A new phase in my education was beginning. At the time, Japan's education system was not like that of the United States. Students did not move through a grade level system but instead attended primary schools and then went on to pursue higher levels of education at selective schools and then universities.
I had passed a test to enroll in a Catholic school called Friends School. It had been my dream to go there and I was thrilled when I was accepted for enrollment. I had seen the students in their smart-looking navy pleated skirts, white blouses, long-sleeved jackets, Mary Jane shoes and stylish berets atop their heads and I could hardly wait to join them.
When school started, I was happy to begin studying English, Japanese, history, math and piano. There was something exciting about being in those classrooms, immersed in the energy of a new school.
Two weeks later I took the train into town and started my usual walk up the hill to Friends. It was a wonderful school building with tall ceilings and wide, spacious rooms. A lovely garden surrounded the school's property and there was an arched trellis at the entrance with flowers and green vines weaving their way through it.
When I arrived, I was shocked to see that the grounds where the garden and school had once stood were now a charred and blackened ruins — the school had been burned to the ground from a bomb explosion. I turned around and ran back down the hill to the train station in tears. For a brief moment, I felt hatred for what the Americans had done to my dream.
The nuns who ran the school had tried to provide makeshift classrooms for the students in people's homes. Locations would change from week to week. The nuns had informed us that we were not to tell anyone that we were learning English, the language of the enemy. Each week, we met on a different street, studied at a different house. The feeling I once had for school began to fade and after a while, I stopped going.
American planes began bombing Tokyo regularly. Air raid sirens would blare warnings throughout the city and searchlights would sweep across the skies. We could hear the roar of the planes that were constantly flying overhead and the hissing sounds of the bombs as they fell. The ground would shake when they exploded. Even years later as an adult, the sound of a harmless plane passing by overhead would make me cringe.
We lived on a hill and many of the homes there were burning from bombs that had exploded. Even at night, the sky was blood red. As we stood outside to survey the damage, the faces of my neighbors glowed crimson from the light of the surrounding flames.
YOU ARE READING
Forged In Fire: Stories of wartime Japan
Non-FictionForged In Fire is the true story of a young girl's childhood in pre-WW II Tokyo; her schoolgirl dreams; the violence, starvation and desperation of wartime that drove her family out of the city; and the American Occupation that shaped Japan's future...
