking up in the morning.

On one particular morning, a bomb hit very close to the family shelter, engulfing it in roaring fire. As she scrambled to get outside, Higashi accidentally stepped on an abandoned, crying toddler. “I will never forget that,” she said. “Who was this child? Where was the parent? I could not think of these questions because we had to run from the fire.”

While running from the shelter, Higashi took one last look at her aunt’s home as it burned to the ground. She witnessed a neighbor rolling on the ground, covered in flames. She saw hundreds of people on fire jumping into a small river in an attempt to extinguish themselves. Screams and cries for help came from every direction. Her family tried to seek refuge in other neighbor’s shelters, but were continuously turned away due to overcrowding.

When the B-29s finally turned in for the day, Higashi’s entire town was decimated. Thousands of bodies littered the street. The smell of burning flesh stained the air. “Everything was ash,” Higashi lamented. “There was nothing but dead bodies. I watched them being shoveled onto some big truck. Everything we had was gone, again. We had no hope. I wished I could die, to escape.”

After losing her second home, Higashi and her family were split up, staying with different relatives.

Months later, when finally hearing the war was over, she felt more confusion than relief. “I kept thinking, ‘Where are the B-29s? Why am I not dead?’ When the news of Hiroshima and the surrender came, I could not speak. Everyday we were told that the Japanese people would not surrender. The war would only end when all of us were dead, but here I was.”

Higashi’s close friend of over 30 years Marie-Rose Boucher of Lyon, France is also a World War II survivor. “Growing up this way is difficult for others to understand,” Boucher said. “Many might think Joanne and I are cynical or resentful, when I actually think that the war has made us more compassionate people.”

Higashi and Boucher both agree that the trauma is hard to reconcile. “I did not speak of anything that happened in the war until the 1980’s, about 20 years after I came to America,” Higashi said. “I had blocked it out of my mind…I finally wrote to my family in Japan asking them to send me any book on the war that they could find. I wanted to know all angles to find out the truth.”

Now, unsurprisingly, Higashi is entirely anti-war. “War is stupid, please write that down,” she said. “Both sides think they were right. Both sides brainwashed their men to kill. Humans build great things then destroy them with war. War is hell, and you have no choice.”

Independently researching the facts about the war has brought her some peace. After fully learning of the destruction of her home country, she is shocked that she is alive. She is reluctant to call herself a survivor, however. “I do not want to just survive,” she said. “I want to live! I will live to do what I want!” With that, she adds another teaspoon of sugar to her tea.

I sit back, and smile.