Okinawa Airakuen: Keeping Alive the Lights and Shadows
Mr. Jinyu Taira
Birth year：1939
Birth place：Kumejima Town
Wartime Kume Island and my lifestyle
I was born in Kume Island in 1939. I had my parents and seven siblings. I was the middle child and the only son. My parents were farmers. They grew mainly rice, and at the time each household raised pigs, so we also grew sweet potatoes to feed the pigs. There was an observation point for the Japanese Army on Mt. Uegusukudake, and my village was at the foot of the observation point. One day, the U.S. artillery bombardment was so loud, and since the observation point was being attacked, my older sister carried me on her back, and we evacuated to the shore. The bombing was so loud that it seemed like a bomb had gone off just above my head. I don’t have much memory of right after the war ended. I do remember that I got Hansen’s disease, and I confined myself to the back room of our house. It wasn’t certain that I had Hansen’s disease at the time, but I felt I was somehow different from others. My parents didn’t tell me that I should stay in the back room or that I should hide when people come, but I got into the habit of hiding in the back room immediately when I felt other people were coming to our house.
Treatment for Hansen’s disease during the war
There was no established treatment method or Hansen’s disease at the time. I was taken many times to a therapist who prescribed folk remedies to patients called “Yaboo.” I received moxibustion, and since the therapist said my disease was caused by bad blood circulation, his treatment method was called “Boo Boo,” or cupping therapy. First, he put a little awamori (distilled rice liquor) in a bamboo tube and set fire to it, leaving the inside empty, and then placed it on my shoulder or other places with blemishes to accumulate blood. These areas would turn into lumps, which he would cut with a razor, and finally collect the accumulated blood using the bamboo tube that he set on fire again. That was the kind of folk remedy that existed for Hansen’s disease at the time. My mother gradually learned the treatment method and would do both “Boo Boo” and moxibustion for me. The scars from being cut with a razor were simply re-opened with a razor again. I still remember the pain.
Leaving my family for Okinawa Airakuen
I left Kume Island on December 23, 1948. My father woke me while everyone else was still asleep, and put a piece of cloth and a bamboo hat on my head. My father also put some cloth and a bamboo hat on his head. Then, he got us on his favorite horse, and pulled the reins, and we left while it was still dark. We were traveling along a main street, but once dawn broke, we changed routes and travelled along mountain paths and farm roads. We didn’t wear cloth and bamboo hats because it was cold, but rather to avoid getting people’s attention. We arrived in Hanasaki Port near where Kumejima High School is now. The port was not a well-developed port like it is now. There were 27 patients with Hansen’s disease gathered at the top of the mountain. That was how many patients were in Kume Island after the war. When we went down the cliff, there was a sabani (traditional wooden canoe) that we were put onto. Then we were loaded on to a U.S. LST (landing ship tank) that was anchored offshore. The trip took an entire night, and on December 24, we arrived at Okinawa Airakuen. Many people welcomed us at Airakuen. When I went down the floating pier, I saw Airakuen’s many children.
This scene made me very happy because in Kume Island, I had been living in the back room of my house, avoiding people’s attention, and now I would be able to live with children just like me.
Dormitory and school life at Airakuen
There was a dormitory for boys and girls in Airakuen. It was a Quonset hut (U.S. military housing) and at least thirty children lived there. The dormitory had a semicircular roof and it was divided into two rooms. One for boys and the other for girls. Boys and girls were living together in the building. The dorm had dorm parents, who acted as parents for us and were selected from among Aiurakuen’s residents. Both sides of the dormitory had U.S. military field beds, and there were cloths underneath the beds. We cut the cloth and put plywood on the beds and our baggage on the plywood. When we slept, we put comforters and blankets on the beds. A section of the dormitory had an area that was not sectioned off, so we placed a long dining table and both the boys and girls ate meals there. At the time, the rice was imported, so it was hard and non-sticky. We got rations from the U.S. military, so there was a lot of what flour. We often had soup with dumplings made from the wheat flour. Also, we had vegetable soup. All the vegetables were grown and provided by patients with mild Hansen’s disease. We all ate soup made with the vegetables. U.S. soldiers also brought us various old clothes and many toys and sweets for children. The clothes were quite big on us, but we wore them anyway, or remade the clothing to fit.
I don’t remember going to school in Kume Island. When I entered Airakuen, I was nine and in the third grade of elementary school. Airakuen had a school called Airaku Gakuen, so I studied there from the third grade of elementary school. The school went up to junior high school. There were many children of various ages and grades who couldn’t go to school because they had Hansen’s disease, so all those students were put in the same class regardless of grade or age. We studied using old textbooks used at schools outside Airakuen. We sometimes used mimeographed textbooks made by the autonomous association of Airakuen. Both adults and children played volleyball and baseball in the facility. When we played baseball, I was a catcher. Although other schools probably played games against other schools, our school didn’t play other schools, so we put together teams made up of students and played each other. When we reached the upper grades, we played against the adults at Airakuen.
At Airakuen, I didn’t feel that lonely as there were many children there. Along the shore near Airakuen were many rocks and we called that area a “forest.” In the evening, I saw the lights of buses coming and going from Nago to Kunigami. I would sit alone under a screw pine tree and watch the lights of buses and cars coming and going along the shore. There, I would think about my parents and sisters, and wondered when I would be able to leave Airakuen and go back to my family.
Employment and marriage; life after Airakuen
I left Airakuen for the first time in 1956. I went back to Kume Island and helped my father with farm work. Though I recovered from Hansen’s disease, I experienced an after effect. My nerves would swell in different parts of my body. When I was working in a field and hoeing the earth, I would feel a sharp pain in the nerves of my feet whenever dirt would hit my feet. People couldn’t tell that I was experiencing this. My parents had no idea either. It was a pain that only I understood. I thought I wouldn’t last if I continued this kind of work, so I told my father that I would like to get a driver’s license. But when I asked him about it, he said it was dangerous and wouldn’t allow me to. When I was at Airakuen, there was a person there who treated me like his own son. He’s since passed away. That person came to Kume Island and helped me persuade my father, and my father let me get my license. There was a Leprosy association in Naha, which is called the Okinawa Yuuna Association now, and I stayed there for a while to attend driver’s school and got my driver’s license. My uncle ran a liquor store in Naha, so I worked there as a driver. After that, I worked as a taxi driver and a driver of a two-ton truck for vegetable wholesale store. I would make two to three roundtrips from the port to the store, or deliver goods, which were shipped from Mainland Japan, from Naha to the south and central parts of Okinawa, accompanied by sales persons. When I was working at my uncle’s liquor store, I had a delivery to Kunigami, so I had to spend the night in Kunigami without going back to Naha. I fell in love with a woman there and we got married. It was hard for me to tell her about my past, and I worried over it. When I gathered the courage to tell her, she took it fairly easily. She had known about Airakuen and said she had once wanted to work there, so I was relieved to hear that.
Okinawa Airakuen’s hardships and its reconstruction
In 1944, Okinawa was going to turn into a battleground, so the 32nd Army was formed in Okinawa. About 100,000 soldiers came to Okinawa from mainland Japan. The Japanese Army used public halls and schools as their military housing and requisitioned even private houses in Okinawa. It was said that Okinawa had a high number of Hansen’s disease cases even before the war, and there were some patients living in the back rooms of houses. The Japanese Army knew about this. Currently the disease is called Hansen’s disease, but it was called Leprosy at that time. They thought if soldiers were infected with Leprosy, it would weaken their military strength, so they were wary of Hansen’s disease patients. There was an order to evacuate the elderly, women, children, and the sick out of Okinawa because they were considered hindrances in the defense of mainland Japan. However, in the case of Hansen’s Disease patients, when patients were found, they were immediately separated from their families and confined at Airakuen by the Japanese Army. People brought to Airakuen were forced to dig an air-raid shelter called the Hayata Shelter. Patients of Hansen’s disease, like me, experience numbness in our limbs so we can’t feel anything when we touch something. When we are injured, since we can’t feel anything, we don’t notice the injury until we see the blood. This is the type of physical state we were in when we were forced to dig air-raid shelters or do farm work. Most of the buildings at Airakuen were burnt to the ground in the October 10th air raids by the U.S. military. On the U.S. military’s strategic map for northern Okinawa, Airakuen was labeled as housing for the Japanese Army, which explains why the U.S. military bombed Airakuen. “Barracks” referred to army housing, and these were marked with a symbol. This explains why the U.S. forces bombed Airakuen, thinking it was Japanese military housing. At the time, the capacity of Airakuen was about 450 people, but the Japanese Army packed 800 to 900 patients in the facility. We were forced into an area of roughly 331,000 square meters. In April 1945, the U.S. military landed on Yagaji Island and learned that Airakuen was a sanatorium for Hansen’s disease, so they stopped attacking the sanatorium. However, even after the war ended, the buildings were all burnt, so the patients were unable to leave the shelter. Patients with mild Hansen’s disease were able to go outside at night to look for food, but seriously ill patients were unable to look for food. As you know, the rainy season starts in May in Okinawa. Once the rainy season began, Hayate Shelter was full of water. Severely ill patients died there, sitting and leaning against the mud wall. Many people died of starvation, malnutrition, and malaria all alone without being taken care of by their family or sanatorium staff. It’s said 288 people died in the shelter over a period of year. The sanatorium staff had fled leaving patients behind once the war began.
Airakuen suffered much damage from the war, but it was not restored by the government of Japan. From 1949 to 1952, there was an American doctor named Scorebrand. He was the director of the Public Health and Welfare Department of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands. He was the first person to work towards the restoration of Airakuen. He was an experienced doctor who worked at a Hansen’s disease sanatorium in Hawaii for a year. He believed that Promin, a drug for treating Hansen’s Disease, was necessary in treating the disease. However, in considering the physical strength and nutritional state of the patients at Airakuen, the patients were not in a condition for receiving the Promin treatment. Therefore, he was able to gain the approval of Josef R. Sheetz, Military Governor, for special distribution of rations of food. Once the Airakuen patients were able to build their strength in this way, the patients began being treated with Promin.
I saw the patients at Airakuen work together to handle everything from the design to the completion of the residential building using the timber that Dr. Scorebrand supplied. Without his efforts, Okinawa Airakuen would not have been restored. This sanatorium was built by all of its patients. And it was rebuilt by the patients, with the help of aid providers. This is how the current form of Airakuen came to be. I would like to say the site of Airakuen is a land where all those who had their rights taken away by the Leprosy Prevention Law shed their blood and sweat. There is an incredible amount of anger that surges up from within me towards the Leprosy Prevention Law. Just because we had Leprosy, we were isolated in the Hansen’s disease sanatorium, and went through so much suffering and lived through that terrible situation. I want people to understand this.
A message for young people
I became a guide and storyteller at Airakuen because I realized the importance of compassion and empathy through my encounter with children of the Human Inner Values Rights Network Okinawa. I can’t talk about or listen to stories about the history of the violation of human rights experienced by patients of Hansen’s disease resulting from the Leprosy Prevention Law without tears. I would like each young person to stop and think about the problem of Hansen’s disease and the violation of human rights. I think peace is something that everyone wants. But just preaching peace will not bring about peace. I would like to tell young people that your strong desire for peace is what will bring peace to us.
Mr. Jinyu Taira was born on Kume Island as a Hansen’s disease patient, and was forcefully put in the Okinawa Airakuen sanatorium at the age of 9. After being discharged from Airakuen in 1999, he was a member of the Okinawa Kaede no Tomo no Kai and then served as the chairman of the National Discharged Patients Liaison Council. Ever since meeting a group of children, Mr. Taira has worked to communicate to people the hardships experienced by leprosy patients and their families and how they were belittled by the Leprosy Prevention Law. He is also active as a volunteer guide for Airakuen and also carries out public awareness programs concerning human rights and peace.
Wartime Kume Island and my lifestyle
I was born in Kume Island in 1939. I had my parents and seven siblings. I was the middle child and the only son. My parents were farmers. They grew mainly rice, and at the time each household raised pigs, so we also grew sweet potatoes to feed the pigs. There was an observation point for the Japanese Army on Mt. Uegusukudake, and my village was at the foot of the observation point. One day, the U.S. artillery bombardment was so loud, and since the observation point was being attacked, my older sister carried me on her back, and we evacuated to the shore. The bombing was so loud that it seemed like a bomb had gone off just above my head. I don’t have much memory of right after the war ended. I do remember that I got Hansen’s disease, and I confined myself to the back room of our house. It wasn’t certain that I had Hansen’s disease at the time, but I felt I was somehow different from others. My parents didn’t tell me that I should stay in the back room or that I should hide when people come, but I got into the habit of hiding in the back room immediately when I felt other people were coming to our house.
Treatment for Hansen’s disease during the war
There was no established treatment method or Hansen’s disease at the time. I was taken many times to a therapist who prescribed folk remedies to patients called “Yaboo.” I received moxibustion, and since the therapist said my disease was caused by bad blood circulation, his treatment method was called “Boo Boo,” or cupping therapy. First, he put a little awamori (distilled rice liquor) in a bamboo tube and set fire to it, leaving the inside empty, and then placed it on my shoulder or other places with blemishes to accumulate blood. These areas would turn into lumps, which he would cut with a razor, and finally collect the accumulated blood using the bamboo tube that he set on fire again. That was the kind of folk remedy that existed for Hansen’s disease at the time. My mother gradually learned the treatment method and would do both “Boo Boo” and moxibustion for me. The scars from being cut with a razor were simply re-opened with a razor again. I still remember the pain.
Leaving my family for Okinawa Airakuen
I left Kume Island on December 23, 1948. My father woke me while everyone else was still asleep, and put a piece of cloth and a bamboo hat on my head. My father also put some cloth and a bamboo hat on his head. Then, he got us on his favorite horse, and pulled the reins, and we left while it was still dark. We were traveling along a main street, but once dawn broke, we changed routes and travelled along mountain paths and farm roads. We didn’t wear cloth and bamboo hats because it was cold, but rather to avoid getting people’s attention. We arrived in Hanasaki Port near where Kumejima High School is now. The port was not a well-developed port like it is now. There were 27 patients with Hansen’s disease gathered at the top of the mountain. That was how many patients were in Kume Island after the war. When we went down the cliff, there was a sabani (traditional wooden canoe) that we were put onto. Then we were loaded on to a U.S. LST (landing ship tank) that was anchored offshore. The trip took an entire night, and on December 24, we arrived at Okinawa Airakuen. Many people welcomed us at Airakuen. When I went down the floating pier, I saw Airakuen’s many children.
This scene made me very happy because in Kume Island, I had been living in the back room of my house, avoiding people’s attention, and now I would be able to live with children just like me.
Dormitory and school life at Airakuen
There was a dormitory for boys and girls in Airakuen. It was a Quonset hut (U.S. military housing) and at least thirty children lived there. The dormitory had a semicircular roof and it was divided into two rooms. One for boys and the other for girls. Boys and girls were living together in the building. The dorm had dorm parents, who acted as parents for us and were selected from among Aiurakuen’s residents. Both sides of the dormitory had U.S. military field beds, and there were cloths underneath the beds. We cut the cloth and put plywood on the beds and our baggage on the plywood. When we slept, we put comforters and blankets on the beds. A section of the dormitory had an area that was not sectioned off, so we placed a long dining table and both the boys and girls ate meals there. At the time, the rice was imported, so it was hard and non-sticky. We got rations from the U.S. military, so there was a lot of what flour. We often had soup with dumplings made from the wheat flour. Also, we had vegetable soup. All the vegetables were grown and provided by patients with mild Hansen’s disease. We all ate soup made with the vegetables. U.S. soldiers also brought us various old clothes and many toys and sweets for children. The clothes were quite big on us, but we wore them anyway, or remade the clothing to fit.
I don’t remember going to school in Kume Island. When I entered Airakuen, I was nine and in the third grade of elementary school. Airakuen had a school called Airaku Gakuen, so I studied there from the third grade of elementary school. The school went up to junior high school. There were many children of various ages and grades who couldn’t go to school because they had Hansen’s disease, so all those students were put in the same class regardless of grade or age. We studied using old textbooks used at schools outside Airakuen. We sometimes used mimeographed textbooks made by the autonomous association of Airakuen. Both adults and children played volleyball and baseball in the facility. When we played baseball, I was a catcher. Although other schools probably played games against other schools, our school didn’t play other schools, so we put together teams made up of students and played each other. When we reached the upper grades, we played against the adults at Airakuen.
At Airakuen, I didn’t feel that lonely as there were many children there. Along the shore near Airakuen were many rocks and we called that area a “forest.” In the evening, I saw the lights of buses coming and going from Nago to Kunigami. I would sit alone under a screw pine tree and watch the lights of buses and cars coming and going along the shore. There, I would think about my parents and sisters, and wondered when I would be able to leave Airakuen and go back to my family.
Employment and marriage; life after Airakuen
I left Airakuen for the first time in 1956. I went back to Kume Island and helped my father with farm work. Though I recovered from Hansen’s disease, I experienced an after effect. My nerves would swell in different parts of my body. When I was working in a field and hoeing the earth, I would feel a sharp pain in the nerves of my feet whenever dirt would hit my feet. People couldn’t tell that I was experiencing this. My parents had no idea either. It was a pain that only I understood. I thought I wouldn’t last if I continued this kind of work, so I told my father that I would like to get a driver’s license. But when I asked him about it, he said it was dangerous and wouldn’t allow me to. When I was at Airakuen, there was a person there who treated me like his own son. He’s since passed away. That person came to Kume Island and helped me persuade my father, and my father let me get my license. There was a Leprosy association in Naha, which is called the Okinawa Yuuna Association now, and I stayed there for a while to attend driver’s school and got my driver’s license. My uncle ran a liquor store in Naha, so I worked there as a driver. After that, I worked as a taxi driver and a driver of a two-ton truck for vegetable wholesale store. I would make two to three roundtrips from the port to the store, or deliver goods, which were shipped from Mainland Japan, from Naha to the south and central parts of Okinawa, accompanied by sales persons. When I was working at my uncle’s liquor store, I had a delivery to Kunigami, so I had to spend the night in Kunigami without going back to Naha. I fell in love with a woman there and we got married. It was hard for me to tell her about my past, and I worried over it. When I gathered the courage to tell her, she took it fairly easily. She had known about Airakuen and said she had once wanted to work there, so I was relieved to hear that.
Okinawa Airakuen’s hardships and its reconstruction
In 1944, Okinawa was going to turn into a battleground, so the 32nd Army was formed in Okinawa. About 100,000 soldiers came to Okinawa from mainland Japan. The Japanese Army used public halls and schools as their military housing and requisitioned even private houses in Okinawa. It was said that Okinawa had a high number of Hansen’s disease cases even before the war, and there were some patients living in the back rooms of houses. The Japanese Army knew about this. Currently the disease is called Hansen’s disease, but it was called Leprosy at that time. They thought if soldiers were infected with Leprosy, it would weaken their military strength, so they were wary of Hansen’s disease patients. There was an order to evacuate the elderly, women, children, and the sick out of Okinawa because they were considered hindrances in the defense of mainland Japan. However, in the case of Hansen’s Disease patients, when patients were found, they were immediately separated from their families and confined at Airakuen by the Japanese Army. People brought to Airakuen were forced to dig an air-raid shelter called the Hayata Shelter. Patients of Hansen’s disease, like me, experience numbness in our limbs so we can’t feel anything when we touch something. When we are injured, since we can’t feel anything, we don’t notice the injury until we see the blood. This is the type of physical state we were in when we were forced to dig air-raid shelters or do farm work. Most of the buildings at Airakuen were burnt to the ground in the October 10th air raids by the U.S. military. On the U.S. military’s strategic map for northern Okinawa, Airakuen was labeled as housing for the Japanese Army, which explains why the U.S. military bombed Airakuen. “Barracks” referred to army housing, and these were marked with a symbol. This explains why the U.S. forces bombed Airakuen, thinking it was Japanese military housing. At the time, the capacity of Airakuen was about 450 people, but the Japanese Army packed 800 to 900 patients in the facility. We were forced into an area of roughly 331,000 square meters. In April 1945, the U.S. military landed on Yagaji Island and learned that Airakuen was a sanatorium for Hansen’s disease, so they stopped attacking the sanatorium. However, even after the war ended, the buildings were all burnt, so the patients were unable to leave the shelter. Patients with mild Hansen’s disease were able to go outside at night to look for food, but seriously ill patients were unable to look for food. As you know, the rainy season starts in May in Okinawa. Once the rainy season began, Hayate Shelter was full of water. Severely ill patients died there, sitting and leaning against the mud wall. Many people died of starvation, malnutrition, and malaria all alone without being taken care of by their family or sanatorium staff. It’s said 288 people died in the shelter over a period of year. The sanatorium staff had fled leaving patients behind once the war began.
Airakuen suffered much damage from the war, but it was not restored by the government of Japan. From 1949 to 1952, there was an American doctor named Scorebrand. He was the director of the Public Health and Welfare Department of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands. He was the first person to work towards the restoration of Airakuen. He was an experienced doctor who worked at a Hansen’s disease sanatorium in Hawaii for a year. He believed that Promin, a drug for treating Hansen’s Disease, was necessary in treating the disease. However, in considering the physical strength and nutritional state of the patients at Airakuen, the patients were not in a condition for receiving the Promin treatment. Therefore, he was able to gain the approval of Josef R. Sheetz, Military Governor, for special distribution of rations of food. Once the Airakuen patients were able to build their strength in this way, the patients began being treated with Promin.
I saw the patients at Airakuen work together to handle everything from the design to the completion of the residential building using the timber that Dr. Scorebrand supplied. Without his efforts, Okinawa Airakuen would not have been restored. This sanatorium was built by all of its patients. And it was rebuilt by the patients, with the help of aid providers. This is how the current form of Airakuen came to be. I would like to say the site of Airakuen is a land where all those who had their rights taken away by the Leprosy Prevention Law shed their blood and sweat. There is an incredible amount of anger that surges up from within me towards the Leprosy Prevention Law. Just because we had Leprosy, we were isolated in the Hansen’s disease sanatorium, and went through so much suffering and lived through that terrible situation. I want people to understand this.
A message for young people
I became a guide and storyteller at Airakuen because I realized the importance of compassion and empathy through my encounter with children of the Human Inner Values Rights Network Okinawa. I can’t talk about or listen to stories about the history of the violation of human rights experienced by patients of Hansen’s disease resulting from the Leprosy Prevention Law without tears. I would like each young person to stop and think about the problem of Hansen’s disease and the violation of human rights. I think peace is something that everyone wants. But just preaching peace will not bring about peace. I would like to tell young people that your strong desire for peace is what will bring peace to us.
Mr. Jinyu Taira was born on Kume Island as a Hansen’s disease patient, and was forcefully put in the Okinawa Airakuen sanatorium at the age of 9. After being discharged from Airakuen in 1999, he was a member of the Okinawa Kaede no Tomo no Kai and then served as the chairman of the National Discharged Patients Liaison Council. Ever since meeting a group of children, Mr. Taira has worked to communicate to people the hardships experienced by leprosy patients and their families and how they were belittled by the Leprosy Prevention Law. He is also active as a volunteer guide for Airakuen and also carries out public awareness programs concerning human rights and peace.