My Post-war Experience as a Tsushima-maru Survivor
Ms. Keiko Taira
Birth year：1934
Birth place：Kunigami Village
Life in Kunigami Village
I was born in 1934 in a village called Aha in Kunigami. Before the war, everyone in the village farmed, so children also helped when crops were harvested or planted. Because I took care of livestock like cows, pigs, and chickens, or watched my younger siblings, I feel that I helped out around the house more than I studied. I was the fourth oldest of seven brothers and sisters.
Boarding the Tsushima Maru
It was my grandmother, my sister who attended the Third Prefectural Girls High School, my brother in sixth grade and me in fourth grade, and my older brother’s fiancée. Tokiko, my cousin in the same grade as me, lived next door and overcame her parent’s opposition to evacuate with us. Our motive for evacuating to the mainland was that we wanted to see our father and brother in Tokyo. Also, we thought we could see snow and ride the train if we went to the mainland. We didn’t think at all about the trip being dangerous in the middle of a war. Our longing to go to the mainland trumped that. Although our mother was hesitant about the evacuation. My brother in sixth grade, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about it. Our grandmother was also reluctant, but the village wanted children and the elderly to go. So, although she didn’t want to leave her home in Aha, she evacuated, encouraged by people in the village that she could see her son in Tokyo. In the end, she never returned.
The Tsushima Maru sinks
On the evening of August 22, 1944, we were ordered to go up to the deck of the Tsushima Maru, the ship we had boarded. Our family went up, and the six of us sat together. After that, Tokiko and I fell asleep in my grandmother’s arms. When I woke up, I was in the ocean. I couldn’t hear the voice of my sister, who should have been beside me, and my grandmother was gone, too. I called out to them, “Sister! Grandmother!” But there was no answer. The waves were steadily becoming more violent, and the fires kept burning on Tsushima Maru, which had been attacked by a U.S. submarine. Children were screaming, and I saw soldiers toss them into the sea one after another as Tsushima Maru was going under. I was floating and had no idea what was going on. At that point, I was separated from everyone else. Later, my sister and my brother’s fiancée were rescued by a boat. The tides had separated us with Tokiko and I being swept south, and the others north to Kagoshima. I reunited with Tokiko in the sea, who was crying. I urged her on, saying that she wouldn’t be able to see if she cried. We grabbed onto barrels of soy sauce to stay afloat. Suddenly, a big wave hit us, and Tokiko lost her hold on the soy sauce barrel, and she went missing. I looked for her for some time, but I couldn’t find her. I was afraid. Tokiko was gone, people were sinking under the waves, and bodies were floating by. Someone started making a racket about 50 meters away. I knew people were alive, so I dove under the floating corpses and was able to get on a raft 50 meters in front of me. The raft was only about the size of two tatami mats (3.3 square meters) and made of bamboo, and dozens of people were scrambling to get on. An adult grabbed both my legs and dragged me into the sea. That person dragged me off the raft, and was trying to get on the raft himself. I had my limbs pulled at even in the water. I nearly drowned, but I wanted to cling to that raft no matter what, and finally I managed to climb aboard. When day broke, there were only ten people left on the raft. Not a single one of the men who had been dragging people off remained. One boy, about two years old, was held by his mother and the other nine people were women.
Drifting to an uninhabited island
We were lost at sea. Our skin was burning and peeling in the midsummer sun of August and everyone’s faces gradually became quite bad. Honestly, it’s a mystery to me how we lived for six days drifting through the ocean like that. We washed ashore on Edateku, an uninhabited island in Uken Village, Amami Oshima. When the raft reached the island, we jumped off in a mad rush. We were overcome with joy. Morning came, and we staggered inland in search of water. After that, we waited for a long time for a boat to appear at sea, until finally, one appeared in front of us. We all called out to the boat in unison to try to get the boat to stop. I climbed onto a small boulder. After a while, the boat changed direction and headed toward us. I can’t put into words how happy we were. We all cried with joy. The captain found me and praised me saying, “Good job, young lady. You did great.” I didn’t say anything and was looking down. Then he told us to eat, presenting us with soft, white rice in a canteen and also some brown sugar. We thrust our hands into the canteen sand ate with desperation. Of the ten people who boarded the raft, only four had survived. Then we were transported to a clinic in the village across from Edateku. We were well taken care of, receiving treatment and food. Then we finally felt like we were alive.
Life in Amami Oshima
One day, I met my father’s friend, Mr. Tsukayama, who took me to a place called Koniya in Amami Oshima. I spent half a year there where he had looked after me. I spent my time babysitting a boy who had been born just nine months before and going out to meet Mr. Tsukayama as he left or came back from his boat. There were also airstrikes on Amami Oshima. We sometimes took refuge in an air-raid shelter at night. Mr. Tsukayama sent a telegram to my mother. “Keiko is alive here.” My mother was overjoyed when she saw it and she anxiously awaited my return. When I got a letter from my mother, I would hide, read it, and cry. Because the Tsukayama family was taking care of me, I thought, even as a child, that I shouldn’t show them my sadness, and I enjoyed looking after the baby. Forty people from Aha boarded Tsushima Maru, but 37 of them died, and only me, my sister, and my brother’s fiancée had survived. That’s why houses were empty in Aha Village even after the war. Whole families had boarded the ship and whole families had perished.
Returning home after half a year
On February 22, 1945, I got on Mr. Tsukayama’s boat from Amami Oshima. We stopped for a night in Tokunoshima, and were met with an airstrike. I saw boats being attacked from the air. Mr. Tsukayama said that it was dangerous, and he didn’t want to lose the boat to an airstrike, so we hid in the harbor of Yoron Island. We cut down some trees in the nearby mountain and used the branches to hide the boat. After the airstrike alarm ceased, we crossed the sea at night, and finally made it to Ada Village in Kunigami.
My mother came to Ada looking for me. She frantically searched for me, but I had changed so much. I was nearly unrecognizable, even when she was looking right at me. I was thin when I was in Aha, but I grew bigger after living with Mr. Tsukayama in Amami Oshima. My skin had also gotten paler, so my mother was unable to recognize me. So, I was the one to embrace her.
I then returned to my house in Aha, and the first person I met was Tokiko’s mother. “Did you come back safely but leave my Tokiko in the ocean?” she said to me plainly. I hid and cried in the house. I thought how a parent would feel, and thought I deserved to be told that. There was a soldier named Mr. Yoshida in our house at the time. He had come to Aha for defense purposes. At the time, each solider was assigned a household to be given meals. He was a member of the Signal Corps, and he was assigned duties along the mountains. The school playground had been turned into a sweet potato patch. Occasionally there were airstrikes. There was machine-gun fire in the village on the day I arrived in Ada. Everyone marveled at how I had managed to return safely in the middle of a war.
Painful experiences while taking refuge
In March I moved to a shelter on top of a mountain. The Battle of Okinawa started soon after that. I stayed in the shelter from March to April, and was then told that Japan had lost and everyone would be taken prisoner. Everyone was forced to descend from the mountain and gathered in Aha Village. The people of Aha Village were loaded on American boats and taken near Noha in Ogimi. My mother told me,“I’m not putting you on a boat again. You came back to us from a sunken ship, so I absolutely will not put you on a ship because the U.S. military might throw you in the Pacific Ocean.” So, we ran away to the mountains, in the opposite direction of the ocean. We went deep into the mountains, coming out on the west coast and escaped to Ueshima in Hentona.
We took refuge in Hentona for about six months. There was no food, and my mother got malaria and was unable to look after the children. Me, my mother, my four-year-old brother, and my seven-year-old sister were all that was left of our family. So I walked a 36 km mountain trail from Ueshima, Hentona and went to Aha, Kunigami to dig up sweet potatoes from our own patch. I put them in a basket, and carried them the 36 km back. I boiled the sweet potatoes and fed them to my mother and siblings, going back to dig more when they ran out.
Eventually, the sweet potatoes from our patch in Aha ran out, and we had no food and were left starving and staggering. My little brother became especially thin, with a swollen belly and on the verge of death. I felt responsible and took my brother to a doctor, who said,“This child is not sick but malnourished.” Someone told us it would be better to feed him frogs and insects. There were frogs hopping around our backyard, so I caught some, cut their stomachs open, washed and skewered them, cooked them, sprinkling them with salt, and tried feeding them to my brother. But he didn’t want to eat them because they were filthy and frightening. I scared him into eating them telling him he would die if he didn’t. Then my mother, sister, and I caught frogs to eat and started feeling better. My brother, who realized frogs tasted good, told me that frogs came out when it got dark. We also ate dragonflies and cicadas.
Life directly after the war
While we were doing this to stay alive, the war ended, and my family took the mountain path back to Aha in Kunigami. Our home had been burnt to the ground. Everyone else’s homes had been burned, and not a single house remained. We joined forces with the older men to build small huts, and post-war life began. We stayed there after the war.
Immediately after the war, the school wasn’t a place to study. A crowd of displaced people from central and southern Okinawa were taking shelter there. All of the glass in the school windows had been shattered by the American soldiers, and many evacuees were being housed inside. With nothing to eat, people died of starvation. I saw someone die almost every day. The body was carried in a gunny bag, and I heard the bodies were thrown away in the bay or near the graves in Aha Village. Many refugees died from starvation.
There was no food for us in Aha Village. All the fields had been laid waste, so people survived by doing all sorts of things, like drawing salt from the sea for miso soup. People once again ploughed the fields after the sweet potatoes had been dug out, looking for any small sweet potatoes that might be left. After a while, there was free distribution of food from the U.S. military, and various things like milk, pork, and canned beef were handed out. Everyone perked up when they got something good. Blankets were handed out, too, and somehow we survived.
Going to high school and life in the dorms
My father, brother, and sisters came back to Okinawa from Tokyo, which cheered us up. Somehow we were also able to grow sweet potatoes in our field to feed ourselves, and I thought I could go to high school soon. However, my household couldn’t even earn enough money for me to go, so it was hard to talk to my father about going. He was against the idea when I asked him, and told me there wasn’t money to put me in a dorm, so I had no choice but to give up. My classmate’s father was the principal then, so he convinced my father for me, and my father finally allowed me to continue on to high school. There was a big celebration because all four of us who took the entrance exam passed and got into high school.
I entered Hentona High School, referred to as “the High School” at the time. It had a shabby, thatched-roof dormitory, and the food wasn’t very good, but I put up with the lack of good food and spent three years in the dorm in Noha, Ogimi. The school building there was a Quonset hut (semi-cylindrical shaped military barrack). I was part of the eighth graduating class. Our textbooks were things like handouts and thin notebooks. When I was in the dormitory, I barely studied and was always looking after the younger students. All the children from rural areas cried when they came to the dorm, saying things like “I want to go back to Yanbaru,” “I want to go home,” or “This food is awful.” There were few buses in those days and it was not easy for students to go home. So, if the younger students caught a cold, I didn’t go to school and took care of them, making them porridge. I looked after them like a nurse. So I wasn’t able to study much, but I enjoyed my high school days. My father was working at a big construction company in Naha when I was in high school. After I graduated, he told me there was a job opening at the company, so I worked at the same company as my father.
Becoming a teacher at my Alma mater
Around that time, the principal of my alma mater told me the school was short of teachers and asked if I would come, so I gladly went. My family had moved to Naha, so I stayed in my grandmother’s house and became an assistant teacher at Aha Elementary School. After that, I renewed my annual contract as an assistant teacher a few times. Then the principal told me that I was suited for teaching and to continue as a teacher. So, I took a correspondence course at the University of the Ryukyus to earn credits. I took classes taught by university professors who came to Okinawa from mainland Japan. I earned credits in this way, got a class-one teaching license, and continued as a teacher. I didn’t want children to have to go through what I experienced. My students have grown up, and some have become teachers or principles. Everyone is doing their best, and that makes me happy.
A message for young people
I would like young people to take a bit more interest in the world, study history properly to learn about what will happen to society in the future, and find what they themselves can do for peace. That’s what I want them to do.
Ms. Keiko Taira worked as an elementary school teacher for many years and was instrumental in peace education. After retirement, she shared the truth about the Tsushimamaru incident and about the Battle of Okinawa as a storyteller.
Life in Kunigami Village
I was born in 1934 in a village called Aha in Kunigami. Before the war, everyone in the village farmed, so children also helped when crops were harvested or planted. Because I took care of livestock like cows, pigs, and chickens, or watched my younger siblings, I feel that I helped out around the house more than I studied. I was the fourth oldest of seven brothers and sisters.
Boarding the Tsushima Maru
It was my grandmother, my sister who attended the Third Prefectural Girls High School, my brother in sixth grade and me in fourth grade, and my older brother’s fiancée. Tokiko, my cousin in the same grade as me, lived next door and overcame her parent’s opposition to evacuate with us. Our motive for evacuating to the mainland was that we wanted to see our father and brother in Tokyo. Also, we thought we could see snow and ride the train if we went to the mainland. We didn’t think at all about the trip being dangerous in the middle of a war. Our longing to go to the mainland trumped that. Although our mother was hesitant about the evacuation. My brother in sixth grade, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about it. Our grandmother was also reluctant, but the village wanted children and the elderly to go. So, although she didn’t want to leave her home in Aha, she evacuated, encouraged by people in the village that she could see her son in Tokyo. In the end, she never returned.
The Tsushima Maru sinks
On the evening of August 22, 1944, we were ordered to go up to the deck of the Tsushima Maru, the ship we had boarded. Our family went up, and the six of us sat together. After that, Tokiko and I fell asleep in my grandmother’s arms. When I woke up, I was in the ocean. I couldn’t hear the voice of my sister, who should have been beside me, and my grandmother was gone, too. I called out to them, “Sister! Grandmother!” But there was no answer. The waves were steadily becoming more violent, and the fires kept burning on Tsushima Maru, which had been attacked by a U.S. submarine. Children were screaming, and I saw soldiers toss them into the sea one after another as Tsushima Maru was going under. I was floating and had no idea what was going on. At that point, I was separated from everyone else. Later, my sister and my brother’s fiancée were rescued by a boat. The tides had separated us with Tokiko and I being swept south, and the others north to Kagoshima. I reunited with Tokiko in the sea, who was crying. I urged her on, saying that she wouldn’t be able to see if she cried. We grabbed onto barrels of soy sauce to stay afloat. Suddenly, a big wave hit us, and Tokiko lost her hold on the soy sauce barrel, and she went missing. I looked for her for some time, but I couldn’t find her. I was afraid. Tokiko was gone, people were sinking under the waves, and bodies were floating by. Someone started making a racket about 50 meters away. I knew people were alive, so I dove under the floating corpses and was able to get on a raft 50 meters in front of me. The raft was only about the size of two tatami mats (3.3 square meters) and made of bamboo, and dozens of people were scrambling to get on. An adult grabbed both my legs and dragged me into the sea. That person dragged me off the raft, and was trying to get on the raft himself. I had my limbs pulled at even in the water. I nearly drowned, but I wanted to cling to that raft no matter what, and finally I managed to climb aboard. When day broke, there were only ten people left on the raft. Not a single one of the men who had been dragging people off remained. One boy, about two years old, was held by his mother and the other nine people were women.
Drifting to an uninhabited island
We were lost at sea. Our skin was burning and peeling in the midsummer sun of August and everyone’s faces gradually became quite bad. Honestly, it’s a mystery to me how we lived for six days drifting through the ocean like that. We washed ashore on Edateku, an uninhabited island in Uken Village, Amami Oshima. When the raft reached the island, we jumped off in a mad rush. We were overcome with joy. Morning came, and we staggered inland in search of water. After that, we waited for a long time for a boat to appear at sea, until finally, one appeared in front of us. We all called out to the boat in unison to try to get the boat to stop. I climbed onto a small boulder. After a while, the boat changed direction and headed toward us. I can’t put into words how happy we were. We all cried with joy. The captain found me and praised me saying, “Good job, young lady. You did great.” I didn’t say anything and was looking down. Then he told us to eat, presenting us with soft, white rice in a canteen and also some brown sugar. We thrust our hands into the canteen sand ate with desperation. Of the ten people who boarded the raft, only four had survived. Then we were transported to a clinic in the village across from Edateku. We were well taken care of, receiving treatment and food. Then we finally felt like we were alive.
Life in Amami Oshima
One day, I met my father’s friend, Mr. Tsukayama, who took me to a place called Koniya in Amami Oshima. I spent half a year there where he had looked after me. I spent my time babysitting a boy who had been born just nine months before and going out to meet Mr. Tsukayama as he left or came back from his boat. There were also airstrikes on Amami Oshima. We sometimes took refuge in an air-raid shelter at night. Mr. Tsukayama sent a telegram to my mother. “Keiko is alive here.” My mother was overjoyed when she saw it and she anxiously awaited my return. When I got a letter from my mother, I would hide, read it, and cry. Because the Tsukayama family was taking care of me, I thought, even as a child, that I shouldn’t show them my sadness, and I enjoyed looking after the baby. Forty people from Aha boarded Tsushima Maru, but 37 of them died, and only me, my sister, and my brother’s fiancée had survived. That’s why houses were empty in Aha Village even after the war. Whole families had boarded the ship and whole families had perished.
Returning home after half a year
On February 22, 1945, I got on Mr. Tsukayama’s boat from Amami Oshima. We stopped for a night in Tokunoshima, and were met with an airstrike. I saw boats being attacked from the air. Mr. Tsukayama said that it was dangerous, and he didn’t want to lose the boat to an airstrike, so we hid in the harbor of Yoron Island. We cut down some trees in the nearby mountain and used the branches to hide the boat. After the airstrike alarm ceased, we crossed the sea at night, and finally made it to Ada Village in Kunigami.
My mother came to Ada looking for me. She frantically searched for me, but I had changed so much. I was nearly unrecognizable, even when she was looking right at me. I was thin when I was in Aha, but I grew bigger after living with Mr. Tsukayama in Amami Oshima. My skin had also gotten paler, so my mother was unable to recognize me. So, I was the one to embrace her.
I then returned to my house in Aha, and the first person I met was Tokiko’s mother. “Did you come back safely but leave my Tokiko in the ocean?” she said to me plainly. I hid and cried in the house. I thought how a parent would feel, and thought I deserved to be told that. There was a soldier named Mr. Yoshida in our house at the time. He had come to Aha for defense purposes. At the time, each solider was assigned a household to be given meals. He was a member of the Signal Corps, and he was assigned duties along the mountains. The school playground had been turned into a sweet potato patch. Occasionally there were airstrikes. There was machine-gun fire in the village on the day I arrived in Ada. Everyone marveled at how I had managed to return safely in the middle of a war.
Painful experiences while taking refuge
In March I moved to a shelter on top of a mountain. The Battle of Okinawa started soon after that. I stayed in the shelter from March to April, and was then told that Japan had lost and everyone would be taken prisoner. Everyone was forced to descend from the mountain and gathered in Aha Village. The people of Aha Village were loaded on American boats and taken near Noha in Ogimi. My mother told me,“I’m not putting you on a boat again. You came back to us from a sunken ship, so I absolutely will not put you on a ship because the U.S. military might throw you in the Pacific Ocean.” So, we ran away to the mountains, in the opposite direction of the ocean. We went deep into the mountains, coming out on the west coast and escaped to Ueshima in Hentona.
We took refuge in Hentona for about six months. There was no food, and my mother got malaria and was unable to look after the children. Me, my mother, my four-year-old brother, and my seven-year-old sister were all that was left of our family. So I walked a 36 km mountain trail from Ueshima, Hentona and went to Aha, Kunigami to dig up sweet potatoes from our own patch. I put them in a basket, and carried them the 36 km back. I boiled the sweet potatoes and fed them to my mother and siblings, going back to dig more when they ran out.
Eventually, the sweet potatoes from our patch in Aha ran out, and we had no food and were left starving and staggering. My little brother became especially thin, with a swollen belly and on the verge of death. I felt responsible and took my brother to a doctor, who said,“This child is not sick but malnourished.” Someone told us it would be better to feed him frogs and insects. There were frogs hopping around our backyard, so I caught some, cut their stomachs open, washed and skewered them, cooked them, sprinkling them with salt, and tried feeding them to my brother. But he didn’t want to eat them because they were filthy and frightening. I scared him into eating them telling him he would die if he didn’t. Then my mother, sister, and I caught frogs to eat and started feeling better. My brother, who realized frogs tasted good, told me that frogs came out when it got dark. We also ate dragonflies and cicadas.
Life directly after the war
While we were doing this to stay alive, the war ended, and my family took the mountain path back to Aha in Kunigami. Our home had been burnt to the ground. Everyone else’s homes had been burned, and not a single house remained. We joined forces with the older men to build small huts, and post-war life began. We stayed there after the war.
Immediately after the war, the school wasn’t a place to study. A crowd of displaced people from central and southern Okinawa were taking shelter there. All of the glass in the school windows had been shattered by the American soldiers, and many evacuees were being housed inside. With nothing to eat, people died of starvation. I saw someone die almost every day. The body was carried in a gunny bag, and I heard the bodies were thrown away in the bay or near the graves in Aha Village. Many refugees died from starvation.
There was no food for us in Aha Village. All the fields had been laid waste, so people survived by doing all sorts of things, like drawing salt from the sea for miso soup. People once again ploughed the fields after the sweet potatoes had been dug out, looking for any small sweet potatoes that might be left. After a while, there was free distribution of food from the U.S. military, and various things like milk, pork, and canned beef were handed out. Everyone perked up when they got something good. Blankets were handed out, too, and somehow we survived.
Going to high school and life in the dorms
My father, brother, and sisters came back to Okinawa from Tokyo, which cheered us up. Somehow we were also able to grow sweet potatoes in our field to feed ourselves, and I thought I could go to high school soon. However, my household couldn’t even earn enough money for me to go, so it was hard to talk to my father about going. He was against the idea when I asked him, and told me there wasn’t money to put me in a dorm, so I had no choice but to give up. My classmate’s father was the principal then, so he convinced my father for me, and my father finally allowed me to continue on to high school. There was a big celebration because all four of us who took the entrance exam passed and got into high school.
I entered Hentona High School, referred to as “the High School” at the time. It had a shabby, thatched-roof dormitory, and the food wasn’t very good, but I put up with the lack of good food and spent three years in the dorm in Noha, Ogimi. The school building there was a Quonset hut (semi-cylindrical shaped military barrack). I was part of the eighth graduating class. Our textbooks were things like handouts and thin notebooks. When I was in the dormitory, I barely studied and was always looking after the younger students. All the children from rural areas cried when they came to the dorm, saying things like “I want to go back to Yanbaru,” “I want to go home,” or “This food is awful.” There were few buses in those days and it was not easy for students to go home. So, if the younger students caught a cold, I didn’t go to school and took care of them, making them porridge. I looked after them like a nurse. So I wasn’t able to study much, but I enjoyed my high school days. My father was working at a big construction company in Naha when I was in high school. After I graduated, he told me there was a job opening at the company, so I worked at the same company as my father.
Becoming a teacher at my Alma mater
Around that time, the principal of my alma mater told me the school was short of teachers and asked if I would come, so I gladly went. My family had moved to Naha, so I stayed in my grandmother’s house and became an assistant teacher at Aha Elementary School. After that, I renewed my annual contract as an assistant teacher a few times. Then the principal told me that I was suited for teaching and to continue as a teacher. So, I took a correspondence course at the University of the Ryukyus to earn credits. I took classes taught by university professors who came to Okinawa from mainland Japan. I earned credits in this way, got a class-one teaching license, and continued as a teacher. I didn’t want children to have to go through what I experienced. My students have grown up, and some have become teachers or principles. Everyone is doing their best, and that makes me happy.
A message for young people
I would like young people to take a bit more interest in the world, study history properly to learn about what will happen to society in the future, and find what they themselves can do for peace. That’s what I want them to do.
Ms. Keiko Taira worked as an elementary school teacher for many years and was instrumental in peace education. After retirement, she shared the truth about the Tsushimamaru incident and about the Battle of Okinawa as a storyteller.