Left Behind on the Battlefield
Mr. Satoshige Kuba
Birth year：1935
Birth place：Naha City
Taking shelter instead of evacuating
I was in the fourth grade of Normal School during the war. I was supposed to go to Kumamoto with my older brother for children’s evacuations, but I couldn’t because the school doctor diagnosed me with gastroenteritis. My brother refused to go all by himself, so my other older brother and sister decided to go instead of me. I stayed behind in Okinawa. I am the sixth child of nine children. My father worked for a pharmacy, but he quit two years before the war and worked for Okinawa Prison. At the time, the Army placed regulations on purchasing commodities, so we couldn’t buy things. When the Battle of Okinawa started, the prisoners were released. The prisoners who didn’t go home evacuated with prison staff. Around May 1945, when the U.S. Army invaded this area, we took refuge in a shelter near the prison in Sobe, Naha City. Japanese soldiers came to the shelter telling us to leave so they could use it. When we told them we had dug the shelter ourselves, they drew their swords, saying, “Can’t you follow orders?” So, we had no other choice but to leave.
Evacuating south
We headed for Madanbashi Bridge, which led to the south, but it had been destroyed. As we walked past the farm fields, naval gunfire fell nearby and shell splinters flew toward us. My father was acting strange, so my mother and I went to check on him. My father’s face had been disfigured and he fell down and died shortly after. After that, my family decided to evacuate on our own, rather than staying with the people from the prison. Since my father died, we all evacuated crying in tears.
We arrived in the village of Takara (present-day Yaese town). We looked for shelter but had a hard time finding one. But when we did, Japanese soldiers kicked us out, saying “We’re going to use this shelter so you need to leave.” My family then hid in the village community center, but artillery hit the building at around eight at night. Seven or eight young soldiers of a tank unit were hit directly. It was an unreal sight with organs spilling out of their stomachs. My right knee felt hot, and when I touched it, there was blood on my hand. This is the scar I got from that bomb fragment.
Since the village community center was destroyed, we stayed in a pig sty. I cried at night feeling pain from my wound, and a young man around fourteen or fifteen years old carried me to a military unit in Yaesedake to sterilize the wound. When I woke up the next morning, I saw some maggots in my wound. My grandmother was also wounded and died from blood loss. My youngest brother, who was three years old, died of tetanus. We dug holes near a bunker and buried my grandmother and brother. Then we put a house door on top and covered it with soil.
The Japanese army was positioned nearby in Yozadake, so my brother and I tried to convince our mother to leave the area, but she had lost her will to move. After losing her mother, husband, and youngest child, she must have thought there was no point in living. She was injured, so she laid down in the shelter, but she got up and walked slowly to Yoza, Itoman City. Yoza was abundant in water, as there was a spring there called “Yozaga.” Four of us were at the entrance of a nearby cave shelter when a US soldier suddenly pointed a gun at us from above. It was all too sudden, so we didn’t know what to do. One of the soldiers, a second-generation Japanese American, was calling out to civilians to leave the cave and that they wouldn’t be harmed. A few people who were hiding deep in the cave went out and I followed along. We were lined up in groups of ten, and walked towards a large crossroad in Itoman. My eight year old brother and five year old sister were with my mother and I had unknowingly separated myself by leaving the shelter. Thinking back, I regret not trying to do something to try and save my family who stayed behind in the cave.
Boarding the LST (landing ship tank)
Those taken prisoner from nearby headed toward the ocean from present-day Nashiro Beach and were loaded onto an LST, which was anchored there. The hinged double doors of the ship’s bow opened and we just walked right in. I thought it was a strange ship to have the front open like that. I thought they would take us offshore and make us drown, just as we had been told. But once we entered, there was a deck where American soldiers were. The soldiers threw us various things like food, and we ate it. I thought it was strange for them to give us things before killing us. I came to think that maybe it wasn’t true that Americans would kill us.
We were taken to where current-day Higa / Shimabuku of Kitanakagusuku is. I received medical treatment for my injury, and stayed there for two or three days. I then was loaded onto a vehicle and taken to a hospital in Ginoza. The hospital was a long narrow building, about thirty to forty meters in length. When I left the hospital, I started to look for someone who I might know. I was separated from everyone during the war, but I thought I might be able to meet an acquaintance or relatives. Then I managed to find a relative there. He was a relative from Tounokura in Shuri and told me to go to his house. He lost all three of his grandchildren in the war, and I went to his place as an orphan. After spending several days there, I found a closer relative, and she told me to come and stay with her, so I went. She was my father’s cousin, about the same age as my mother.
Taken in by a relative
I stayed with that relative in a civilian camp in Sokei, Ginoza. The camp was located on the side of the sea. At the time, I couldn’t think about anything other than eating. Rations from the American military were not enough, so I picked grasses like mugwort and water dropworts, and boiled the buds of sea figs. We also scalded sea fig buds and mixed it with the rations. That’s what it was like back then.
Contracting malaria
I went with about four or five people from Sokei village to a US military dumping site. We couldn’t go home easily at night, so we built a hut made from scrap materials, and the next day we looked through the dumping site and took home anything we might be able to use. Things were fine at that point, but then I contracted malaria that night. I felt so cold and started shivering. Even when my two caretakers (my relatives) pressed against me, I still felt cold and couldn’t stop shivering, so I took a yellow medicine called Quinine and was cured in two days. School at Sokei was nothing more than a blackboard hung on a pine tree and the teacher would write things on the board and give us lessons. That teacher eventually became my homeroom teacher at Shuri High School. He was an English teacher, and I was surprised when I reunited with him in high school. The school in Sokei had about four or five students. There was a station in the camp that distributed clothing sewn with flour bags. Standardized housing was built in Tera Town, Shuri, and there I found my mother’s younger sister, and she took over my care.
Leaving the main island for Kume Island
One day, Mr. Hokumura came by my aunt’s home. Before the war, he had been staying at my house while studying at a normal school. He had heard that I was the only survivor in my family. He was visiting mainland Okinawa to receive salaries for Kume Island’s teachers. He was close to my older brother because they were close in age, but since we were not close in age, I had just heard a lot about him. He said that Kume Island suffered little from the war and had food, so he invited me to go with him to Kume. I had my eldest relative come to discuss the matter. I lost my parents and brothers in the war, so it didn’t really matter where I lived, and I said I would go. My relative said that I could go if that’s what I wanted to do. I also asked my aunt and elderly relative and they approved. That day I walked from Shuri to Itoman and took a boat to Kume Island. I arrived at the port in Torishima, formerly known as Gushikawa Village. After about a 20 minute walk, I arrived in Nakachi Village, where Mr. Hokumura lived.
I was admitted into the fifth grade of Otake Elementary School, and stayed in Kume until the first year of junior high school. I was there for about two and a half years. I was busy cutting grass from the morning hours so I wasn’t able to participate in club activities, like my friends. Children from stable households were taught by their seniors and studied, but I didn’t have time to study. Mr. Hokumura’s wife was also a school teacher and her sister taught kindergarten, so there were three teachers in the home. They took good care of me even though I was a war orphan, so I never fell into despair. I didn’t have time to think about the loss of my family, and was focused on what I needed to do at the time. The 6-3-3 education system was established when I was in the sixth grade of elementary school and I entered junior high after graduating from elementary school. I’m a member of the third graduating class of Gushikawa Junior High School.
Searching for my brother and sister
Before the war, my brother and sister had evacuated to Kumamoto and my older brother had gone to the Japanese Naval Aviation Preparatory School and I never learned whether they had survived. So I went to a relative’s house in mainland Okinawa to find out. The relative told me to stay with them because Mr. Hokumura wasn’t family and was just staying at my house when he was a normal school student. They said they were closer family and would take better care of me, and told me to stay there rather than going back to Kume Island. I stayed there from junior high school until my second year at Shuri High School. Then, just before my third year, I went to Nagasaki where my brother lived. My brother was a prison officer. He had fought in Northern China before coming back to Japan. I finished my second year of high school and entered Nagasaki Nishi High School. At the time, I was not able to study, and my academic performance fell. Although I was eligible to enroll as a third year, I enrolled as a second year, and ended up being in high school for four years.
Back then, if you didn’t have living parents or if you weren’t financially stable, you couldn’t find a job at a bank. I once had an argument with my teacher about that. I went to a public employment office every day after graduating from high school, wondering if I had any chance at all of finding a job, being an orphan and all. After that, I was employed at a bus repair factory for the Nagasaki Prefectural Transportation Department. My work involved sheet metal and electronic welding from the start, and I ended up hurting my back. I was hospitalized for two months, but I didn’t get better. My brother told me to train my body by joining the Self-Defense Forces, so I did and I was able to build up strength within two years. I left the Self-Defense Forces and went to Osaka with three friends, thinking I could attend college (night school) while working. But then I hurt my back once again while working, so I got a live-in position delivering the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Sennichimae near Dotonbori. When Shuri high school was in the high school baseball tournament, I went to see them play. My aim was to work in Osaka and save up enough money to attend night school but was unable to. I felt that I couldn’t continue like this forever, so I went back to my brother’s place in Nagasaki and he suggested returning to Okinawa to fix up our old house. He said that the warmer weather in Okinawa would help me regain my health, so I went back to Okinawa.
Then I worked at Naha military port, unloading cargo from U.S. military ships for three years. An American asked me once, “You lost many family members, including your parents and siblings, in the war. How can you work on a U.S. military base, where there are Americans?” I gave it some thought. Sure, I thought about taking revenge for my family members while in Kume Island. I was willing to die for that cause, but my feelings gradually changed. I came to think that it wasn’t that individual Americans were bad people. It was a war between countries. So I replied, “I don’t hold a grudge against any individuals because this was a war between countries.” After hearing my answer, the person seemed to understand.
Mr. Satoshige Kuba worked for the U.S. military for 10 years until he was 35 years old. Thereafter, he became a prison officer and for 15 years worked with foreign inmates, including American soldiers and military personnel.
Taking shelter instead of evacuating
I was in the fourth grade of Normal School during the war. I was supposed to go to Kumamoto with my older brother for children’s evacuations, but I couldn’t because the school doctor diagnosed me with gastroenteritis. My brother refused to go all by himself, so my other older brother and sister decided to go instead of me. I stayed behind in Okinawa. I am the sixth child of nine children. My father worked for a pharmacy, but he quit two years before the war and worked for Okinawa Prison. At the time, the Army placed regulations on purchasing commodities, so we couldn’t buy things. When the Battle of Okinawa started, the prisoners were released. The prisoners who didn’t go home evacuated with prison staff. Around May 1945, when the U.S. Army invaded this area, we took refuge in a shelter near the prison in Sobe, Naha City. Japanese soldiers came to the shelter telling us to leave so they could use it. When we told them we had dug the shelter ourselves, they drew their swords, saying, “Can’t you follow orders?” So, we had no other choice but to leave.
Evacuating south
We headed for Madanbashi Bridge, which led to the south, but it had been destroyed. As we walked past the farm fields, naval gunfire fell nearby and shell splinters flew toward us. My father was acting strange, so my mother and I went to check on him. My father’s face had been disfigured and he fell down and died shortly after. After that, my family decided to evacuate on our own, rather than staying with the people from the prison. Since my father died, we all evacuated crying in tears.
We arrived in the village of Takara (present-day Yaese town). We looked for shelter but had a hard time finding one. But when we did, Japanese soldiers kicked us out, saying “We’re going to use this shelter so you need to leave.” My family then hid in the village community center, but artillery hit the building at around eight at night. Seven or eight young soldiers of a tank unit were hit directly. It was an unreal sight with organs spilling out of their stomachs. My right knee felt hot, and when I touched it, there was blood on my hand. This is the scar I got from that bomb fragment.
Since the village community center was destroyed, we stayed in a pig sty. I cried at night feeling pain from my wound, and a young man around fourteen or fifteen years old carried me to a military unit in Yaesedake to sterilize the wound. When I woke up the next morning, I saw some maggots in my wound. My grandmother was also wounded and died from blood loss. My youngest brother, who was three years old, died of tetanus. We dug holes near a bunker and buried my grandmother and brother. Then we put a house door on top and covered it with soil.
The Japanese army was positioned nearby in Yozadake, so my brother and I tried to convince our mother to leave the area, but she had lost her will to move. After losing her mother, husband, and youngest child, she must have thought there was no point in living. She was injured, so she laid down in the shelter, but she got up and walked slowly to Yoza, Itoman City. Yoza was abundant in water, as there was a spring there called “Yozaga.” Four of us were at the entrance of a nearby cave shelter when a US soldier suddenly pointed a gun at us from above. It was all too sudden, so we didn’t know what to do. One of the soldiers, a second-generation Japanese American, was calling out to civilians to leave the cave and that they wouldn’t be harmed. A few people who were hiding deep in the cave went out and I followed along. We were lined up in groups of ten, and walked towards a large crossroad in Itoman. My eight year old brother and five year old sister were with my mother and I had unknowingly separated myself by leaving the shelter. Thinking back, I regret not trying to do something to try and save my family who stayed behind in the cave.
Boarding the LST (landing ship tank)
Those taken prisoner from nearby headed toward the ocean from present-day Nashiro Beach and were loaded onto an LST, which was anchored there. The hinged double doors of the ship’s bow opened and we just walked right in. I thought it was a strange ship to have the front open like that. I thought they would take us offshore and make us drown, just as we had been told. But once we entered, there was a deck where American soldiers were. The soldiers threw us various things like food, and we ate it. I thought it was strange for them to give us things before killing us. I came to think that maybe it wasn’t true that Americans would kill us.
We were taken to where current-day Higa / Shimabuku of Kitanakagusuku is. I received medical treatment for my injury, and stayed there for two or three days. I then was loaded onto a vehicle and taken to a hospital in Ginoza. The hospital was a long narrow building, about thirty to forty meters in length. When I left the hospital, I started to look for someone who I might know. I was separated from everyone during the war, but I thought I might be able to meet an acquaintance or relatives. Then I managed to find a relative there. He was a relative from Tounokura in Shuri and told me to go to his house. He lost all three of his grandchildren in the war, and I went to his place as an orphan. After spending several days there, I found a closer relative, and she told me to come and stay with her, so I went. She was my father’s cousin, about the same age as my mother.
Taken in by a relative
I stayed with that relative in a civilian camp in Sokei, Ginoza. The camp was located on the side of the sea. At the time, I couldn’t think about anything other than eating. Rations from the American military were not enough, so I picked grasses like mugwort and water dropworts, and boiled the buds of sea figs. We also scalded sea fig buds and mixed it with the rations. That’s what it was like back then.
Contracting malaria
I went with about four or five people from Sokei village to a US military dumping site. We couldn’t go home easily at night, so we built a hut made from scrap materials, and the next day we looked through the dumping site and took home anything we might be able to use. Things were fine at that point, but then I contracted malaria that night. I felt so cold and started shivering. Even when my two caretakers (my relatives) pressed against me, I still felt cold and couldn’t stop shivering, so I took a yellow medicine called Quinine and was cured in two days. School at Sokei was nothing more than a blackboard hung on a pine tree and the teacher would write things on the board and give us lessons. That teacher eventually became my homeroom teacher at Shuri High School. He was an English teacher, and I was surprised when I reunited with him in high school. The school in Sokei had about four or five students. There was a station in the camp that distributed clothing sewn with flour bags. Standardized housing was built in Tera Town, Shuri, and there I found my mother’s younger sister, and she took over my care.
Leaving the main island for Kume Island
One day, Mr. Hokumura came by my aunt’s home. Before the war, he had been staying at my house while studying at a normal school. He had heard that I was the only survivor in my family. He was visiting mainland Okinawa to receive salaries for Kume Island’s teachers. He was close to my older brother because they were close in age, but since we were not close in age, I had just heard a lot about him. He said that Kume Island suffered little from the war and had food, so he invited me to go with him to Kume. I had my eldest relative come to discuss the matter. I lost my parents and brothers in the war, so it didn’t really matter where I lived, and I said I would go. My relative said that I could go if that’s what I wanted to do. I also asked my aunt and elderly relative and they approved. That day I walked from Shuri to Itoman and took a boat to Kume Island. I arrived at the port in Torishima, formerly known as Gushikawa Village. After about a 20 minute walk, I arrived in Nakachi Village, where Mr. Hokumura lived.
I was admitted into the fifth grade of Otake Elementary School, and stayed in Kume until the first year of junior high school. I was there for about two and a half years. I was busy cutting grass from the morning hours so I wasn’t able to participate in club activities, like my friends. Children from stable households were taught by their seniors and studied, but I didn’t have time to study. Mr. Hokumura’s wife was also a school teacher and her sister taught kindergarten, so there were three teachers in the home. They took good care of me even though I was a war orphan, so I never fell into despair. I didn’t have time to think about the loss of my family, and was focused on what I needed to do at the time. The 6-3-3 education system was established when I was in the sixth grade of elementary school and I entered junior high after graduating from elementary school. I’m a member of the third graduating class of Gushikawa Junior High School.
Searching for my brother and sister
Before the war, my brother and sister had evacuated to Kumamoto and my older brother had gone to the Japanese Naval Aviation Preparatory School and I never learned whether they had survived. So I went to a relative’s house in mainland Okinawa to find out. The relative told me to stay with them because Mr. Hokumura wasn’t family and was just staying at my house when he was a normal school student. They said they were closer family and would take better care of me, and told me to stay there rather than going back to Kume Island. I stayed there from junior high school until my second year at Shuri High School. Then, just before my third year, I went to Nagasaki where my brother lived. My brother was a prison officer. He had fought in Northern China before coming back to Japan. I finished my second year of high school and entered Nagasaki Nishi High School. At the time, I was not able to study, and my academic performance fell. Although I was eligible to enroll as a third year, I enrolled as a second year, and ended up being in high school for four years.
Back then, if you didn’t have living parents or if you weren’t financially stable, you couldn’t find a job at a bank. I once had an argument with my teacher about that. I went to a public employment office every day after graduating from high school, wondering if I had any chance at all of finding a job, being an orphan and all. After that, I was employed at a bus repair factory for the Nagasaki Prefectural Transportation Department. My work involved sheet metal and electronic welding from the start, and I ended up hurting my back. I was hospitalized for two months, but I didn’t get better. My brother told me to train my body by joining the Self-Defense Forces, so I did and I was able to build up strength within two years. I left the Self-Defense Forces and went to Osaka with three friends, thinking I could attend college (night school) while working. But then I hurt my back once again while working, so I got a live-in position delivering the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Sennichimae near Dotonbori. When Shuri high school was in the high school baseball tournament, I went to see them play. My aim was to work in Osaka and save up enough money to attend night school but was unable to. I felt that I couldn’t continue like this forever, so I went back to my brother’s place in Nagasaki and he suggested returning to Okinawa to fix up our old house. He said that the warmer weather in Okinawa would help me regain my health, so I went back to Okinawa.
Then I worked at Naha military port, unloading cargo from U.S. military ships for three years. An American asked me once, “You lost many family members, including your parents and siblings, in the war. How can you work on a U.S. military base, where there are Americans?” I gave it some thought. Sure, I thought about taking revenge for my family members while in Kume Island. I was willing to die for that cause, but my feelings gradually changed. I came to think that it wasn’t that individual Americans were bad people. It was a war between countries. So I replied, “I don’t hold a grudge against any individuals because this was a war between countries.” After hearing my answer, the person seemed to understand.
Mr. Satoshige Kuba worked for the U.S. military for 10 years until he was 35 years old. Thereafter, he became a prison officer and for 15 years worked with foreign inmates, including American soldiers and military personnel.