Ie Island During and After the War
Mr. Kamekichi Uchima
Birth year：1937
Birth place：Ie Village
Ie Island before the war intensified
I was seven years old during the Battle of Okinawa. In 1943, the construction of an airfield on Ie Island began. A Japanese military officer came to my kindergarten, riding on a horse. When I saw him, I remember thinking that Japanese soldiers were cool, but I also felt a little scared. My family consisted of seven people: my parents, my four older sisters, and myself. I remember the US military landing because I was with my family on Ie Island the whole time.
Life in an air raid shelter
In 1945, on April 13th or 14th, I believe it was, our thatched-roof home was burned by U.S. forces. It was only four or five meters away from the air raid shelter we were taking cover in, but all we could do was watch it burn. We couldn’t pour even a single drop of water on it. U.S. military aircraft were flying overhead in the sky. We felt like we were in danger, and all of my relatives came together, 25 people there in that small shelter. We sat there with our arms wrapped unable to even stretch out our legs. After four days in the shelter, I heard music I had never heard before from a small forest about 200 meters away, south of the shelter. Thinking that the shelter had now become a dangerous place to be, we left and took refuge in our ancestral burial site. According to the adults, the inside of a tomb was a place of death. When you die, you’re brought to a tomb, so dying there would avoid causing trouble to others. That’s what we were told. So we went to the tomb. Since we’d escaped there with only the clothes on our backs, we couldn’t bring any food. We only had a single 1.8-liter bottle of water with us. We ran into a Japanese soldier on the way, and when we offered him water, he drank it all. So we had no water or food. If we could get to the village, there’d be food and water. But the day after we evacuated to the tomb, when we decided to try and get some from the village, there were many American soldiers, and we weren’t able to. We returned and went in the opposite direction, to the field. There, we dug up sweet potatoes and about ten sugarcane stalks. We bit through them and ate them raw. It was war, so cows and horses had escaped. They were injured and went to the pond to seek water for drink, but when they reached the pond, they died of exhaustion. Their rotting bodies were infested with maggots. We drew water from such a pond. I was drawing water at dawn. In the morning, I was about to drink the water and looked into the bottle, I saw that there were four or five maggots in it. Still, I could not dispose of the water. There was no water other than that, I stuck a piece of string into the bottle, fished out the maggots, and drank the water. On the evening of April 21st, the U.S. military aircraft that usually flew until before sunset didn’t do so that day. And at night, the U.S. warships that always approached and bombarded us with gunfire were nowhere to be seen. The adults left the tomb and told everyone to come out. We emerged from the tomb, and were told to look over at the white flag flying from the peak of Mt. Gusuku. “Japan lost,” the adults said. “The war’s over.” We had been prepared to die in the tomb since we’d come there to die, so even when we were told the war was over, nobody would leave.
Becoming a prisoner of war and internment camp life
The next morning, on the 22nd, several American soldiers came and called out in broken Japanese,“Come out, come out. No bullets. Give fruits.” But no one left the tomb because the adults had said,“This is the place to die. Don’t leave the tomb. If you leave, you’ll be killed. If you die here, you can go to paradise.” So no one left. The American soldiers left once, then returned. They threw a gas bomb into the tomb. There was an exploding sound, and white smoke filled the tomb. It was really bad. I couldn’t see because of the white smoke, and it made my throat tighten up, so I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take it anymore and raced outside. Because I’d inhaled gas, I couldn’t speak. I was mute for about six months. We were taken by a U.S. military truck to a POW camp in Nagarabama. At the Nagara camp, we were first stripped naked. American soldiers dunked all men, women, and children, one by one, into drums containing an oil-like substance. We learned later that it was an antiseptic solution. We were submerged up to our heads before being pulled out. According to adults who experienced this, fleas and lice floated on the antiseptic solution in the drums. After someone was dunked, the fleas and lice were disposed of, the antiseptic solution was replenished, and the next person was put in. This is how fleas and lice were exterminated from prisoners of war. I was scared when the American soldiers dunked me in the drum. But even though I was scared, I was not afraid to die. There was a war on, so I was always prepared to die. Afterward, we were taken to Tokashiki Island in the Kerama Islands, which is visible from Ie Island. We wondered if we were going to be killed there, on Tokashiki Island, and our bodies disposed of somewhere.
Life on Tokashiki Island
In early May, I believe, the residents of Ie Island were divided into several groups and transferred to Tokashiki Island on LSTs (landing ship tanks). The original residents of Tokashiki Island had evacuated to the mountains, so the village was full of vacant houses. We, the residents of Ie Island, were placed in these vacant houses. The one I was put in was a fine house with a tiled roof. Six families were housed there. There were no food shortages while the US military was on Tokashiki Island because they distributed relief supplies. However, after the US military withdrew to the main island of Okinawa, because one thousand Ie Islanders had been moved to Tokashiki Island, which originally had a population of between 400 and 500, there was no system in place for producing food for all of us. We planted sweet potatoes in the fields, but they were terraced rice fields, and the crops only provided food for the residents of Ie Island for two to three days. Unable to build up a production base, it was difficult for people to continue life on Tokashiki Island. The people of Tokashiki Island used to fish to make their living but we weren’t able to do that. We Ie Islanders only knew about agriculture. We arrived in Tokashiki Island in May, and it was around June, I believe, that the original residents came down from the mountains to which they’d evacuated. We met Tokashiki Islander classmates at school. They had prominent scars, recent wounds from blades, on their heads and limbs. They said that many people had died in group suicides, but that they had survived. I also heard that some people sat in a circle and committed group suicide. Silverberry produces fruit until early June, which we gathered in the mountains. This provided about one meal for our family. We couldn’t gather enough for three meals. So we picked sprouts from trees and ate cycads. After eating all the cycads, we ate roadside vegetation, sprouts from trees, and leaves from wild plants. We ate anything that was edible. For protein, we even ate grasshoppers. When we caught even one grasshopper, we pulled off the legs and wings and ate it raw. Then there were the small lizards. There were various lizards on the island. We caught lizards living in the trees, and would eat them raw after removing the head and legs, but without removing the internal organs. That was our protein source.
From Tokashiki to Motobu
In March 1946, we were moved from Tokashiki Island to Motobu. That’s where Sesoko Bridge is located now. We were moved to a village called Ken-ken, on the Motobu side. We stayed there until July, with five to six households sharing a single tent. We had U.S. military rations, but it still was not enough food. Thankfully, U.S. military supplies were being unloaded on a nearby sandy beach. Back then, I was in the second grade of elementary school. Some older students took me to the beach. We brought back “war trophies”, meaning we took U.S. military supplies back home with us. We didn’t “steal.” We “brought back war trophies.” The most delicious of those supplies was the ice cream powder. The words on the bags and boxes were in English, and we couldn’t read English, so we didn’t know what was inside until we opened them. When we opened them and were fortunate enough to find ice cream powder, we were overjoyed. And there were also U.S. field rations. My mother and sisters were pleased when I brought home wheat flour. We picked up supplies over two days. There were guards until about ten at night, so between around one and two in the morning we would gather together and go for “war trophies,” led by the older kids. I was attending Sakimotobu Elementary School, but when the first semester ended and summer vacation began, we received an order from the U.S. military to move from Ken-ken, so during summer vacation in August, we were moved to a village called Gushiken in Motobu, which was called Sakimotobu at the time. It was a village that bordered Imadomari, Nakijin. We built a tent hut of about seven square meters and stayed from August until March of the following year, 1947.
Return to Ie Island and recovery
We returned to Ie Island in March 1947. Before the people of Ie Island returned to the island, young people went first as an advance party, building tent huts for everyone to live in, and preparing Quonset huts, setting things up so that we could all start our lives immediately upon returning. Our family ended up living in a Quonset hut. There were relief supplies left by the US military on Ie Island, and we were able to make it for six months on those rations. In around July or August, the rations started running low, and there was a serious food shortage. We gathered wild sweet potatoes and sugarcane from the fields, as they had been left untended for about two years. We also planted sweet potatoes in our field and so were able to survive, even if it was with a poor diet. As the fields had not been tended to for two years and were in a state of neglect, and the US military had trampled them with heavy machinery, it was incredibly difficult to cultivate crops there. The soil was so hard that even an adult swinging a hoe wasn’t able to till the soil. With our strength as elementary school students, we needed to swing our hoes down two or three times to break the soil. Even though we were just second-year elementary students, we had to cultivate the previously-abandoned land. One day, when I went to dig up wild sweet potatoes, I found some large ripe ones in the field. I went to harvest them, and was really surprised when I dug up a human skull. I put it all back into the dirt and ran away, without taking the sweet potatoes. There was a big rat in the US military food warehouse, and I was very happy when I managed to catch it. Because there was a lot of empty bottles there, I broke it and used a shard of glass to cut the rat. Then, I tore out some grass roots, stuck them into the rat’s wound and blew. This caused the rat’s body to swell and the skin and muscle to separate. I peeled the skin off and brought the carcass home. It was a very delicious source of protein. It was huge, even for a rat. Probably because it ate a lot of delicious food. We used this meat in a soup, using an empty can from U.S. military relief supplies in place of a pot, as we didn’t have one at that time, and also frying it up.
Ie Island school life
When I returned to Ie Island, I was old enough to advance to the fourth grade. But since I hadn’t been able to properly take classes, my mother told me to go through third grade again. So I graduated from elementary school and junior high school one year later than usual. The elementary school was able to reopen because it had its own Quonset hut, but it was blown away every time a typhoon came. We got textbooks starting in the fourth grade. Until third grade, we didn’t have proper notebooks, so we would cut up cement bags in big pieces, and tie them together with strings. Using this in place of a notebook, we’d copy down what the teacher wrote on the blackboard.
LCT explosion
During summer vacation in fourth grade, I heard a loud explosion on my way home after fishing so I wondered if the war had started back up. There was this saying, “kuwagin shado,” that instructed us to hide under a mulberry tree whenever we were surprised by a loud noise, such as thunder. It was a saying used by older people since long ago. There was a mulberry tree nearby, so I hid under it when I heard the explosion. Once the explosion had faded, I returned to the road. I looked to the south and saw a big cloud of black smoke rising up. “Had an atomic bomb been dropped,” I wondered. I parted ways with the four or five friends I was with and went home. I later learned that there had been an LCT explosion. I didn’t actually see the site of the explosion but there were many victims, including some of my relatives. People went to Nakijin to bring home the remains of those who lost their lives in the war. There were many people gathered at the pier on Ie Island when the ship returned. While they were confirming the remains that had been brought back, an LCT (landing craft tank) loaded with U.S. military bombs exploded, and they got caught in the explosion.
Elementary school construction
When I was in fifth or sixth grade, construction began for a new school building that had red tiles, rather than concrete. The foundation of the school building was made of stones about this big. The students brought stones one by one when we went to school and added them to the foundation. I brought one stone every day for about two months. Under the direction of the school, teachers watched at the school gates, and children who did not bring a stone were turned away until they brought one. Back then, we might have been children, but we were also made to help build our school. Classes were only held in the morning, and most afternoons involved some kind of work. When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I planted trees around the school in the afternoon. The playground was full of stones because it was covered with coral (limestone). During practice before athletic meets, whenever I fell, my shin would be covered in scratches. I ran barefoot, so I had blood blisters on the soles of my feet. They hurt at night, so I couldn’t sleep. After graduating from junior high school, I worked as an office assistant at Ie Elementary School for one year. After that, I was told to continue for a year more, making it two years in the end.
A message for young people
At the elementary school, before Memorial Day every June, there’s an opportunity to teach about peace, and I speak to children for about an hour every year, as someone who experienced life during war. When I see school children on the street, they thank me for telling them my story about the war. That makes me feel glad for talking about the war. There are children who genuinely listen, so I feel I have to talk about the war as long as I have the strength to do so.
Mr. Uchima worked as an employee of the Ie village public office for many years, giving his full efforts in the village’s administration. After retiring, he has continued talking to children in the area about his personal experiences of surviving the suffering seen during and after the war.
Ie Island before the war intensified
I was seven years old during the Battle of Okinawa. In 1943, the construction of an airfield on Ie Island began. A Japanese military officer came to my kindergarten, riding on a horse. When I saw him, I remember thinking that Japanese soldiers were cool, but I also felt a little scared. My family consisted of seven people: my parents, my four older sisters, and myself. I remember the US military landing because I was with my family on Ie Island the whole time.
Life in an air raid shelter
In 1945, on April 13th or 14th, I believe it was, our thatched-roof home was burned by U.S. forces. It was only four or five meters away from the air raid shelter we were taking cover in, but all we could do was watch it burn. We couldn’t pour even a single drop of water on it. U.S. military aircraft were flying overhead in the sky. We felt like we were in danger, and all of my relatives came together, 25 people there in that small shelter. We sat there with our arms wrapped unable to even stretch out our legs. After four days in the shelter, I heard music I had never heard before from a small forest about 200 meters away, south of the shelter. Thinking that the shelter had now become a dangerous place to be, we left and took refuge in our ancestral burial site. According to the adults, the inside of a tomb was a place of death. When you die, you’re brought to a tomb, so dying there would avoid causing trouble to others. That’s what we were told. So we went to the tomb. Since we’d escaped there with only the clothes on our backs, we couldn’t bring any food. We only had a single 1.8-liter bottle of water with us. We ran into a Japanese soldier on the way, and when we offered him water, he drank it all. So we had no water or food. If we could get to the village, there’d be food and water. But the day after we evacuated to the tomb, when we decided to try and get some from the village, there were many American soldiers, and we weren’t able to. We returned and went in the opposite direction, to the field. There, we dug up sweet potatoes and about ten sugarcane stalks. We bit through them and ate them raw. It was war, so cows and horses had escaped. They were injured and went to the pond to seek water for drink, but when they reached the pond, they died of exhaustion. Their rotting bodies were infested with maggots. We drew water from such a pond. I was drawing water at dawn. In the morning, I was about to drink the water and looked into the bottle, I saw that there were four or five maggots in it. Still, I could not dispose of the water. There was no water other than that, I stuck a piece of string into the bottle, fished out the maggots, and drank the water. On the evening of April 21st, the U.S. military aircraft that usually flew until before sunset didn’t do so that day. And at night, the U.S. warships that always approached and bombarded us with gunfire were nowhere to be seen. The adults left the tomb and told everyone to come out. We emerged from the tomb, and were told to look over at the white flag flying from the peak of Mt. Gusuku. “Japan lost,” the adults said. “The war’s over.” We had been prepared to die in the tomb since we’d come there to die, so even when we were told the war was over, nobody would leave.
Becoming a prisoner of war and internment camp life
The next morning, on the 22nd, several American soldiers came and called out in broken Japanese,“Come out, come out. No bullets. Give fruits.” But no one left the tomb because the adults had said,“This is the place to die. Don’t leave the tomb. If you leave, you’ll be killed. If you die here, you can go to paradise.” So no one left. The American soldiers left once, then returned. They threw a gas bomb into the tomb. There was an exploding sound, and white smoke filled the tomb. It was really bad. I couldn’t see because of the white smoke, and it made my throat tighten up, so I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take it anymore and raced outside. Because I’d inhaled gas, I couldn’t speak. I was mute for about six months. We were taken by a U.S. military truck to a POW camp in Nagarabama. At the Nagara camp, we were first stripped naked. American soldiers dunked all men, women, and children, one by one, into drums containing an oil-like substance. We learned later that it was an antiseptic solution. We were submerged up to our heads before being pulled out. According to adults who experienced this, fleas and lice floated on the antiseptic solution in the drums. After someone was dunked, the fleas and lice were disposed of, the antiseptic solution was replenished, and the next person was put in. This is how fleas and lice were exterminated from prisoners of war. I was scared when the American soldiers dunked me in the drum. But even though I was scared, I was not afraid to die. There was a war on, so I was always prepared to die. Afterward, we were taken to Tokashiki Island in the Kerama Islands, which is visible from Ie Island. We wondered if we were going to be killed there, on Tokashiki Island, and our bodies disposed of somewhere.
Life on Tokashiki Island
In early May, I believe, the residents of Ie Island were divided into several groups and transferred to Tokashiki Island on LSTs (landing ship tanks). The original residents of Tokashiki Island had evacuated to the mountains, so the village was full of vacant houses. We, the residents of Ie Island, were placed in these vacant houses. The one I was put in was a fine house with a tiled roof. Six families were housed there. There were no food shortages while the US military was on Tokashiki Island because they distributed relief supplies. However, after the US military withdrew to the main island of Okinawa, because one thousand Ie Islanders had been moved to Tokashiki Island, which originally had a population of between 400 and 500, there was no system in place for producing food for all of us. We planted sweet potatoes in the fields, but they were terraced rice fields, and the crops only provided food for the residents of Ie Island for two to three days. Unable to build up a production base, it was difficult for people to continue life on Tokashiki Island. The people of Tokashiki Island used to fish to make their living but we weren’t able to do that. We Ie Islanders only knew about agriculture. We arrived in Tokashiki Island in May, and it was around June, I believe, that the original residents came down from the mountains to which they’d evacuated. We met Tokashiki Islander classmates at school. They had prominent scars, recent wounds from blades, on their heads and limbs. They said that many people had died in group suicides, but that they had survived. I also heard that some people sat in a circle and committed group suicide. Silverberry produces fruit until early June, which we gathered in the mountains. This provided about one meal for our family. We couldn’t gather enough for three meals. So we picked sprouts from trees and ate cycads. After eating all the cycads, we ate roadside vegetation, sprouts from trees, and leaves from wild plants. We ate anything that was edible. For protein, we even ate grasshoppers. When we caught even one grasshopper, we pulled off the legs and wings and ate it raw. Then there were the small lizards. There were various lizards on the island. We caught lizards living in the trees, and would eat them raw after removing the head and legs, but without removing the internal organs. That was our protein source.
From Tokashiki to Motobu
In March 1946, we were moved from Tokashiki Island to Motobu. That’s where Sesoko Bridge is located now. We were moved to a village called Ken-ken, on the Motobu side. We stayed there until July, with five to six households sharing a single tent. We had U.S. military rations, but it still was not enough food. Thankfully, U.S. military supplies were being unloaded on a nearby sandy beach. Back then, I was in the second grade of elementary school. Some older students took me to the beach. We brought back “war trophies”, meaning we took U.S. military supplies back home with us. We didn’t “steal.” We “brought back war trophies.” The most delicious of those supplies was the ice cream powder. The words on the bags and boxes were in English, and we couldn’t read English, so we didn’t know what was inside until we opened them. When we opened them and were fortunate enough to find ice cream powder, we were overjoyed. And there were also U.S. field rations. My mother and sisters were pleased when I brought home wheat flour. We picked up supplies over two days. There were guards until about ten at night, so between around one and two in the morning we would gather together and go for “war trophies,” led by the older kids. I was attending Sakimotobu Elementary School, but when the first semester ended and summer vacation began, we received an order from the U.S. military to move from Ken-ken, so during summer vacation in August, we were moved to a village called Gushiken in Motobu, which was called Sakimotobu at the time. It was a village that bordered Imadomari, Nakijin. We built a tent hut of about seven square meters and stayed from August until March of the following year, 1947.
Return to Ie Island and recovery
We returned to Ie Island in March 1947. Before the people of Ie Island returned to the island, young people went first as an advance party, building tent huts for everyone to live in, and preparing Quonset huts, setting things up so that we could all start our lives immediately upon returning. Our family ended up living in a Quonset hut. There were relief supplies left by the US military on Ie Island, and we were able to make it for six months on those rations. In around July or August, the rations started running low, and there was a serious food shortage. We gathered wild sweet potatoes and sugarcane from the fields, as they had been left untended for about two years. We also planted sweet potatoes in our field and so were able to survive, even if it was with a poor diet. As the fields had not been tended to for two years and were in a state of neglect, and the US military had trampled them with heavy machinery, it was incredibly difficult to cultivate crops there. The soil was so hard that even an adult swinging a hoe wasn’t able to till the soil. With our strength as elementary school students, we needed to swing our hoes down two or three times to break the soil. Even though we were just second-year elementary students, we had to cultivate the previously-abandoned land. One day, when I went to dig up wild sweet potatoes, I found some large ripe ones in the field. I went to harvest them, and was really surprised when I dug up a human skull. I put it all back into the dirt and ran away, without taking the sweet potatoes. There was a big rat in the US military food warehouse, and I was very happy when I managed to catch it. Because there was a lot of empty bottles there, I broke it and used a shard of glass to cut the rat. Then, I tore out some grass roots, stuck them into the rat’s wound and blew. This caused the rat’s body to swell and the skin and muscle to separate. I peeled the skin off and brought the carcass home. It was a very delicious source of protein. It was huge, even for a rat. Probably because it ate a lot of delicious food. We used this meat in a soup, using an empty can from U.S. military relief supplies in place of a pot, as we didn’t have one at that time, and also frying it up.
Ie Island school life
When I returned to Ie Island, I was old enough to advance to the fourth grade. But since I hadn’t been able to properly take classes, my mother told me to go through third grade again. So I graduated from elementary school and junior high school one year later than usual. The elementary school was able to reopen because it had its own Quonset hut, but it was blown away every time a typhoon came. We got textbooks starting in the fourth grade. Until third grade, we didn’t have proper notebooks, so we would cut up cement bags in big pieces, and tie them together with strings. Using this in place of a notebook, we’d copy down what the teacher wrote on the blackboard.
LCT explosion
During summer vacation in fourth grade, I heard a loud explosion on my way home after fishing so I wondered if the war had started back up. There was this saying, “kuwagin shado,” that instructed us to hide under a mulberry tree whenever we were surprised by a loud noise, such as thunder. It was a saying used by older people since long ago. There was a mulberry tree nearby, so I hid under it when I heard the explosion. Once the explosion had faded, I returned to the road. I looked to the south and saw a big cloud of black smoke rising up. “Had an atomic bomb been dropped,” I wondered. I parted ways with the four or five friends I was with and went home. I later learned that there had been an LCT explosion. I didn’t actually see the site of the explosion but there were many victims, including some of my relatives. People went to Nakijin to bring home the remains of those who lost their lives in the war. There were many people gathered at the pier on Ie Island when the ship returned. While they were confirming the remains that had been brought back, an LCT (landing craft tank) loaded with U.S. military bombs exploded, and they got caught in the explosion.
Elementary school construction
When I was in fifth or sixth grade, construction began for a new school building that had red tiles, rather than concrete. The foundation of the school building was made of stones about this big. The students brought stones one by one when we went to school and added them to the foundation. I brought one stone every day for about two months. Under the direction of the school, teachers watched at the school gates, and children who did not bring a stone were turned away until they brought one. Back then, we might have been children, but we were also made to help build our school. Classes were only held in the morning, and most afternoons involved some kind of work. When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I planted trees around the school in the afternoon. The playground was full of stones because it was covered with coral (limestone). During practice before athletic meets, whenever I fell, my shin would be covered in scratches. I ran barefoot, so I had blood blisters on the soles of my feet. They hurt at night, so I couldn’t sleep. After graduating from junior high school, I worked as an office assistant at Ie Elementary School for one year. After that, I was told to continue for a year more, making it two years in the end.
A message for young people
At the elementary school, before Memorial Day every June, there’s an opportunity to teach about peace, and I speak to children for about an hour every year, as someone who experienced life during war. When I see school children on the street, they thank me for telling them my story about the war. That makes me feel glad for talking about the war. There are children who genuinely listen, so I feel I have to talk about the war as long as I have the strength to do so.
Mr. Uchima worked as an employee of the Ie village public office for many years, giving his full efforts in the village’s administration. After retiring, he has continued talking to children in the area about his personal experiences of surviving the suffering seen during and after the war.