Samizu's life & times: Nine years old in Noboribetsu when Hiroshima died. Hokkaido during and after World War 2

Samizu Matsuki describes life as 9 year old in Northern Japan when  the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  The interview  by her then-husband Ronald Calvin Huber was in late 2003  

Noboribetsu.  August 1945

"First I have to explain  the particular environment &  circumstances: The   dropping of the atomic bomb. I call it the  "Hiroshima Incident"

I was a Japanese kid.  9 years old. In 4th grade. I was living in Noboribetsu.

 It happened  in 1945  in early August.  First atomic bomb used in mankind's  history.   All the movies and all those things that describe it are false.  It wasn't like that at all.

 In the beginning, we didn't know what the heck it was.  Then next thing we know, we got to all get checked out for "fallout".   We didn't know what the fallout was.  We only knew that if you are wet or rain falls on your head, your hair comes off! Your skin comes off!  What is it?

 Most people didn't have radio. Most people, 60%, are illiterate. These are the people all fighting in the war somewhere.

 Noboribetsu  is a resort place designed for aristocratic hierarchy.   Japan had a strict caste system.   At the top, the Emperor and the aristocrats.  Then the warrior class. Then the peasant class, then merchant class. Bottom of line was the industrial class"

 That's how city was designed arranged like that , because, it  makes sense, If you have  a factory you would ilke to have it  outside  the city.  Agriculture in the middle  Most people grow their own  vegetables. They don't have  those special  farmers to grow mass production,  so don't need so much land after the Meiji stuff  & everything happened. Then big landlords and all that.   That was the environment"

 SAMIZU'S FAMILY

 "My family belonged to the "Half and Half".  Half aristocrat, half warrior class. (same as Tojo)

We are living  in that  particular resort - beautiful place: hot springs and lake.  Strictly designed for resort place for those classes. 

RH Q:  Not considered a big military target?

 Samizu: No. They (Americans) were going to  win anyway. Thery are going to move in there.  Like in Germany: Hitler's summer  house gots occupied by an American Air Force office.

 

FIRST AMERICANS IN NOBORIBETSU

 So first Americans came in to Noboribetsu  aboard water landing airplanes, they landed on lake with tons of medical stuff.  31 crew

"We all ran to shore to watch. My father was one of the few males not purged.   Educated enough not to fear white people. He worships DaVinci, Walt Whitman. A liberal education.

He went to them; he and his best friend - a doctor.  In Mid August... 14 ? 1945 during the Bon  festival   The Americans  were really tall, taller than the Japanese.

 [side note by SM: "Nuclear fission which made atom bomb possible was first experimented or formulated  by Japanese nuclear scientist Dr Ugawa   Nobel prize winner"]

INTELLECTUALS COME TO NOBORIBETSU

One thing that happened after the war. All the intellectuals who'd escaped and were now refugees came to my home town  It's a wilderness, no bombs were dropped This is the land of the Ainu tribal peoples   Everyone was so glad Tojo was gone.  These  were the ones influenced by Walt Whitman and Longfellow

 Until then my father was hiding.  Military Police  came to check  up  our house every day.

So funny! They used to wear long leather boots.They can really sneak in to catch you  We noticed they come with long shovels    We  purposely added   small stones so when they shoveled them up,   we  can hear it.   Meanwhile my mother hides everything. Then they come in, take a look, say okay nothing there . 

You see?  We got lots of cooperation from  ordinary people. Military police here were local people  They had orders to carry out.  He doesn't want to do it?  

There were only 2 or 3 radios in  entire town One in my parents' house. My mother trained as nurse and electrician. Those were female jobes Males were prohibited from anything domestic  Most females didn't get to school.   Didn't read nor write. My mother went there.   My mother was so busy teaching housewives how to use electricity.  Local candles replaced with electricity. All tginbs of new things came out

After Hiroshima?  When atomic  bomb was  dropped, Now privileged class, we're  already western influenced pretty much , we had radio, piano, Chopin's music, Beethoven. Everything   But ordinary people couldn't read. That the class system ; a dangerous system

Since my father was not purged,  and educated enough to handle most stuff, h e  came back after the war   He and my mother every day put on  arm bands and megaphone.

THE EMPEROR SPEAKS

The day when the end of war  was pronounced by Emperor,  all the generals and aristocrats ran away somewhere. Left their servants without pay.   Without anything!

Emperor came out and made this end of war speech . But imperial  Japanese language  is different from ordinary Japanese.  They don't understand what they the heck he was talking about.  Everybody thought they were going to announce " We won!"   They all dressed up like, we're the winners! Sitting there.

My mother had to translate.   She's a  Hokkaido woman.  She does everything, like a man.My father was busy with MacArthur's generals and GHQ and all those people, hew couldnt handle it  so my mother did it. 

She didn't know  either what the emperor was going to say     She did the translation in front of our house . People gathered.  She didn't know what the emperor was going to say.

The emperor's voice came out the radio. She listened, started to cry and told the people "We lost the war" . That

 

That's all she  got to say before things  started to happen.  Many had  thought we were winning, victorious.  They were ready for celebration!

We didn't know what to do.  People were  rolling around on the ground!  Crying. Screaming.   One person, a little old man, took up a stick from my mother's  snow peas garden in front of our house   He  starting beating everything around.Nor p-  So angry!

The next couple days: here's what happened.  In  wartime Japan,  when a loud signal came we traditionally used a little statue of  Buddha in the house.

This time,  people went to  the Shinto shrine.   Tore up all the gold and  purple.   Even urinated on it. Pooped!

 Every Japanese school house had a little Shinto  place inside. It  had the emperor's writing in it. A very holy place to us kids.  These were knocked down  too.   We were  all in total shock. 

 Strange thing:  After the vacation was over, my school teacher said  "Write what happened during your summer vacation." 

So I naturally said the war ended!    We were  defeated by MacArthur.  I was a 4th grader  and I was the only kid who even mentioned  the war.

The other kids didn't know anything: the class system  The b iggest  thing from other students? "I grew one inch".

 RH If you'd been on  the outskirts of Hiroshima that would have been  something different

SM In this secluded place.  Way up North!  What battles?"

My uncle, a farmer, knew nothing about it. The only thing he knew was that he had to grow rice to feed the soldiers. His patriotic duty  So he grew lots of rice. He even set up a greenhouse to try to develop better rice. Very pragmatic, my mother's side.

 Q FROM RH:  Did refugees come to Hokkaido?

 Samizu: Tons of them.  A lot of them  From off the island,

 

 THE OCCUPATION PART 1

 I and  my father were very close.  My father used to take me everywhere he goes  because he was  pretty  absent-minded.  Forget everything So I did  everything.  "Get your hair cut!" He  might pick up someone else's  hat and walk out of the barber shop

He took me everywhere.   As I was the oldest child, and a female, and trained by my mother,  he took me everywhere. Thank the god. I thought.   I will  be  listened to  and  looked up to! (laughs).  I will  know what's going on exactly.

So naturally when I come back, I told my friend what's going on.  The war's ended . This and all that.   "If you don't trust me?"  I took them to the post office.   I'd  found  out,  in the post office,  another radio  It kept broadcasting. But no one was there.  

My mother taught me how to  handle radio because she was busy at other stuff.

We had to hide the radio  because it has a light  and when air attack comes, no light possible,  so we had to put the radio into the closet.  We had a big closet 

Open a bit to let the air in .  I was the one there to take care of radio  It  had lots of vacuum tubes. Twenty of them all lined up. The light goes out in one, I have to  to change it .  All I had to do actually. 

At the post office I was looking at the radio, You can tell what it  was. . They are prohibited to say the name of place of battle  but you can say time and "latitude" .. . . " This time at (something something) latitude  Japanese air planes shot down 200 American airplanes"

Goddamn! it's after the war! Still running !   .

This was it!  Lies!  I was totally astonished.

 I walked into the post office to look around.  On a counter at first  I saw what looked like  skulls. Round. Eyes  comes out.  Nose like an elephant  shows up like this.  Then I saw I was a stack of gas masks! 

All the aristocrats   who know that Japan, in in trouble and that maybe the Americans might use that stuff - or they might themselves use chemical stuff.

So they have these  gas masks stored in the post office. I naturally ran home and told my mother:  Look at this! My mother said "Just tell!  Just go tell. Don't worry about anything; you're a kid,  Just tell everyone you know what you saw today.

That's what I did    First thing I did was locate the smarted kids in school and I approached them.  By then I was known as a tough kid.  I told them and brought them  to the post office     And they saw the radio, and heard the “today we shot down...” stuff  and all the gas masks  and all the things.  And every general gone.

They had to figure it out themselves. That's where a smarter head is  very convenient. You don't need to say anything. They figured it out

They structured a  class  presentation. Organize  it first. , because it's a very very dangerous situation - you can to have really organized  school otherwise you get raped ,attacked.

Then we had a very ordinary  schoolteacher,  like a master, a  science teacher in my school.  He had a hot line to GHQ ,

I told you already   We have new education. Boys and girls got to be educated the same way. We had to chop up frog for biology. You got to use all that chemical  stuff. 

We'll take a short break to eat our sushi,  then get back to this story.

PART 2. CHALLENGE OF THE OCCUPATION  

[Recording starts in progress.  Samizu is explaining Occupation and post occupation Japan.)   

 Japanese intellectuals were totally preoccupied  with  need to  understand, to explain this peculiar psychological condition the Japanese got in. One thing  I recalled when I was in Germany

He said Germans and Japanese pretty much shared the same kind of fate.  But Germans didn't beat beaten up that much Like Iraq people  Like Iraq  they really went down. The reason was they shared the same God Jesus Christ with the Germans.  American people didn't want to beat Jesus Christ up! 

 But they beat Shinto up.  God died, you see.   Suddenly Nietzche very in public mind  because  he said God is dead.

We don't have that kind of concept.  Gods don't die!   We think very different  from Western thinking   Not the dialectical thinking or  legal thinking.  Intuitive.  

Every thing was intuitive, tradition and skill. Skill very closely associated. 

There were    Japanese  anthropologist  whopublished a book called the Vertical Society.  Everything got to be  vertical   Good-bad  First born precedence. Naturally, appearance. (chuckles) 

Suddenly now Democracy comes in. Flat out.  One- One  Everything same value: horizontal society .  

Had to change overnight.  T hat happens when you are defeated. So all the Japanese constitution everything it upheld, every legal procedure and  every social function, was stopped.  Right there. 

That's what George Bush was going to do . That West Point bullshit   Once a quick victory you have a quickest deployment as possible   and within a couple hours you should be able to cover all.

The problem was  places like my home town. They don't have places for airplanes to  land. no large airport ...maybe one.

So they came in the Jeep.  Jeeps were  everywhere . They got to go across mountains and dark roads  and jeep   was best way to reach to the people, for the Americans.

 So boy oh boy,  the jeeps came! With the jeep they carried three kinds of stuff Brown sugar, wheat and a third item.  And actually dropped at each household They knew that the mayor  it' ll never go through.  So they actually physically delivered to each door 

They made us stop everything No old Japanese ancien regime they called it . A good policy so it was what will be next.   Closest thing I every experiences was alcoholics  anonuym ous 12 step 1 by 1 by 1.

 If you don't know anything you just put your leg up one step and do it. That kind of direction you need.

 And we go that direction

 It all from Ruth Benedict  They said  the only person MacArthur listened to  about education was her.

When he pardoned the Emperor that was one of the biggest shock after the atomic bombs.   We expected he would be beheaded or something. Instead General MacArthur set up   big national- standard  American ceremony with flowers and everything else.  The emperor wore his topnotch clothes   Both flags and national anthems.  Really carried out the respect ful atmosphere

 We never expected anything like that! 

 That changed whole national attitude . Then the rest of stuff was easy as anything  We are all trained to listen to  emperor instantly  without question   MacArthur used that communication route,  The emperor derived all  his  political power out of General Macarthur.  Except putting his signature on it  before  it becomes  invested.   Like in America you need a presidential signature before a law becomes effective. General MacArthur   preserved that right of the Emperor  So all his decisions  had to be ratified by the Emperor.  He always did. Emperor was totally afraid of  MacArthur    He might be dragged out and incarcerated!

MANCHURIA 

My aunt and  uncle  were  high ups in the  Manchurian Railroad  management , when the Russians took over. Happily  they  escaped: They are tall people  on my mother's side.  She had to shave her hair off. and put man's costume and act like a man and escaped  Just about every woman was raped.   T he street was filled up with dead bodies. 

My uncle's place -  he was a big shot so he got a big house with 14 coolies working for him. They all turned against him and opened the door for the Cossacks and the Cossacks came in and took every thing shiny. Clocks and watches and pens.  Anything shiny; like little puppies!   Peasants, right? 

There was a piano.  The Cossacks  jumped on the piano and started dancing,  and smashed it  That's the Russian way of invading

So they just run and barely survived. But my uncle was caught, and put into  Sugamo  Prison, the  biggest war crimes place, where Tojo and all those people were sent.  

He stayed there ten years  and  was finally pardoned because of Olympics or something. But then he turned into a total alcoholic.   He can't get job. He never got a job . Started to drink and finally drank himself to death. 

When  I met him all he had to say was: "What a glorious past.  Great Manchurian empire."  

But that was the situation. Its a common thing,  not an unusual situation  A lot of families died together

 Ruling class was worst one. Lot of ruling class women become prostitutes because they speak English. They know how  to dress in the western way.  It's Japan They are like Geisha  girls, we called the Flowers of Night.  They  were like a Greek tragedy:  beautiful Madamoiselle now has to walk into a bar, and  some nasty low grade man, tongue hanging, says  “Ahhh I like your flesh!”   

That was society then.

DAY TO DAY SURVIVAL

 For a while we're were not afraid of anything we didn't have time  Every minute of the day was survival. Suddenly the weather temperature went way down. Only crop we could grow - every household  have a little backyard you grow vegetables you don't go to store in town

 The only thing you could grow was western potato and western onion, and strange thing was... watermelon.   You know we stopped growing watermelon because you could get killed!  Watermelon you can  eat right away.  If you have  watermelons  right in your back yard. People would steal them

 It was called "strong arm thief"   Armed robbery.  Very dangerous people. These are soldiers trained as killers who came back to no job. Nothing  Nothing to eat. Their families are gone. They turn into brutes.

 Hiroshima was already gone   Its not the big tragedies ithat hit you  but the small ones .  When your father dies,  you beat your breast, you cry.  But when  your entire nation?   You are just stunned. You don't really react any way. You're  halfway gone.  No fear.   Ready to do anything to save your neck.

 One thing Fallout!  we had General MacArthur  Has absolute every detail step by step on fallout    What in the heck it was.   If you are wetted by rain, first thing is wash all hair;  if you don't,  you'll get sick and die. 

 School: in rainy weather its cancelled but then  the weather changed We used to look at the shape of clouds and tell if it was rain cloud or this  or that cloud. But no more,you can't depend on that.  

 So then, as we don't have broadcasting set up again. GHQ knew what to do.  They used the schools because that's where everyone's kids go.  Every official news, every thing , given to students at school to take home.   

Kids are trained naturally in writing and reading;   everything an adult society needs. We were really trained into it.  You needed to be able to  name 500 kanji by 4th grade.  I'm the only person who made it!  Because I learned to read when I was one year old, 

Since my parents didn't bring in toys - Influenced by Dr Spock  -  I  got to create it myself. I started to look at  drawings. There was no paper available so i  started to draw on my father's books. (laughs) Then I learn the  letters.

 When I was teacher I found  some teachers actually did it. You can do that  No big deal.  Kid has  got to use as much brainpower, concentration to master babytalk Da da da..  It takes  as much brain power  to comprehend maybe.  because everthing is new 

 I witnessed when I was babysitting in Chicago A  baby was 4 months  old  A friend  she needed someone to babysit her baby. I've never paid much attention to babysitting.  I think every baby in the beginning is born as a  genius . All the human faculties are perfectly in shape otherwise they don't know how to suck milk.

 Before that ,I met a mother with newborn baby in Isla Vista . I was working  as a janitor. She said"  when you're a baby, all the perception has got no specific identification.  For instance color.  In every thing the newborn baby is looking at, it sees just one  color .

We talk about painting She's sort of an artist and we used to talk about art.  She said "Really strange about this baby  I just realized to this baby everything is color I'm just color to the baby . 

 I used to take care of a lady in Oregon.  I was in a coffeeshop  for Genie  She says to the baby  "Look at this  This is blue  and this is a  blue (shape) "  Just the color.   It' s  all the same.  It's  blue  paper or blue color, makes no difference,

But if you do this with a little older kid,  if its  an apple?   just red color  and an apple,?  they will go for the apple less than  to color,  But little baby doesn't do that." 

 End of recording of interview of Samizu  M atsuki by Ron Huber 2003