A Better Life Through Ladies’ Groups After the War
Ms. Keiko Matsuda
Birth year：1927
Birth place：Yomitan Village
A life of evacuation
I was 18 years old at the time of the war. I did not have much concern about the war. My father and eldest brother went to fight in the war. My older sister worked at the post office. The rest were all children. I was the oldest and one left at home, so I helped my mother, and I was always with her to watch over the house. There was a slogan “Defense behind guns,” and once the men went to war, those who remained home did their best to protect the local community. The local young men’s association were also doing their best. We were not old enough to know the meaning of fighting a war, or its horrors, or understand what war really was.
We evacuated to Hentona in Kunigami. We also went to a settlement called Toubaru. Residents of Yomitan also evacuated with us. Initially, everyone evacuated to allocated private houses, but we were ordered to climb the mountain because the enemy was coming. So at night, my family took our belongings and climbed the mountain in darkness. We fled deep in the mountains of Hentona. We went to the field at night for food, and brought back small amounts. We would always look for sweet potato leaves called kandaba. No matter how much we harvested, there were more leaves growing when we went back. Since sweet potatoes were attached to the root of the leaves, as long as we left the sweet potato, we could look forward to seeing more leaves growing. If we dug all the sweet potatoes, no leaves would be left. If we left them behind, we’d continue to have food. We didn’t know much about farming, but that much we knew. “Leave the root (sweet potatoes). They must be saved for tomorrow,” we were told. That was how we lived. Gradually I began to know what was left and where it was. When we ran out of food, we dug for sweet potatoes. At first, we were very uncertain about which plants to harvest on the roadside. The elderly people with us would teach us which plants were edible and were safe to eat. Once we ate all those plants, only sweet potato leaves remained. I believe that Okinawan sweet potatoes were what saved our lives. When I went to the sea for food one day, a flare was launched, and the light made the area seem brighter than daylight. I could even see people clearly. One day, the flares were so bright that I was crawling on the ground. Bullets fell to my feet as I heard them so I thought I lost my legs, but my slacks were torn up by the bullets that went through it. We spent three months in the mountains. I don’t know what we could have eaten if the war continued any longer.
When we heard the war had ended, we couldn’t just go home right away. At night, we all hid ourselves as we went to the Yaka area of Kin. We couldn’t move during the day. We did not go to the internment camp. Someone we knew asked us, “You’re from Yomitan, aren’t you? I have some space at home, so you can stay overnight.” So we went there, and there was a horse stable and pig hut. We cleaned the place up and stayed lying on whatever we could find. We expressed our gratitude and happily stayed overnight. We kept walking the following day, and it took us several months to get close to Yomitan.
We did not know that my father died in battle for a long time. We were all waiting for his return. We were told that he died not far from where we were. Some years later, we heard that my father had died in Chatan. Our family searched for him in various places, until we found a place we thought he might have been buried in. I came to the realization that my father had really died.
I think there is nothing more foolish than war. I wondered why we had to wage war and kill one another, and why we sacrificed so much just to wage war. That’s why I want peace. I think peace is more important than anything else.
When the war ended and we returned home, we had lost everything. I remember the Matsuda family residence, but it had become just a flat area. It amazed me that there used to be a house there before. There was nothing left of my village as well. We just stood there and cried. I wondered if we would be able to live on like this. We came home tired from the war and even if our family was together, I was at a loss as to how I was going to live.
Improving lives after the war
Luckily at that time, the Life Improvement Group helped encourage us after the war. Young women in their 20s and 30s, were recruited. If we didn’t somehow devise a way to rebuild our lives, going forward would be very difficult. The war ended in 1945 and in 1948, we got together and started to do some work to improve our lives. We all worked very hard on this.
We all strongly desired for recovery from the post-war era. I made it through the war and survived, and now that I was living and blessed with children, I wanted to somehow make a good living. That desire led to the hope that things will be better tomorrow. When I remember those days, I am overwhelmed with emotion. Even with only sweet potatoes to eat, I believed things would improve tomorrow.
Of the three essentials of food, clothing, and shelter, building a house was most difficult. We used to sing a song called “Tonarigumi” (the neighbor song). It went like this.“The neighbor goes knock, knock, knock. Pardon me as I open the window.” As the lyrics suggest, large families lived in small two-family households, so we opened our windows and shared everything to help one another. “We baked too many sweet potatoes, so please have some,” we’d say. This is how we lived in standardized housing after the war.
The most important thing was food. As long as we could fill our stomachs, we could all think much better. Herringbone twill (HBT) uniforms were green clothes worn by American troops, and those working military jobs would bring back old HBT uniforms which we carefully disassembled to make clothing we could wear. We had no clothing for babies that were born at the time. Once the war ended, the number of babies increased, and each house had three or four children. When we couldn’t give babies anything to wear, we would use cloth from US military parachutes for clothes. Thinking back, it was amusing and brings a tear to my eye, but we would find parachutes that were torn from being caught on things around the airport nearby. We would go searching for them and make baby clothes with the soft material from the parachutes, gifting them to families that gave birth to babies. Once the baby could walk, we would make simple clothes like pants and vests out of HBT uniforms. There was no distinction between boys and girls, so we added embroidery for girls. That’s how post-war embroidery started. We used silk yarn which was extremely easy to use for embroidering. I learned to dye yarns once I started embroidery. We would collect some leaves and dyed colors to our clothes. I found a child wearing beautiful clothing made out of HBT uniforms that had various patterns, so I asked the child’s mother to teach me how do make patterns.
Pig raising and household budgeting
Pigs that give birth only have 12 nipples. When 14 piglets are born once, I would be told to come since so many piglets were born, and I was given a little piglet. I went to the Americans to ask for milk and leftover food, asking them to share because I had piglets to raise. I also got milk and leftovers from the school lunch. We raised the piglets with things that would be thrown away. It took about six months to raise the piglet back then, and they could be found in any house. You would be surprised by how many were around. Everyone needed a pigsty then, and we built a small one surrounded by rocks to raise pigs and bring in some money.
Making money took a lot of effort. While we were raising our children, we wanted to send all of them to high school, but some families couldn’t because of the high cost. Household budgeting played a major role in improving life. Keeping a budget opened us up to various ideas.
Birth of the Nabekama (pots and pans) Chorus
The Nabekama Chorus was a very interesting initiative. When we were working on improving people’s lives, it had been about seven or eight years since the war had ended. There was nothing to entertain us and we felt dreary. With no television or newspapers, we’d just talk, drink tea, and go home. One day someone brought empty cans that made pleasant sounds when hit. Nabekama Chorus by Zakimi women’s association I lined up some empty cans and started beating them, someone started singing along softly, “The neighbor goes knock, knock, knock” and we started beating pots and pans along with the song. Pot lids sounded quite good. I ended up playing the mortar. It was too heavy for anyone to carry, so I took the mortar and wooden pestle, and used a broom to beat the mortar. Toumami (broad beans) made the best sound. They made beautiful sounds while rolling, and I thought they sounded amazing. We tried playing in concert, and the sounds came together, so we played into the night in place of our lack of entertainment. Once we started playing together, it was so much fun. We called that performance “Nahbikankan.”
After our life improvement lessons and conversations dried up, there was nothing to do and Nahbikankan was such fun. Someone suggested that we should try it once during a community event. We actually made good music, so we named ourselves Nabekama Chorus. Someone from the Ryukyu Government was impressed and said,“That was amazing! We’d love to have you perform.” We performed in various communities, traveling as far north as Yanbaru. I like to believe our Nabekama Chorus made everyone happy.
A message for young people
People should be more caring and helpful to each other. The current trend of looking out only for yourself will not bring true happiness. I don’t know if it’s because I grew old, but things now feel different compared to the past. People now live in smaller families while we used to have big families. Relatives invited one another to stay over and eat food, and people were willing to help one another out. Young people now barely get in touch with older people. No matter what we want to teach or want to tell them, we have little chance to do so now. We can’t go back to the past, but I think younger people should get involved more with the local community. Improving the local community is good for us and the children. I think it would be better to have that kind of mindset. Being satisfied with just raising children at home might give way to some issues down the line.
Utilizing her experience as an accountant at a foodbank after the war, Ms. Keiko Matsuda worked towards improving the lives of local people and local ceremonies. She led a life improvement movement and organized the Education Neighborhood Association for the education of local children and worked to revitalize the local community. She has held positions related to families and the community, such as Director of the Okinawa Women’s Federation, President of the Movement for Better Living, and Family Court Domestic Relations Mediator.
A life of evacuation
I was 18 years old at the time of the war. I did not have much concern about the war. My father and eldest brother went to fight in the war. My older sister worked at the post office. The rest were all children. I was the oldest and one left at home, so I helped my mother, and I was always with her to watch over the house. There was a slogan “Defense behind guns,” and once the men went to war, those who remained home did their best to protect the local community. The local young men’s association were also doing their best. We were not old enough to know the meaning of fighting a war, or its horrors, or understand what war really was.
We evacuated to Hentona in Kunigami. We also went to a settlement called Toubaru. Residents of Yomitan also evacuated with us. Initially, everyone evacuated to allocated private houses, but we were ordered to climb the mountain because the enemy was coming. So at night, my family took our belongings and climbed the mountain in darkness. We fled deep in the mountains of Hentona. We went to the field at night for food, and brought back small amounts. We would always look for sweet potato leaves called kandaba. No matter how much we harvested, there were more leaves growing when we went back. Since sweet potatoes were attached to the root of the leaves, as long as we left the sweet potato, we could look forward to seeing more leaves growing. If we dug all the sweet potatoes, no leaves would be left. If we left them behind, we’d continue to have food. We didn’t know much about farming, but that much we knew. “Leave the root (sweet potatoes). They must be saved for tomorrow,” we were told. That was how we lived. Gradually I began to know what was left and where it was. When we ran out of food, we dug for sweet potatoes. At first, we were very uncertain about which plants to harvest on the roadside. The elderly people with us would teach us which plants were edible and were safe to eat. Once we ate all those plants, only sweet potato leaves remained. I believe that Okinawan sweet potatoes were what saved our lives. When I went to the sea for food one day, a flare was launched, and the light made the area seem brighter than daylight. I could even see people clearly. One day, the flares were so bright that I was crawling on the ground. Bullets fell to my feet as I heard them so I thought I lost my legs, but my slacks were torn up by the bullets that went through it. We spent three months in the mountains. I don’t know what we could have eaten if the war continued any longer.
When we heard the war had ended, we couldn’t just go home right away. At night, we all hid ourselves as we went to the Yaka area of Kin. We couldn’t move during the day. We did not go to the internment camp. Someone we knew asked us, “You’re from Yomitan, aren’t you? I have some space at home, so you can stay overnight.” So we went there, and there was a horse stable and pig hut. We cleaned the place up and stayed lying on whatever we could find. We expressed our gratitude and happily stayed overnight. We kept walking the following day, and it took us several months to get close to Yomitan.
We did not know that my father died in battle for a long time. We were all waiting for his return. We were told that he died not far from where we were. Some years later, we heard that my father had died in Chatan. Our family searched for him in various places, until we found a place we thought he might have been buried in. I came to the realization that my father had really died.
I think there is nothing more foolish than war. I wondered why we had to wage war and kill one another, and why we sacrificed so much just to wage war. That’s why I want peace. I think peace is more important than anything else.
When the war ended and we returned home, we had lost everything. I remember the Matsuda family residence, but it had become just a flat area. It amazed me that there used to be a house there before. There was nothing left of my village as well. We just stood there and cried. I wondered if we would be able to live on like this. We came home tired from the war and even if our family was together, I was at a loss as to how I was going to live.
Improving lives after the war
Luckily at that time, the Life Improvement Group helped encourage us after the war. Young women in their 20s and 30s, were recruited. If we didn’t somehow devise a way to rebuild our lives, going forward would be very difficult. The war ended in 1945 and in 1948, we got together and started to do some work to improve our lives. We all worked very hard on this.
We all strongly desired for recovery from the post-war era. I made it through the war and survived, and now that I was living and blessed with children, I wanted to somehow make a good living. That desire led to the hope that things will be better tomorrow. When I remember those days, I am overwhelmed with emotion. Even with only sweet potatoes to eat, I believed things would improve tomorrow.
Of the three essentials of food, clothing, and shelter, building a house was most difficult. We used to sing a song called “Tonarigumi” (the neighbor song). It went like this.“The neighbor goes knock, knock, knock. Pardon me as I open the window.” As the lyrics suggest, large families lived in small two-family households, so we opened our windows and shared everything to help one another. “We baked too many sweet potatoes, so please have some,” we’d say. This is how we lived in standardized housing after the war.
The most important thing was food. As long as we could fill our stomachs, we could all think much better. Herringbone twill (HBT) uniforms were green clothes worn by American troops, and those working military jobs would bring back old HBT uniforms which we carefully disassembled to make clothing we could wear. We had no clothing for babies that were born at the time. Once the war ended, the number of babies increased, and each house had three or four children. When we couldn’t give babies anything to wear, we would use cloth from US military parachutes for clothes. Thinking back, it was amusing and brings a tear to my eye, but we would find parachutes that were torn from being caught on things around the airport nearby. We would go searching for them and make baby clothes with the soft material from the parachutes, gifting them to families that gave birth to babies. Once the baby could walk, we would make simple clothes like pants and vests out of HBT uniforms. There was no distinction between boys and girls, so we added embroidery for girls. That’s how post-war embroidery started. We used silk yarn which was extremely easy to use for embroidering. I learned to dye yarns once I started embroidery. We would collect some leaves and dyed colors to our clothes. I found a child wearing beautiful clothing made out of HBT uniforms that had various patterns, so I asked the child’s mother to teach me how do make patterns.
Pig raising and household budgeting
Pigs that give birth only have 12 nipples. When 14 piglets are born once, I would be told to come since so many piglets were born, and I was given a little piglet. I went to the Americans to ask for milk and leftover food, asking them to share because I had piglets to raise. I also got milk and leftovers from the school lunch. We raised the piglets with things that would be thrown away. It took about six months to raise the piglet back then, and they could be found in any house. You would be surprised by how many were around. Everyone needed a pigsty then, and we built a small one surrounded by rocks to raise pigs and bring in some money.
Making money took a lot of effort. While we were raising our children, we wanted to send all of them to high school, but some families couldn’t because of the high cost. Household budgeting played a major role in improving life. Keeping a budget opened us up to various ideas.
Birth of the Nabekama (pots and pans) Chorus
The Nabekama Chorus was a very interesting initiative. When we were working on improving people’s lives, it had been about seven or eight years since the war had ended. There was nothing to entertain us and we felt dreary. With no television or newspapers, we’d just talk, drink tea, and go home. One day someone brought empty cans that made pleasant sounds when hit. Nabekama Chorus by Zakimi women’s association I lined up some empty cans and started beating them, someone started singing along softly, “The neighbor goes knock, knock, knock” and we started beating pots and pans along with the song. Pot lids sounded quite good. I ended up playing the mortar. It was too heavy for anyone to carry, so I took the mortar and wooden pestle, and used a broom to beat the mortar. Toumami (broad beans) made the best sound. They made beautiful sounds while rolling, and I thought they sounded amazing. We tried playing in concert, and the sounds came together, so we played into the night in place of our lack of entertainment. Once we started playing together, it was so much fun. We called that performance “Nahbikankan.”
After our life improvement lessons and conversations dried up, there was nothing to do and Nahbikankan was such fun. Someone suggested that we should try it once during a community event. We actually made good music, so we named ourselves Nabekama Chorus. Someone from the Ryukyu Government was impressed and said,“That was amazing! We’d love to have you perform.” We performed in various communities, traveling as far north as Yanbaru. I like to believe our Nabekama Chorus made everyone happy.
A message for young people
People should be more caring and helpful to each other. The current trend of looking out only for yourself will not bring true happiness. I don’t know if it’s because I grew old, but things now feel different compared to the past. People now live in smaller families while we used to have big families. Relatives invited one another to stay over and eat food, and people were willing to help one another out. Young people now barely get in touch with older people. No matter what we want to teach or want to tell them, we have little chance to do so now. We can’t go back to the past, but I think younger people should get involved more with the local community. Improving the local community is good for us and the children. I think it would be better to have that kind of mindset. Being satisfied with just raising children at home might give way to some issues down the line.
Utilizing her experience as an accountant at a foodbank after the war, Ms. Keiko Matsuda worked towards improving the lives of local people and local ceremonies. She led a life improvement movement and organized the Education Neighborhood Association for the education of local children and worked to revitalize the local community. She has held positions related to families and the community, such as Director of the Okinawa Women’s Federation, President of the Movement for Better Living, and Family Court Domestic Relations Mediator.