My mother was lost to malaria so I became a war orphan
My mother was lost to malaria so I became a war orphan
Witness: Zenko Asato (01安里善好)
Date of birth: May 1, 1936
Place of birth: Taketomi Island
Age at the time: 8 years old
■ Mother died and I became a war orphan
My mother, my older sister and I relocated to Ishigaki Island from Taketomi Island when I was in the second grade of elementary school. By the time I was in the third grade I was already a war orphan. When I think back to the time I experienced life as a war orphan it breaks my heart, my lips quiver and I cannot speak well. It was a period of misery for me.
It all started when I was about to advance from the second grade to the third grade. We received a message from my sister and so we evacuated into the mountain called Barabido on Ishigaki Island. My mother packed cooking pots and pans, salted meat and we loaded all that on a cart before we evacuated to the mountain.
After two weeks, however, all the food was gone and we started gathering edible leaves in the mountains and started eating them. Then the entire family contracted malaria.
This was the first time we had suffered with malaria and it was indeed a dreadful disease. We had high fevers repeatedly a number of times a day and suffered a lot. We had nothing to eat; we were gravely ill, and in the end my mother could not recover and passed away.
I am grateful that I survived in spite of having contracted malaria and since then I have been doing my bit for the sake of other people in society by serving as a probation officer and a welfare commissioner. This desire to cooperate and support each other is largely due to the experiences I had as a victim of that war.
At times I wish my mother was still alive, so I could carry her around on my back. It was such a wretched way to die. I cannot even start to describe what it was like. We faced a period when we had nothing, so when my mother died we took off a door and disassembled it to make a box, a makeshift casket. I placed her on a cart and pulled it with a neighbor when it was pitch black outside. My neighbor said "It doesn't matter where, let us just bury her" so we stopped and buried her right there. By a strange coincidence that spot was just in front of my father's grave.
When I talk about the experiences I had during the war, I cannot talk about many things without tears coming out of my eyes. I wonder how I should convey all that to children. I would like to say emphatically, that such a tragic war must never ever happen again.
(Interviewer)
Do memories of the time sometime resurface?
I am not sure if I would characterize it as resurfacing, but every time I hear cicadas I remember.
What I remember is around the time I was so hungry that I could not cope with it any longer, so I captured a grasshopper in the field, fried it and ate it. I even captured a cicada, fried that too and ate it. I even ate a frog in the rice paddy. I ate so many different things.
■ I would like people to find a way for the world to progress in peace, without military bases.
Military might does not lead to progress. I would like people to find a way to take Osprey (military aircraft) overseas and all those things out of this country and get rid of military bases, so that the world can progress in peace.
■ Were the politicians at the time really not aware of the clear differences in the military strength of the United States?
It was such a juvenile strategy when I think about it, but Japanese soldiers cut down some logs and piled them up on stone walls to make them look like artillery guns. The idea was to make them look like the real thing when seen from an aircraft and they were hoping that bombs would be dropped there. Why were those important people in power at the time not aware of such differences in their military strength? If they had realized the differences in the national capabilities, they would have been able to determine that there was no chance of winning.
The source of any war is greed. Instead of consulting with each other, the greed of humans desiring to make all this and that theirs is when wars start, I believe.
Witness: Zenko Asato (01安里善好)
Date of birth: May 1, 1936
Place of birth: Taketomi Island
Age at the time: 8 years old
■ Mother died and I became a war orphan
My mother, my older sister and I relocated to Ishigaki Island from Taketomi Island when I was in the second grade of elementary school. By the time I was in the third grade I was already a war orphan. When I think back to the time I experienced life as a war orphan it breaks my heart, my lips quiver and I cannot speak well. It was a period of misery for me.
It all started when I was about to advance from the second grade to the third grade. We received a message from my sister and so we evacuated into the mountain called Barabido on Ishigaki Island. My mother packed cooking pots and pans, salted meat and we loaded all that on a cart before we evacuated to the mountain.
After two weeks, however, all the food was gone and we started gathering edible leaves in the mountains and started eating them. Then the entire family contracted malaria.
This was the first time we had suffered with malaria and it was indeed a dreadful disease. We had high fevers repeatedly a number of times a day and suffered a lot. We had nothing to eat; we were gravely ill, and in the end my mother could not recover and passed away.
I am grateful that I survived in spite of having contracted malaria and since then I have been doing my bit for the sake of other people in society by serving as a probation officer and a welfare commissioner. This desire to cooperate and support each other is largely due to the experiences I had as a victim of that war.
At times I wish my mother was still alive, so I could carry her around on my back. It was such a wretched way to die. I cannot even start to describe what it was like. We faced a period when we had nothing, so when my mother died we took off a door and disassembled it to make a box, a makeshift casket. I placed her on a cart and pulled it with a neighbor when it was pitch black outside. My neighbor said "It doesn't matter where, let us just bury her" so we stopped and buried her right there. By a strange coincidence that spot was just in front of my father's grave.
When I talk about the experiences I had during the war, I cannot talk about many things without tears coming out of my eyes. I wonder how I should convey all that to children. I would like to say emphatically, that such a tragic war must never ever happen again.
(Interviewer)
Do memories of the time sometime resurface?
I am not sure if I would characterize it as resurfacing, but every time I hear cicadas I remember.
What I remember is around the time I was so hungry that I could not cope with it any longer, so I captured a grasshopper in the field, fried it and ate it. I even captured a cicada, fried that too and ate it. I even ate a frog in the rice paddy. I ate so many different things.
■ I would like people to find a way for the world to progress in peace, without military bases.
Military might does not lead to progress. I would like people to find a way to take Osprey (military aircraft) overseas and all those things out of this country and get rid of military bases, so that the world can progress in peace.
■ Were the politicians at the time really not aware of the clear differences in the military strength of the United States?
It was such a juvenile strategy when I think about it, but Japanese soldiers cut down some logs and piled them up on stone walls to make them look like artillery guns. The idea was to make them look like the real thing when seen from an aircraft and they were hoping that bombs would be dropped there. Why were those important people in power at the time not aware of such differences in their military strength? If they had realized the differences in the national capabilities, they would have been able to determine that there was no chance of winning.
The source of any war is greed. Instead of consulting with each other, the greed of humans desiring to make all this and that theirs is when wars start, I believe.
