[Return to Homepage] “Pagan Island in the Distance…” This is an English-language electronic book containing a translation of the following Japanese language website and booklet publication: Okamoto Mariko, editor. 遥かなるパガン島よ… “Harukanaru Pagantô yo…” [Pagan Island in the Distance…]. Tokyo: Pagantô HP Un’ei Iinkai パガン島ＨＰ運営委員会 [Pagan Island HP Management
Committee], 2000. http://www.dd.iij4u.or.jp/~pagan/ English E-Book Translation & Website Credits Translator, project manager, primary English language correspondent: Jessica Jordan, Ph.D. Candidate Department of History, University of California San Diego Translation editor, researcher, primary Japanese language correspondent: Horiguchi Noriyasu Funding and support provided by: Translation: Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Division of Historic Preservation, Saipan: http://www.dcca.gov.mp/#!historic-preservation/ceuc Research, glossary, preface: Pacific Rim Research Program full-scale research grant (Oct 2011 to Sept 2012) awarded to Jessica Jordan Pacific Rim Research Program: http://pacrim.ucsc.edu English Website publication: Northern Marianas Humanities Council, Saipan http://northernmarianashumanities.org English language website design and hosting provided by: Angil Design, Saipan, http://www.angildesign.com Published on 15 October, 2014 Pagan Island in the Distance… 2 About this Collection The homepage, “Harukanaru Pagantô yo…” introduces the history of Pagan and an outline of the island, as well as a collection of stories contributed by people with a relationship to the island. I began this home page project on the 15th of April this year, and on the anniversary of the end of the war in August I was fortunate to have had the story picked up as part of a special feature by Shizuoka Daiichi Television.1 I would really like for you all to have a look at the website, but the use of the Internet has not become completely widespread. I therefore came up with the idea of bringing together the content from the website to create this booklet. Lastly, regarding the production of the website, I received lots of information and stories from Mr. Hattori Hideo and members of the All Pagan Island War Comrades Association and the Pagan Island Repatriates Assembly. I was allowed also to cite many episodes from the Pagan Island Garrison Record published by the War Comrades Association. I am thankful from the bottom of my heart to everyone who helped to shed light on this island called Pagan, hitherto unknown to me, and from here on out I am determined to continue to grow the website. Okamoto Mariko, December 2000 Pagan Island in the Distance… Editor: Pagan Island HP Un’ei Committee Tokyo, Japan Pagan Island in the Distance… 3 Table of Contents Title Page, English E-Book Translation & Website Credits……………..…………..1 About this Collection…………………………………………………………………….…..2 Table of Contents………………………………..…………………………………….………3 1. To Begin………………………………………………………………………….……………5 2. An Outline of the Island…………………………………….………….…………………….7 3. Anatahan Incident……….…………………………..……….……………………..……12 4. Photographs………………………………………………………………………………….15 5. War and the Island……………………….……………………………………………….23 6. The Island Thereafter………………..……………………….….………………………34 7. Anecdotes…..……………………………………………………………………………………………..36 8. Exploring Pagan Island…………………………………….…………………………….46 Mr. Shimomura Hiroshi’s records……………………………………..………………49 Mr. Osakabe Tomoyuki’s records…………………………………………….………..51 Mr. Koyanagi Atsushi’s records……………………………………………..…..……55 9. Songs of Pagan Island……………………….……….…….……………………………………..59 10. Pagan Island Anthology……………….………………….…..……………………….64 The Special Attack Corps that Fell into the Open Ocean Around Pagan Island, by Yumita Chôko from Tokyo, Age sixty-eight………….………..…..…………………….………………64 Daifuku mochi: Soft Rice Cakes Stuffed with Sweetened Bean Jam from an Unknown Pagan Comrade, by Okamoto Eiko from Shinagawa Prefecture, Age sixty-eight…………………66 Memories from Emigration to Repatriation, by Yumita Chôko from Tokyo, Age sixty-eight ……………………………………………………………………………………………………70 A Short History of Pagan Island, by Kameoka Shin’ichi from Fukushima Prefecture, Age eighty-two…………….…………….…………………………………………………..………..77 The Island of My Birth, by Miyashiro Seiichi from Okinawa Prefecture, Age fifty-seven.……82 The Children of Pagan Island, by Okamoto Eiko from Shinagawa Prefecture, Age sixty-eight …………………………………………………………………………………………….………83 Living With Few Resources, by Chino Yoshikado from Nagano Prefecture, Age eighty-two…85 Military Facilities on Pagan Island, by Kameoka Shin’ichi from Fukuoka Prefecture, Age eighty-one……………………………………………………………………………….….……..88 Sweet Potato Fields, by Kameoka Shin’ichi from Fukushima Prefecture, Age eightyone………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………90 Pagan Island in the Distance… 4 Yearning for My Hometown, by Jahana Yoshiharu from Okinawa Prefecture…………………………………………………………………………….…………….91 I Will Defend to the Death my Senior Officer’s Ashes, by Tajima Nobuo from Gunma Prefecture, Age eighty.……….……………….………………….…..…..…….…………………..91 The Truck and the Daihatsu Landing Craft, by Kameoka Shin’ichi from Fukushima Prefecture, Age eighty-one………………………………………………………………………96 In the Lemon Bush, by Okamoto Eiko, Age sixty-seven from Kanagawa Prefecture….………97 At the End of a Desertion, by Sakamoto Masao from Tokyo, Age seventy-nine.…..…………98 Travel Accompanying Data Collection at Pagan, by Hattori Hideo from Tokyo, Age eightytwo……………………….……………………………………………………………………….101 Singing “A Coconut” on a Moonlit Night, by Satô Fujio from Ibaragi Prefecture………..……104 The Kid With the Lizard, by Tajima Nobuo from Gunma Prefecture…………………………….105 The German Battleship Emden, by Kameoka Shin’ichi from Fukushima Prefecture, Age eighty-one………………………………………………………………………………………..107 Beneath a Dim Lamp, by Saburi Rokurô from Hyogo Prefecture, Age eighty-seven………..110 An Erupting Solitary Island, by Kameoka Shin’ichi from Fukushima Prefecture, Age eightyone…………………………………………………………………………………….…….……111 From Manchuria to Pagan Island, by Ujiie Otoji from Fukushima Prefecture, Age eightythree………………………………………………………………………………………..……113 The Food that was Destroyed, by Sakamoto Masao from Tokyo, Age seventy-nine…………114 11. Everyone’s Voices…………………………………………………..……..……………115 My Grandfather’s Change of Battlefield, from Manchuria to Pagan Island, by Mrs. Koguma, Age thirty…………………………………………………………………………..………115 Thinking of ‘The Significance of Life and Death’ and Degenerate ex-Tokkô, by Saitô Akira from Saitama Prefecture………………….………………………………………………………………….117 The Great-Uncle who Perished at Pagan Island, by Bubiko-san…………………..…..…..119 The Beautiful Pagan Island That Raised My Mother, by Yuda Atsuko from Tokyo, Age thirty-four…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….119 The B-29 that Attacked a Naval Preparatory School, by Ishida Takeji of Saitama Prefecture, Age seventy-three …………………………………………………………………..…….…..…121 I am on my way to a Tokkô [Kamikaze Special Attack] Base, Sayonara, by Ishida Takeji of Saitama Prefecture, Age seventy-three……………………………………….…………………125 12. Notes…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..128 13. Appendices—Appendix A: Results of Air Combat in the Marianas……………………133 Appendix B: Flyers Dropped by U.S. Over Pagan Calling for Disarmament Meetings……….135 Appendix C: Chart of Changing Japanese School System Names & Organization……….…..137 Pagan Island in the Distance… 5 1. To Begin In front of banana trees At the Saipan Shrine Pagan Island in the Distance… 6 I came to know about Pagan Island through stories that my mother-in-law told from long ago. When mom was a child, along with her parents who were public school teachers, she crossed over from Saipan to Pagan Island where she spent her life until the end of the war. Before the war, Pagan was shrouded in beautiful nature and the island was like a paradise. Mangos and papayas ripened all over the island. Fish of various colors clustered together in the sea, and countless white herons2 danced around the mountain lake. Children would transfer lots of bananas onto boats floating on the ocean, and would swim and play all day long. Then the war started and people hid under the ground to ward off air raids. Their food supply ran out and they lived through many bitter days. I heard about many such things for the first time through mom’s stories. At her request, I collected data from here and there about these little things and slowly the distant silhouette of Pagan Island came into view. Now I would like you all to know Pagan through these stories, and this is why I took on this website project. As for my generation who do not know about the war and the children who do not even know that there was a war, it is my hope that they will keep a little bit of the stories from Pagan Island in their hearts. I would like to point out the tremendous cooperation I received during the creation of this publication from various people from the All Pagan Island War Comrades Association, and the Pagan Island Repatriates Assembly and to offer my sincere appreciation for their cooperation. Pagan Island in the Distance… 7 2. An Outline of the Island From Japan to the Northern Mariana Islands Pagan Island in the Distance… 8 Pagan Island Map Pagan Island in the Distance… 9 Where is this place called Pagan? Pagan is about two hundred ninety kilometers (one hundred eighty miles) north of Saipan, toward the northern end of the Mariana Islands. It is a volcanic island, twelve kilometers long by four kilometers wide (seven miles long by two miles wide). The island is shaped like a tadpole, with Mt. Pagan rising five hundred seventy meters (1,870 feet) above sea level over the northern portion of the island. According to records, the volcano erupted in March 1922 and May 1981. During these eruptions, little volcanic fumes also rose from the high spot in the southern part of the island. One effect of the volcano is the existence of black sand beaches, and I have heard that this is unique within the Mariana Islands. In the flat areas, lush coconuts, bananas, breadfruit trees, and mangos grow and wild goats and cows live in abundance. What does “Pagan” mean? After Magellan discovered Guam in 1521, the Mariana Islands were colonized by Spain until 1899. After that, the Mariana Islands were sold to Germany along with the nearby Caroline Islands and were colonized by the Germans until the First World War. From 1914 onward they became Japanese mandated territories.3 After the Second World War, they became American territories under the United Nations Trusteeship. In a 1978 vote by local residents, the islands at last became the self-governing Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. I have heard that “Pagan” means “foreign land” in Spanish. It must have been an unknown island farther away from the other Mariana Islands which until then were called the “Islands of Thieves.” The Lives of the People In April 1917, there was a volcanic eruption on nearby Agrihan Island and those islanders Pagan Island in the Distance… 10 escaped to Pagan. Records say that there were six Japanese included among them. After that, a business called the Nan’yô Bôeki Kaisha [South Seas Trading Company] emigrated Kanaka4 islanders from Saipan to Pagan in order to cultivate coconuts. Construction of the airport began around the year 1935. Approximately two hundred Japanese people and four to five hundred islanders assembled from surrounding islands were engaged in the construction work. This work was extremely difficult because the foundation of Pagan Island is made up of the hard bedrock that is characteristic of volcanic regions. It is said that many laborers died nearly every day during the construction. From around 1937, the Japanese Navy began construction for a base. From around 1942, people involved in the fishing industry migrated to the island and engaged primarily in bonito [bunitu, skipjack tuna] and maguro [tuna] fisheries. In addition, there was produce such as copra (coconut oil), Chinese yams, a small amount of lemons, bananas, oranges, and sweet potatoes. There was no water, and drinkable liquids consisted for the most part of rainwater collected from daily squalls. Japanese people lived dispersedly in the area from the bonito [skipjack tuna] factory in Shomushon town down through the southern part of the island. Children went to school at the town’s kokumin gakkô [public primary school, see Appendix C]. In the town there were twenty to thirty civilian homes, a wharf, a Shinto shrine, a small general store with daily household goods for sale, a police substation, a general practitioner, and a café. The woman who became famous as a central character in the “Anatahan Incident” used to work in that café before she went to Anatahan Island. For details on the Anatahan Incident, see “Chapter 3. Anatahan Incident.” Pagan Island in the Distance… 11 Kanaka people primarily gathered around the circumference of the Degusa coastline and Lake Raguna. They lived in residences made out of coconut trees and on top of raised floor structures that were constructed in such a way that floors were spread on top of frames made from tall pillars. They also had several wells. They would catch coconut crabs and fish and exchange them with the Japanese for their produce like sweet potatoes and vegetables, and in this way the people lived together peaceably. In 1942, the population consisted of four hundred thirteen Japanese and two hundred twenty-nine Kanaka. It is said that there were many immigrants in particular from Okinawa and the Ogasawara Islands. Pagan Island in the Distance… 12 3. Anatahan Incident Thirty-two men who did not believe that the war had ended were left behind in Anatahan Island in the Mariana Islands, and there were incidents when the men were killing each other over just one woman, Higa Kazuko. Eleven people had lost their lives during the six years leading up to 1950 when she was extricated by the US military just as she was about to be executed as the sole cause of these deaths. To Saipan, Pagan, and Anatahan Higa Kazuko emigrated from Okinawa to Saipan to help with the family business. Then she crossed over to Pagan Island with a friend and worked as a barmaid at a café. When she was eighteen-years-old she married a man at Pagan, and when she was twenty-two she went with her husband, a new Nan’yô Kôhatsu5 company employee who had been assigned a post at Anatahan island. The war began, and after her husband went to Sarigan Island on business in 1944 a fishing boat that had been conscripted by the Navy had lost its way during an air raid, anchored at Anatahan. The Japanese on the island thereafter came to comprise of thirty-two men (ten soldiers, twenty-one specially drafted sailors, one Nan’yô Kôhatsu employee), and one woman. They lived in communal living situation for a while. During this time, everybody came to take aim at Higa whose husband did not return. Because of this, at the advice of an elder member, she and a certain man feigned that they were a couple and they lived in a hut at a place that was some distance from the rest of the group. However, the other men would not give up and the fight did not die out, and two people suspiciously turned up missing. No information at all was entering the island, and nobody believed it when US armed forces in a boat offshore Pagan Island in the Distance… 13 announced Japan’s war defeat many times over by loudspeaker. Obtaining Weapons Leads to Murdering One day in early August 1946 after one year had passed since the end of the war, the men found two pistols and seventy live cartridges in the wreckage of a B-29 bomber that had crashed in the jungle. They made knives from the duralumin body of the aircraft. After this, with weapons in hand the men came to kill each other openly over Higa. Whenever a partner was murdered a new husband for Higa was decided by a meeting, but the fight would not be settled. In the end a decision was made to carry out Higa’s execution after all since she was the “cause of it all.” “Escape immediately. On the morning of the day after tomorrow, you will be killed”… this secret message was written in pencil on the leaf of a bird’s-nest fern6 and thrown into her hut. Knowing of her own execution, Higa ran and hid in the jungle. And when she could see the outline of a ship in the open ocean she climbed a coconut tree and used the one-piece dress she was wearing to wave, asking for help. On 23 June 1950, Higa was rescued by an American vessel called “Miss Susie” thirty-three days after her escape. This opened a window of opportunity, and exactly one week later, all of the men were also rescued by the US armed forces. In the end, within six years eleven people were murdered on Anatahan. The “Anatahan Incident” that Created a Fad after the War When this incident was reported in Japan after their repatriation in 1952, it turned into an astounding “Anatahan” boom, and photos of Higa reportedly sold like hot cakes. Higa appeared in theaters at places like Ginza and Asakusa, and she starred in a movie. After that she worked as a server at Japanese restaurants before passing away of a brain tumor in March 1974 at the age of Pagan Island in the Distance… 14 fifty-two. With her child and a grandchild at her deathbed, it is reported it was a peaceful ending. Her first husband lost track of Higa’s whereabouts and thought only that she must have died in the war. He had been repatriated earlier and had subsequently built a new home. It is said that, while he was suffering from a growing high fever as an aftereffect of malaria, he came to his doorway and tearfully apologized to Higa who visited him. Pagan Island in the Distance… 15 4. Photographs These photographs were taken in 1979. These have been reproduced from the All Pagan Island War Comrades Association publication Pagantô Shubitai ki [Pagan Island Garrison
Record]. A View of the cliffs [Gake-yama] from Apan Bay. Pagan Island in the Distance… 16 Apan Bay A view of Mt. Pagan from Apan Bay Pagan Island in the Distance… 17 Degusa Bay View of Myôto Iwa [Husband and Wife Rock] from Degusa Bay Pagan Island in the Distance… 18 Lake Raguna Lake Raguna Pagan Island in the Distance… 19 View of the Southern Region from the Vicinity of Battleship Island [Gunkanjima] View of the Southern Region from the Vicinity of Battleship Island Pagan Island in the Distance… 20 Scenery Seen through the Peephole in a Pillbox Air-Raid Shelter [bôkûgô] Pagan Island in the Distance… 21 Wreckage of Japanese Military Airplanes Rusted Wreckage of Anti-Aircraft Guns Pagan Island in the Distance… 22 View of Shomushon Bay from Battleship Island Pagan Island in the Distance… 23 5. War and the Island Life Before the War There were two classes in the island’s public school that extended through advanced courses, and a husband and wife had been assigned to teach the forty pupils. At the school, games like dodge ball were popular. When school let out, every day the children who commuted from far away would make lots of fun stops along the way home. They did things like picking and eating the mangos and papayas that were always growing, drinking sweet coconut juice picked by Kanaka people they knew, and playing on the beach. When the children would go sea-bathing, they would use a kareta [ox-driven cart] with a huge load of bananas. The bananas would be transferred to a small boat, and the boat would become a floating resting place. Using wood, glass, and wax, the children would make goggles to dive down and catch things like fish and octopus with a spear. In the rocky areas there lived many creatures like spiny lobsters, turban shells, abalone, and hermit crabs, all of which became good toys for the children. Many of the adults on the island were engaged in fishing for bonito [skipjack tuna] and maguro [tuna]. From time to time they would gather at the beach to drink homemade tuba [coconut wine] while snacking on fish or shellfish and dancing to the accompaniment of a samisen or a sanshin (an Okinawan samisen made of snake-skin). The First Air Raid On 8 December 1941, the Pacific War began when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Beginning in early 1944, when fierce fighting was going on in southern islands against US forces, Japanese military units were continually being introduced to Pagan Island and a garrison Pagan Island in the Distance… 24 consisting of twenty-five hundred Army and Navy troops was established. Then on the morning of 12 June, an air raid began amid the sounds of deafening explosions and machine gun fire. American Grumman fighter planes proceeded in formation to deliver fatal blows to Shomushon town and the harbor. In the daytime people would hide in underground shelters, and by night they would busily work to repair the demolished airfield and procure food provisions. Mr. Hattori Hideo of the Pagan War Veterans Association sent me drawings of the air raid scenes that he saved as sketches in his pocket diary from those days. 12 June 1944 – US Air Force Air Raids Pagan Island in the Distance… 25 [Note: Text written on the sketch reads:
Top: Agrihan Island
Right Side: Pagan Island
Shomushon Bay
Battleship Island
Body Text: War is…!!
Showa 19 June [1944] On Saipan Island The US Military began their invasion of Saipan Whether knowingly or unknowingly I do not know Our fleet of motorized sailboats Set straight for Saipan harbor. Horrible, inhuman!! On board our twenty-some ships Nearly all of our crew Are civilians, I hear. Grumman planes mocked Japanese armed forces Pagan Island in the Distance… 26 as if engaged in a dance before killing them. To our Pagan Island the people who made it back were four or five members only. Signature: Sketched from the cliffs [Gake-yama] mountain gun gunport Sgt. Hattori Left bottom: cliffs [Gake-yama]. The Struggle for Food Provisions Less than two months after the big air raid, the island’s food supply had noticeably dwindled. A great number of people began to die not only from battle wounds but also of illness and malnutrition. I have tried to summarize the items used as food during the war. Coconut Crabs A large coconut crab can measure almost one meter wide claw to claw [3.3 feet]. They are a part of the hermit crab family, and they eat coconut meat. With a flavor similar to that of a kegani,7 they were a favorite among the islanders. When opened up there were lots of innards piled inside. The innards tasted like a mix of sea urchin eggs and cheese upon which coconut oil was drizzled, and they are said to have been quite a delicacy. However, yashigani8 were exhausted quickly and as they have strong claws, it was hard to capture them even if you did find their burrows. Therefore getting a taste of these crabs was rare. Snails All soldiers would gather snails as a valuable source of protein. They lived all over the island and would appear here and there after squalls. To eat them, the soldiers had to first pull the meat out of the shells and place it in a container, and then stir it with a stick until the slimy scum Pagan Island in the Distance… 27 was removed. Then they would sprinkle on a pinch of salt and sauté it with oil. At times it was boiled in salt water to remove the scum, followed by a dusting with tapioca (a type of tuber) starch. Then the meat was fried in oil to make tempura. What’s more, there were people who would eat the boiled yellow scum, calling it “curry.” But there were people who were too hungry to wait for the cooking and would eat the snails raw. After eating them raw, a number of people started to act crazy and died within a few days. It is said that the snails’ ovaries contain a deadly poison, and that there were also things like parasites in them. Troops Cooking Snails (sketch by Hattori Hideo). [Note: Text written on the sketch reads:
Collection of Ironwood9 trees for the construction of our position.
For lunch the troops
had snails
Their greatest enjoyment
was this]. Pagan Island in the Distance… 28 Geckos Geckos could be caught sometimes when they would walk across the ceiling, or when they scuttled out from behind the layers of a banana tree trunk that was being pulled apart. The big ones measured about five centimeters, but these were rarely caught. They could be broiled or deep-fried in oil and eaten. Saying geckos gave energy, some soldiers slung pouches prepared exclusively for geckos on their hips so that they could always be ready for a catch. However, as the number of geckos was small, it wasn’t long before they were exhausted. Monitor Lizards There were large lizards with bodies as long as fifty centimeters.10 Their bodies were green with white spots. They were beautiful lizards. If one of these was found, ten or so people would first encircle it and lead it toward a coconut tree. If the lizard ascended the tree, one person would take a long stick and chase it higher and higher up the tree. Eventually the lizard would reach the top of the tree and could run no more, and it would fall down and the crowd would catch it. They are said to have been very delicious, with a taste like chicken but lighter. Lizards were very rarely caught and they were a delicacy among all foods on the island. Pigs Wild pigs were captured. However, there were many civilians and Kanaka who raised pigs and so if you were found to have caught a pig you would be deemed a thief. It is for that reason that pigs were caught secretly, under the dark of night. When a large pig was caught, it would let out a terrible squeal. Because of this, people caught meek piglets. When you showed a piglet some food, it would pitter-patter over to you. While the piglet was eating the food, the person would use one hand to hold the pig’s behind in Pagan Island in the Distance… 29 check, and with the other hand they’d make a V-shape or a peace sign with two fingers and quickly shove them into the piglet’s nose. The surprised pig would try to back up, but because its behind was being held it couldn’t move anywhere. After two to three minutes, it was said to lose consciousness. This may seem cruel, but catching a pig this way meant that many people could eat. Rats Traps were made out of large empty cans. They would grill a rat that would lose its legs, ears, and tail and then take the guts out of its abdomen. Then they would sprinkle salt over it and grill it once more, and the fatty meat is said to have been delicious. There were people who said that if you just didn’t look at the shape of the animal, it tasted like a sparrow. Grasshoppers These grasshoppers are about twice as long as grasshoppers in Japan. When they would grill the ones that were caught flying in fields of Japanese pampas grass, the bodies would instantly grow longer. They would cook them until they were light brown and eat them crunchy. Flying Fish The following incident happened only once during the war. Being chased by a group of dolphins, a group of flying fish so large they turned the surface of the ocean jet black was pushed in a surge toward the beach. Soon the beach was covered in flying fish. It is said that everyone gathered them up and ate until they were full. In addition, I heard that these flying fish were dried and preserved and became an important food source at the time. Coconuts When you split a coconut in two, the white core is called “copra.” When this copra is Pagan Island in the Distance… 30 chopped up like diced rice crackers and then roasted, it tastes like peanuts. If you smash the copra into small pieces, knead it thoroughly with water, and then boil it down, the oil will float to the top. This oil can be used in cooking, for lighting, or made into soap. In addition, if you cut the tip of the flower (which looks like kernels on a corncob) with a knife then attach a container to it overnight, a white flower sap will accumulate. This is coconut wine, and if left as is it will turn into vinegar. If the freshly-collected liquid is boiled down, it will become white wine like amazake [sweet wine]. If boiled down further still it turns into a starch syrup-like substance. Juice of the coconut is sweet and is consumed as a beverage, while the leaves and stems are used as construction materials. Coconuts are a valuable plant with many uses. Papayas Wild papaya trees were more like wild grasses that grew very large, unlike those that have been selectively bred. At four to five meters tall, the trunk extends smoothly up to the top where large leaves extend out in all directions. In between the leaves, fruits hang directly off the trunk. The fruits on the wild trees are small, about four centimeters in diameter. One tree holds twenty to thirty fruits. Because of the tropical climate, the tree produces fruits all year long. However, the diameter of these trees is a mere five to ten centimeters so they are weak and fragile. Tree climbing is impossible and people have to wait until the ripened fruit falls out of the tree on its own. When all the fruits have been taken, people would start to use the tree’s root as a part of daily food. In papaya roots there is one part that is shaped like a daikon [Japanese radish], and this root could be minced and mixed with everyday foods to extend the food supply. Pagan Island in the Distance… 31 Breadfruits Shaped similarly to loquats, these fruits grow on breadfruit trees. Some breadfruits were as big as a child’s head, and when roasted whole they had pleasing poku poku [flaky, moist] taste like the combination of chestnuts and pumpkins. Sweet Potatoes These could be harvested after just three months, so military units would cultivate sweet potatoes all together. Other than steaming or boiling them, when grated and placed on a banana leaf and then steamed, sweet potatoes would come out as a sponge cake-like dish. Stalks were boiled and mixed with food to extend the food supply. Pagan Royal Ferns (Rock Fern) This plant belonging to the fern family is fatter than the Japanese rock fern and has a tip that rolls up in a curl. The shoots can be boiled in salt water and eaten. After taking shoots from a fern the plant can be left alone for two or three days and its leaves will harden, then new shoots will again appear. Pig Pumpkins These are enormous pumpkins, and each one feeds thirty people. They were exhausted quickly. Peppers Aside from being used to add flavor to a dish, wild peppers could be added to snails when it was time to remove the scum. The peppers would make it easier to get rid of the sliminess. Pagan Island in the Distance… 32 Rainwater and Salt A coconut tree could be made into something like a trough that would collect rainwater by cutting it diagonally and boring a trench. Also, if you ladled the seawater into a drum can and simmered it down, salt could be obtained. Any smoke that was visible would become the target of enemy airplanes, so coconut husks that produced relatively little smoke were used as fuel for fires. Tobacco Although a small amount of Homare brand Japanese cigarettes had been distributed, they soon disappeared entirely. When they did not have any tobacco, they would dry, roll in paper and smoke eggplant leaves or the hairy substance that covers pandanus11 trees. It was a situation when anything could have worked just as long as smoke was produced. The End of the War On 15 August 1945, the war ended when Japan surrendered unconditionally to the US. For the first time in one year and two months since the first air raid, Pagan Island welcomed quiet days. According to American records, from July 1944 to April of 1945 over four hundred tons of bombs were dropped, in addition to dozens of incendiary bombs. Within the district of the Mariana Islands, Pagan was the second island after Tinian to be massively bombed. American officers who moved to the island after the war are said to have remarked, “If our military had come ashore here at Pagan, the body count would probably have been higher than at Iôtô [Iwo Jima].” For the results of the air war against the United States, see Appendix A. On 20 October initially two thousand, one hundred sixty-four troops were repatriated on board a transport ship called “Chôun Maru.” On the 26th they arrived in Uraga, Kanagawa Pagan Island in the Distance… 33 Prefecture. The Chôun Maru was a three thousand five-hundred-ton ship, and it was only loaded with food and water for five hundred people. People who died while on the ship were buried at sea. By the time the passengers finally saw the shadow of the island of Japan emerge, they are said to have screamed “Fuji-san! Fuji-san!” [Mt. Fuji]. Bringing happy, cheerful feelings as they returned their homeland, the soldiers were bombarded with insults and jeers from compatriots: “American soldiers appear crisp, but how Japanese soldiers look dirty,” or, “We suffer so much because of military losses.” Carrying home the ash remains of their comrades, the soldiers had a dark homecoming. On 27 January of the next year (1946), the group of three hundred thirty-eight resident Okinawans who had departed from Pagan Island arrived in Okinawa after one week and took lodging at a place called Innumiyâdoi. Then on 6 March, one hundred forty civilians and sixtyfive remaining military personnel traveled on a destroyer named “Hatsuume,” to arrive in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture. Although at Pagan Island it had been summer all year round, there was unseasonable snow falling in Sasebo and everyone was said to have been shaking from the cold. Thus all of the Japanese people were gone from Pagan Island. Pagan Island in the Distance… 34 6. The Island Thereafter Plans for a Pagan Island Resort Around 1970, there was a large financier putting energy into plans to develop each of the Pacific Islands. They surveyed such areas as Rota, Yap, the Palau Islands, and Pagan Island. While Japanese financiers were developing tourism in places like Guam and Saipan, they noticed that there were hot springs resources at volcanic Pagan Island. However, these plans had a setback and never came to be. A Volcanic Eruption After the end of the war, repatriates pondered their own memories of Pagan, but that green island they fondly remember from long ago does not exist anymore. On 15 May 1981, Mt. Pagan erupted, rolling volcanic smoke thousands of kilometers up into the air. The mayor of the Kanaka village, Mr. Daniel Castro was living on the island at the time. According to a person by the name of Mr. Santiago Castro, 12 several days beforehand the earth rumbled and smoke rose out of the volcano, causing the villagers to feel uneasy. Then suddenly several large explosions occurred. Mt. Pagan split open on a north-south axis and lava flowed out, burning down groves of trees. Just then, Mr. Castro says that a Japanese steamship “Hôyô Maru” that happened to be passing by caught an SOS from the Coast Guard, and the Japanese ship rescued all fifty-three civilians. After that the island became completely devoid of people. After that, transportation to the island was only by means of one twin-engine plane owned by someone from Saipan. For the occasional visitors to the island, the owner of this charter airplane constructed a simple hut that served as lodging where he had two native inhabitants stay. Now one can visit by a private charter boat or a Cessna airplane, and while it Pagan Island in the Distance… 35 seems that there are several Chamorro families living there, for average people like us, from the airplane bound for Saipan the image of Pagan Island floating on the open ocean remains distant. Island of Cattle and Goats Now wild cattle, goats, and pigs breed on the island, and it is said that plants other than coconuts and other tall trees have all been eaten up by the wild animals. The snails have also completely disappeared. Once a week, local people come to take goats and pigs to sell on Saipan and Guam. Coconut crabs often appear in restaurants in tourist areas. However since their numbers have greatly declined in the wild, many such crabs in fact come from Pagan Island. In Europe, coconut crabs from Pagan are said to be prized as the “the real thing.” Pagan Island in the Distance… 36 7. Anecdotes African Snails The snails that became an important food source were not originally found on Pagan. There was a person who was raising the African snails. Every year the island was slammed with tropical typhoons, and one year when a particularly big typhoon passed by it blew the snails through the air and scattered them across the grassy fields. Two years later, the snails could be seen in all parts of the island. Right after the war started, the children of the island gathered a truck-load of snails and presented them to the military. However, the troops had never eaten things like snails, so they secretly threw them out. When fighting grew fierce and even snails were not to be obtained, the troops are said to have regretted their actions, saying, “What a waste it was to throw away those snails.” And when the war ended and everyone faced repatriation to Japan, it is said that they built a memorial pillar for the snails and said prayers of thanks to the creatures that had kept them alive. Kanaka Youth Most troops were assigned to Pagan Island from cold China, so many people suffered from poor health due to the sudden change of environment. Mr. Hattori Hideo caught malaria after landing there, and he was admitted to a field hospital. One day when he was greatly recovered, he looked up unexpectedly to see an adorable Kanaka boy standing there. He must have been five or six years old. The boy was holding a small package wrapped in a coconut leaf. “Mr. Soldier, please eat this,” said the boy in good Japanese as he handed him the package. Inside were snails cooked in oil. Somehow, it seems the boy’s mother had made him Pagan Island in the Distance… 37 take packages to the sick soldiers. Mr. Hattori had never tried eating snail up to that moment, and to respond to the boy’s kind deed he put a piece into his mouth. In an instant a raw taste came over him. He said that even though he somehow managed to swallow it, a slimy feeling remained in his mouth for around three days after that. Mr. Hattori became good friends with this boy who visited him from time to time. One time, the boy carried an octopus on his shoulders that looked like it was taller than him. With all his might, he dragged it over. “My father told me to give this to you.” Because of this generosity, everyone was able to enjoy a treat for the first time in a long while. This kind Kanaka family also fell victim to the war. While the boy and his mother were out of the house, an air raid struck. The boy’s father and the house were lost. Even now at the age of over eighty years, Mr. Hattori recalls this boy and at times the boy appears in his dreams. Although their encounters were made during a short period of time Mr. Hattori somehow feels that they were family members who shared the same blood. He marvels at this thought. A Place for Practicing A-Bomb Droppings The skies over Pagan became part of the course flown by American bombers heading to the Japanese mainland to conduct air raids. On their return trips, they would drop leftover bombs on the island which became a kind of practice area. Also, Pagan Island was used as a place for practice runs of the A-bomb dropping. Atomic bombs are different from normal bombs in that they are dropped using a parachute, so training must have been required. Strange bombs attached to parachutes were dropped on the island one after the next. And through this training, in 1945 the “Enola Gay” bomber took off from Tinian Island and headed for Hiroshima on 6 August, followed by the Pagan Island in the Distance… 38 “Bock’s Car” bomber that headed for Nagasaki on 9 August. Both airplanes dropped atomic bombs. Further still, and I do not know whether or not it is true, but it has been said that at the end of the war one American officer at the seat of negotiations was rumored to have remarked: “We dropped a real atomic bomb on Pagan Island, but owing to bad weather it failed to detonate.” Not knowing such things, people gathered parachutes and used the cloth to make things like shirts. When it was decided that all Japanese people would be repatriated to Japan, some women who had picked up parachutes came over to a certain Japanese military unit. After having been caught up in bitter fighting, everyone had a tattered appearance. The women told the troops that they wanted to make clothes out of those parachutes to wear in their homecoming and asked them what kind of attire the women back home were using. This question was so pitiful it pained the soldiers, and their hearts went out to these women. The Star-Spangled Banner and White Flags Air raids came to a dead stop after the end of the war on 15 August 1945. On 24 August, the island was overwhelmed with leaflets dropped from the sky by American airplanes. For an unknown reason, what was written on the leaflets said: “Notice to the Japanese Military, Marcus Island.” The content of the leaflets conveyed Japan’s unconditional surrender. After that on 28 and 29 August, the leaflets that whirled down from the sky were revised to say Pagan Island, and contained an order for a military envoy to be sent out on the last day of the month.13 Well, even though a discussion with the US military was called for, it was difficult to find a person who could speak English. In the end, it was a man named Okamoto Keinosuke, called the “perpetual cadet” behind his back, who was singled out for this duty. His commanding officer said to him, “Since you graduated from college, you should be able to speak English. ‘Cadet’ does not fit the Pagan Island in the Distance… 39 situation. Okay, you will now be called First Lieutenant.” With those words, Mr. Okamoto suddenly became First Lieutenant. Along with another officer, the three men hoisted a white flag and together headed toward the wharf. The American destroyer approached, and several American troops got into a boat and came closer. An American officer spoke quickly and rattled on and on. With a desperate look, Mr. Okamoto kept repeating, “Once more please.” For a while the exchange continued in this way, until suddenly Mr. Okamoto realized that the officer had been repeating in horribly accented Japanese, “are you carrying weapons?” When they expressed that they did not have anything on them, the three were taken to the destroyer. On the deck and in the cabins, American sailors had automatic rifles aimed right at them. Amidst this tension, an American Nisei14 interpreter read the thirty-seven clauses of the surrender terms to them, and the negotiations ended after two hours. And on 2 September, after the official signing ceremony, the American military expressed a desire to hoist the StarSpangled Banner on the island. Mr. Okamoto recorded a conversation from this time in his memos: American: “When did you know about Japan’s surrender?” Japanese: “We knew on the twenty-fourth from leaflets that came from your aircraft.” American: “You haven’t heard the Emperor’s broadcast?” (In what was called the Emperor’s Announcement Broadcast, on August 15th the Emperor declared over the radio that Japan had been defeated). Japanese: “No. Our radio does not work well.” American: “When you saw the leaflets, did you think it was real?” Pagan Island in the Distance… 40 Japanese: “Since they were something that came from the United States which is honorable, we did not think it was a lie.” American: “We want to put up a flag here. Do you have any tools to dig into the earth?” Japanese: “Even our hoes have already been taken to your weapons storage.” American: “Hoes are farming tools, so it is all right for you to possess them. So, where is your hometown?” Japanese: “Near Ôsaka.” American: “Is that right? I was in Kôbe for some time.” The interpreter went on to say, “you all have good luck. There were plans to storm the beaches of Pagan Island on 5 September, and fifty thousand Marines from the US mainland had been in training. You were saved by the end of the war on 15 August.” A pole was erected, and just as the national flag hoisting ceremony was about to begin, the American officer said the following: “It is all right if you Japanese officers leave here, and it will not matter if you turn your backs on our national flag.” The American military seemed to understand Samurai spirit,15 and it is said that everyone was grateful for this. Incidentally, when it came time to make the white flag that the military envoy took to the meeting, the only white cloth on hand were loincloths. But each and every loincloth was dirty. “That’s right, the commanding officer should have a new one, and so…” However, that commanding officer has since passed away. Now there is no way of knowing whether or not this part of the story is true. The piece above cites part of a story called “War’s End at an Isolated Island” within a Pagan Island in the Distance… 41 series called “War” published by the Yomiuri Newspaper in September 1976. Delicious Water After losing the war, the troops did not know what to do and many anxious days passed. Americans had put a stop to all radio communications, and with a lack of information various rumors were flying around. One rumor said that if you were in the possession of too many canned food supplies provided by the Americans, they could be confiscated upon inspection in Japan. That was why everyone threw away the kindly provided canned foods one after the next into Lake Bumei. One senior Superior officer’s directive made troops burn the diaries they had been keeping every day, saying, “It’s no good if the American military finds them.” Lance Corporal Sakamoto also obeyed this directive. With sorrow he disposed of his important diary containing such information as detailed war situations, and names and contact information of fallen comrades. Having done this, he waited for the day of repatriation. The troops were greatly delighted to learn that they were to finally board a US military vessel scheduled to pick them up on 20 October. Even though they did not know what awaited them in a Japan that had lost the war and had been reduced to ashes, they were consumed with a single-minded desire anyhow to set foot on the soil of their homeland. But why, oh why? Terrible news landed upon the ears of all who went down to the dock. Because one of the superior officers had violated a prohibition on radio communications and made contacts with the command post at Chuuk Island, those around him would have to remain on the island. Lance Corporal Sakamoto’s name was also read aloud as part of the list of people who were to remain. The troops who had been determined to remain dejectedly got into trucks that were to return to their military units. Sakamoto also rode in the truck, looking up at the sky with dismay when he heard the voice of Warrant Officer Yoshida Chônosuke: “Lance Corporal Sakamoto, Pagan Island in the Distance… 42 Lance Corporal Sakamoto, you are to return. If you don’t return, they will not know the records of the deceased. Hurry up and come to the wharf!” “If I am not riding on this ship, I may not be able to return to Japan for a while.” With the taste of this terribly trying experience in his mouth, while apologizing to his comrades he jumped down from the truck. Looking back from the landing boat heading out to the transport ship on the open ocean, he saw two trucks returning to the mountain carrying those who remained. Everyone was waving their hands vigorously from the truck beds. But Lance Corporal Sakamoto’s heart ached as he thought about their feelings and he prayed for their early repatriation, even just one day sooner. Just then the boat’s American sailor pointed his finger at Sakamoto’s canteen and gestured give me that with his hands. Sakamoto was standing under the blazing hot sun and his canteen had become hot to the touch. Anyway this water may not be drinkable, so if you want my canteen as a souvenir you can have it. When Sakamoto passed the sailor the canteen he disappeared into the boat’s interior, and momentarily came back out to return the canteen. It was cold to the touch because it was filled with extremely cold water. The surprised Sakamoto looked up with thankful eyes and silently bowed his head. The American sailor smiled and went back into the cabin. The casual goodwill of the American sailor, who until yesterday had been an enemy, made a strong impression on Sakamoto who presently took a gulp of the water. It was delicious water. It was not rainwater; it was real water. For him, this moment became a snapshot that he was never able to forget his whole life. The island gradually faded into the distance until it disappeared from view. And then after another half-year the troops who remained on the island along with civilians were returned to Japan. Within that half-year, it is said that they were seized with Pagan Island in the Distance… 43 feelings of homesickness. They would climb to the top of Battleship Island just about every day, gaze in the direction of the distant homeland, and cry as they waved a flag. One day, an American ship saw the flag and came closer, asking “what are you people?” “We are Japanese troops who remained.” “All Japanese military should have been repatriated.” Just then, the stranded people are said to have felt a sadness that is impossible to express with words. What’s more, it is said that the remaining troops salvaged and ate the canned foods that were thrown away into the lake. This story is from Mr. Sakamoto’s record in Pagantô Shubitai ki [Pagan Island Garrison
Record] published by the All-Pagan Island Veterans Association. Mr. Sakamoto Masao’s record was cited. Cigarettes The American military conducted physical inspections as well as inspections of personal belongings. One particular soldier unbuttoned Japanese soldiers’ shirts himself if they ignored his order to undo their own buttons, and when the inspection was over he buttoned them back up for them. At times when they would take out empty cigarette cases from their storage containers, American troops would take two or three cigarettes (Camels) from their pockets and put them into the empty cases, then store them back with a wink. When they found children, they would give them chocolate or chewing gum. They would also clip their fingernails that had been left growing long. It is said that those who witnessed this kind of scene would talk about it and unanimously agree that, had the position been the other way around, [the Japanese military] could not have Pagan Island in the Distance… 44 taken such attitudes. The signing of the surrender documents had been done, but they became prisoners of war only on paper and were supplied with things like California rice, corned beef, and sardines in oil. It was exceptional, mild treatment. Miss Pagan On the island there was a popular beauty known as Tama-chan. She was a fair-skinned and plump sixteen-seventeen year-old cute girl. Tama-chan was the object of the affections of the troops all over the island. She was so popular everyone ended up naming their pet goats, pigs, and chickens that their units were raising after Tama-chan. Even now, a certain soldier becomes enraptured when he tells stories about Tama-chan. In his memory, she wears a one-piece dress and rides a kareta [cart] hitched to a white ox. She appears slowly as she comes out from under the shadow of a coconut tree. He says he looked forward to seeing Tama-chan in such a manner every morning as she went to draw water. After the war Tama-chan returned to her hometown, and to this day she is said to be living happily. The Fallen Zero Fighter In 1993, a discussion was raised about transporting one Zero Fighter airplane to Saipan. This plane made a forced landing and remains to this day at Pagan Island. More than ten years ago, the Japanese owner of a marine sports hotel in Saipan had seen the airplane when he stopped by Pagan. He thought he might want to put the airplane on exhibit in his hotel’s garden. This idea was immediately brought before the Northern Mariana Islands Legislature, and initially the matter was to be investigated. As the owner’s representative, Kamisawa Yoshiaki chartered an airplane and left for Pagan. They descended onto the landing strip that had been half-buried under lava from previous Pagan Island in the Distance… 45 volcanic eruptions. The Zero Fighter in question was lying on the ground in a pitched-forward position after having jumped over the runway. Its legs were broken, and the tip of the propeller was bent. Also, within the span of ten years someone had made off with the wings and a third of the fuselage had been cut off. Owing to these conditions restoration would have been extreme, and in the end just the cost of transporting it to Saipan was enough to cause this topic to fade away. There remains one eyewitness account from the Pagan Island Garrison Signal Unit attesting to the conditions of this Zero Fighter’s forced landing. A communication cylinder was dropped from a friendly plane. It said, “Tomorrow (estimated to have been 13 June) at three o’clock pm, the forced landing of friendly airplanes is expected. It is requested that you consider preparations of the airport.” Without hesitation, throughout the night potholes were repaired on the landing strip and the auxiliary roads running through the lawn, and somehow or other it was made usable again. As had been stated in the advance notice, two or three damaged friendly airplanes landed but were chased by enemy airplanes that proceeded to drop bombs mercilessly. And, up in the sky, damaged friendly aircraft were being shot down. There was nothing to be done but gaze up and watch the enemy planes take an invincible posture as they flew away leisurely. Aside from this Zero Fighter, one Army Type 97 Bomber and engines from ten other aircraft still sleep quietly at Pagan Island even today. They are those destroyed by fire caused by shooting from American military airplanes immediately after forced landing. This story references a record written by Kamisawa Yoshiaki that was printed in The Pacific Society Bulletin number 59/60 in October 1993. Pagan Island in the Distance… 46 8. Exploring Pagan Island Nowadays Pagan is a deserted island. After the war, however, there are records of Japanese visiting the island a number of times. Also, there are local people who use the island as hunting grounds for coconut crabs, goats, and pigs. I have heard that a small-scale cruise tour goes up there on an irregular basis. I have made an attempt to consolidate the records known to me about Japanese people who visited the island. ♦People who Visited Pagan Island ♦ ♦Kanetaka Kaoru (Writer, 1928-present). Although the date is unknown, it appears that writer Kanetaka Kaoru has visited Pagan Island. One of her books is said to include the following anecdote: while she was on the island a local guide asked her, “would you like to go to a hot spring?” ♦First Infantry Battalion (War Comrades Association) June 1979. Six members of the War Comrades Association went to Pagan Island. This was before the volcanic eruption, and they are said to have used the hot springs. ♦Field Hospital (War Comrades Association) November 1979. Seven members of the Field Hospital went to Pagan Island. ♦Kayama Yûzo (Actor) Immediately after the volcanic eruption. While collecting footage for a TV show on a yacht cruise, this group by chance passed nearby Pagan Island and decided to change plans and go ashore. Wreckage such as anti-aircraft guns, Zero airplanes, and the former public elementary school building were recorded on camera. ♦Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV) Camera Crew, May~June 1989. Hattori Hideo Pagan Island in the Distance… 47 and eighteen other members of the Pagan War Comrades Association conducted a survey for half a month in search of remaining Japanese soldiers. Mr. Hattori’s detailed report appears on the “Pagantô No Bunshû” [Pagan Island Anthology] portion of the website. ♦Chiba Prefecture Survey Group, 21 April 1991. The Chiba Prefecture Survey Group made the voyage to Pagan for the purpose of a Mariana archipelago survey of plants and animals. This document, called “Records of an Expedition to the Northern Mariana Islands” [Kita Mariana
Shotô Tanken-ki] (Asakura Akira, editor, A5 format, 368 pages. Fixed price: book 3,398 Yen + tax),” is sold by Bun-ichi Co., Ltd. ♦Kamisawa Yoshiaki visited the island on September 25, 1992 in order to survey the remains of the Zero Fighter on Pagan. Its condition was published in the following year’s Pacific Society Bulletin No. 59/60. In the section, “Anecdotes,” a detailed report has been posted. ♦Monden Osamu (Journalist) visited the island for a special photography feature for the weekly magazine Asahi. ♦The Most Updated Information on Pagan Island ♦ On 29 January 2001, I received an e-mail from a Cessna airplane pilot named Ogata-san. (excerpted) I have read your website on Pagan Island. I had been undergoing pilot training for private use at a flying club in Guam, and the president of the club said that he had been to Pagan Island two or three years before with two other pilots. He said that unfortunately the airstrip there had become shorter due to a lava flow, but not too short for the Cessna to land. If necessary, shall I confirm whether or not any photographs, etc. might exist…? This email gave me a chance, and I was fortunate to have opportunities to hear various stories from Mr. Shimomura Hiroshi and from his fellow flyers who made separate visits to Pagan Island in the Distance… 48 Pagan Island on a Cessna in September 1996. A person whom I met at that time, Osakabe Tomoyuki, visited Pagan Island in March of 2001 and Yanobu Mineyasu visited Pagan Island on 7 April of that year. Both men kindly shared their experiences in the “Minna no Koe” [Everyone’s Voices] portion of the website. After that, permission to enter the island became difficult so no one visited, but in August 2007 Mr. Koyanagi Atsushi of Micronesian Aviation Systems’ Tokyo Office visited the island. Below I introduce records of some of the aforementioned visits to the island. ♦Shimomura Hiroshi, 22 September 1996. Traveled from Guam to Pagan Island on a Cessna airplane. Mr. Shimomura’s full records appear at the end of this section in sub-section 8.a. ♦Mr. Osakabe Tomoyuki, 20 March 2001. Traveled from Guam to Pagan Island on a Cessna airplane. Mr. Osakabe’s full records appear at the end of this section in sub-section 8.b. ♦Mr. Koyanagi Atsushi. 17 August 2007. Traveled from Guam to Pagan Island on a Cessna airplane. Mr. Koyanagi’s full records appear at the end of this section in sub-section 8.c. In this series of events, I received communications from Mr. Motoyoshi of Micronesian Aviation Systems, which has offices in both Guam and Saipan. For those who may desire it, this company offers consultations about travel to Pagan Island. I strongly encourage interested parties to contact this company via the information below. ♦MAS Tokyo Office (Koyanagi Atsushi, Representative). From within Japan: Phone: 03-5548- 1811. IP Phone: 050-1201-8811. Cellular Phone: 090-9390-8565. E-mail: no.1 ♦MAS Saipan Office: As of September 2006, this location was preparing for reopening Pagan Island in the Distance… 49 ♦MAS Guam Office. Phone: 671-649-9595. E-mail: mm. Website: http://www.ifcguam.com 8a. Mr. Shimomura Hiroshi’s Records On 22 September 1996, Mr. Shimomura Hiroshi visited Pagan Island. It was an adventurous flight because he had little information about the island and he did not really know much about the condition of the landing strip. Mr. Shimomura really loves airplanes, and he rides various kinds of airplanes around the world. This flight was one that could have been made only by someone with his kind of knowledge and experience. Mr. Shimomura’s comments: I went to Pagan Island in September 1996. The aircraft was a 1209V, and traveling companions included a PIA captain Mr. Satô, and ANKA 320 captain Mr. Hamazaki. It took us two days to reach Pagan because we had to stay on Saipan overnight. Pagan Island in the Distance… 50 ♦This is the Cessna airplane that carried Mr. Shimomura’s group to Pagan. This area looks like a plain field, but this is the landing strip on the island. Currently about half of the landing strip is buried under lava, but the Northern Marianas government has been planning to extend the field starting in 2002. ♦Left photo: Immediately following a forced landing, this Army Type 97 Heavy Bomber went up in flames after being gunned by American airplanes. ♦Right photo: An abandoned Zero Fighter that made an emergency landing at the side of the landing strip. It still rests on Pagan Island, exposed to wind and rain. Pagan Island in the Distance… 51 ♦ Left photo: A result of the influence of the volcano, black sand beaches such as these are particular to Pagan Island. ♦ Right photo: A Japanese Navy air-raid shelter. ♦Many Japanese and employed local people fell victim to the demands of the construction of the airport that had started around 1935. This Junshoku-hi [Memorial to Deaths in the Line of Duty] expresses sympathy for those people. Even after the war had begun, people risked their lives defending the landing strip that was being damaged in the daily bombings. 8b. Mr. Osakabe Tomoyuki’s Records On 20 March 2001, Osakabe Tomoyuki visited Pagan on a Cessna airplane while he was receiving training on Guam to be pilot for private use. This flight was made along with Micronesian Aviation Systems staff members as a part of his training. Mr. Osakabe’s comments: Pagan Island in the Distance… 52 At Pagan, we approached from the south and circled along the east side to make the landing from the north. After we landed, I placed a new five hundred-yen coin on the “Junshokuhi” [Memorial to Deaths in the Line of Duty] foundation, placing a stone on top of it so that the wind would not blow it off. We were there for just under two hours, so we did not go to the north side of the airport. According to Instructor Shimomura, wrecks of old Japanese military equipment have been left near the north or northwest side of the airport. As for remnants of the lives of the old-time islanders, I saw only the well near the sandy beach west of the Junshoku-hi [Memorial to Deaths in the Line of Duty] and remains of its neighboring concrete building (?), and an air-raid shelter (?) and pillboxes (?) east of the airstrip. There was probably something else to be found if one walked atop the lava, but the footing was too poor to fancy a stroll upon these rocks. I thought there was a lake at the base of the mountain so I searched for it, but I did not find it (but I found Lake Raguna). We could not fly low over the lava rocks because lava dust was easily stirred up, and so we were not able to check the remnants of buildings buried in the lava. *Records of Mr. Osakabe’s experiences are also reported in the “Minna no Koe” [Everyone’s
Voices] section of the website. Pagan Island in the Distance… 53 ♦Left photo: Visible straight ahead is Pagan Island lying on the surface of the sea. Standing solitary on the right side of the island is the Mt. Pagan of recent eruptions. The rugged topography on the left side is the southern highlands. ♦Right photo: A close-up of the southern highlands. During the eruption, volcanic smoke also rose from these highlands. ♦Left photo: Battleship Island is the narrow protrusion in the middle, while Apan Bay is on the right and Shomushon Bay on the left. In the interior is Mt. Pagan. ♦Right photo: A view from the northern part of the island. Pagan Island in the Distance… 54 ♦Left photo: A view from Shomushon Bay as we preparing to land. ♦Right photo: A rare sight in the Mariana archipelago, the black sand beach of Shomushon Bay. ♦Left photo: This is probably something from the Mountain Artillery Company. We are checking into this. ♦Right photo: Wreckage of a Zero Fighter on the side of the landing strip. People have tried to take this wreckage with them a number of times, but to this day it still rests in this position. ♦ Left photo: Remnants of dropped bombs that remain around the landing strip. They attest to the terror of the air raids of those days. Pagan Island in the Distance… 55 ♦ Right photo: The Cessna airplane of Mr. Osakabe’s group. Looking from this angle, it appears as though they landed on a surface that was more of a plain field and less of a landing strip. A safe return is above everything else. 8c. Mr. Koyanagi Atsushi’s Records On 17 August 17, 2008, Mr. Koyanagi Atsushi visited Pagan Island. Mr. Koyanagi Atsushi’s Comments: In the Guam area it had been unseasonable weather much like Japan’s rainy season. Yesterday from around before noon the weather improved so we departed Guam on a journey that would serve also as a training flight. We stopped at Tinian in order to refuel. We continued on, taking a slightly higher altitude at sixty-five hundred feet. While looking sideways at the small islands below, four hours passed before we arrived at Pagan Island. There were lots of clouds around the island only. I think this was because Mt. Pagan was emitting something like volcanic fumes (?) which readily provide for cores of aqueous vapor in the surrounding environment. We were short on time on this trip, so we settled on scoping out only the condition of the airport and the surroundings of the island. However, a landing would have been sufficiently possible. We had decided that if the weather turned foul along the way we would give up and turn back, but luckily there were no sudden weather changes, and we were able to make the trip there and back without incident. Pagan Island in the Distance… 56 ♦View of Mt. Pagan from Apan Bay ♦A rock in the shape of a tunnel. Pagan Island in the Distance… 57 ♦In the foreground are black sand beaches particular to Pagan Island. ♦Mt. Pagan wrapped in greenery. Pagan Island in the Distance… 58 ♦The cliffs at the island’s southernmost point. ♦The webpage below has many more pictures. http://www.skyclear.us/pagan.htm Pagan Island in the Distance… 59 9. Songs of Pagan Island A military doctor at the time, Mr. Oda Tatsumi wrote down a song that Kanaka people sang on Pagan Island. The song is said to have been really monotonous, and was like a Buddhist invocation. While these are the product of memory, which is a little unreliable, I introduce them here along with Mr. Oda’s translation of the words. (Original verses are only numbers 1 and 3). Kanaka Song 1. Andeshidê umana (Before the dawn) haguha- fudaidai fui (I dreamed of you) ankaurû zugi maigohô (When I got up) manbusuzû manjiâ fuâ (I was so very tired) 3. Purohagô na taigenî (Because of you) iiîtâ tautau hô (my body) manpûsu mina shoku shoku (has lost this much weight) tifu tsûgu kaufu matai (I think I may die). 2. So cruel, [your requests] to do your things/ day and night, I cannot sleep. 4. If I could, I would become a little bird / and sometimes fly to where you are Based on the musical score that Mr. Oda jotted down, I have reproduced this Kanaka song by a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) file. Click on this link to listen to this song. Pagan Island in the Distance… 60 ♦Regarding this “Kanaka Song,” I received this e-mail from Mr. Watanabe Yô in Chichijima, Ogasawara [Bonin] Islands. I arrived at your webpage when I searched for Anatahan. Your website is a solid piece of work and I am moved. The Kanaka song on the “Songs of Pagan Island” page is still sung to this day here in the Ogasawara Islands by the name “Before the Dawn.” The original verse does not remain, but the translated poem is pretty much the same as this one. However, the melody appears to be rather different. Other than this song, there are also songs like “Dugout Canoe” and “Lemon Grove” that are deemed to have come from the south. There are probably other songs that people who used to live in Pagan Island would remember. A CD recently came out entitled, “Bonin Islands Old Song Book.” If you give me your address I will send one to you. Musically the album has been substantially arranged, but I think you will be able to grasp the original feelings of the songs. Pagan Island in the Distance… 61 Bonin Islands Old Song Book – I received this CD after taking up Mr. Watanabe’s kind offer. It seems that this song is being sung in Ogasawara as a substantially refined folk song like others in the album. The songs on this CD are arranged in a modern style and are an easy listening experience. You can buy it at places like Amazon.com. Search for it by typing in [or
copy and paste] “小笠原雇用集” [Ogasawara Koyôshû] [Translation editor’s note: only
searching the Japanese characters will produce an accurate search result] (Okamoto Mariko, 30 January 2002). ♦CD Recorded Tracks 1. Dugout Canoe 2. Urame ~ Before the Dawn ~ Urame 3. Lemon Grove 4. 5th Street, Palau 5. For Oyado ~ Postlude [recessional hymn] 6. NINBO 7. Humpback Whale’s Song 8. Urame ~ Uwadoro ~ Gidai 9. KAKA 10. Song of the Ending Dance apu’tairan ♦Mr. Yoshii Shigekazu who used to be in the Pagan Island Garrison gave me Kanaka songs he heard on the Island. Love Song Beneath the blue moon, nostalgia for whispers of love, the scent of bananas. Parting Song …To the (so-and-so) island, you and I will travel far away and will live in secret. Ahhh, Spirit of Ramune (said to be some kind of a god). Mr. Yoshii says that a youth named Juan Taitano from a Kanaka family of Spanish descent used to sing these songs. He says that Juan Taitano had a wife and child, and that every day he would come to Mr. Yoshii’s unit to give them tuba [coconut wine]. ♦ A song was made from Mr. Jahana Yoshiharu’s poem contained in the anthology “Pagantô Pagan Island in the Distance… 62 hikiagesha no tsudoi” [Pagan Island Repatriates Gathering]. “The Pagan of My Memories” That star on this night of a hazy moon its faint light flickers on and off Like the image of my childhood friend calling the past to mind from a distance Many years have passed away Where is the small southern island now? Where I would hide my body in the shade of a coconut tree Cape Pagan I yearn for you That island wrapped in coral Is now a beloved memory Santate and the peak of the volcanic eruption Short-lived and gone, leaving only sadness ♦ This is an original song called “The Pagan Island of My Memories.” By all means, try listening. Pagan Island in the Distance… 63 1. That star on this night of a hazy moon/ Its faint light flickers on and off Like the image of my childhood friend/ Calling the past to mind from a distance 2. Many years have passed away/ Where is the small southern island now? Where I would hide my body in the shade of a coconut tree/ Cape Pagan I yearn for you 3. That island wrapped in coral/ Is now a beloved memory/ Santate and the peak of the volcanic eruption/ Short-lived and gone, leaving only sadness Pagan Island in the Distance… 64 10. Pagan Island Anthology This is the section where I introduce contributions from people with a relationship to Pagan Island. I made requests to soldiers and civilians who used to live on the island to spell out their experiences. Contributions are not reported chronologically, and the dates that appear at the end of each story indicate when it was posted on this webpage. “The Special Attack Corps that Fell into the Open Ocean Around Pagan Island,” by Yumita Chôko, (sixty-eight years old) from Tokyo My raba-san [lover] daughter of the chief She is black in color but a beauty in the South Seas In the shadow of coconuts a stomping dance Dance, dance who would become the bride Of the one who does not dance?16 The soldiers used to sing this a lot, so I memorized this even though I was a kid. Every year when the anniversary of the end of the war draws near, stories about the war are broadcast on television. During the summer of last year, without thinking I turned on the television. What was playing was a program about an elderly person named Ms. Torihama Tome. During the war, Ms. Tome was operating an eatery in Kagoshima, Kyûshû. Just about every day she would send off young boys in the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps heading for battlegrounds in the south, only after feeding them lots of delicious food with the kind of spirit a mother would extend to her own child. One day shortly after that, I turned on the television again this time to see Ms. Tome’s daughter Akabane Reiko singing a Korean folk song arirang on a program about young Korean men who went to the battlegrounds. And then once more on a different day, without thinking about it I was flipping through the channels when Akabane Reiko’s program was on once again. Pagan Island in the Distance… 65 The story featured was about a young man in the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps, I think he was called Major Mitsuyama Fumihiro. The Major announced his departure: “If I die, I will surely turn into a firefly and come back home.” As expected, he was killed in the war. On all three occasions, it was not that I had known about this program but it just appeared by chance when I aimlessly turned the dial on my TV. This gave me a weird feeling. Then gradually I began to feel like the people of the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps were calling out to me. In spite of myself, it finally made me want to pick up a pen to write down my story. During the wartime on Pagan Island, my elder brother Ryôzaburô and my elder sister Tamako17 went out to harvest sweet potatoes, when an enemy airplane spotted them. They were bombed by a B-29. This is when they thought they might be separated from their parents. Ever since then, whenever they heard an airplane sound, even a faint one from far away, they would pull their younger siblings’ hands with such a force as if to pull them off and together dash toward the airraid shelter. However, I was a tomboy and my elder brother Kôsuke and I would run off to a vantage point near the air-raid shelter. From there we could see fields of melons and watermelons and the air was filled with the sweet smell of melons. Japanese pampas grass grew thickly over our heads, and it was a special hiding place for my elder brother and me. My elder brother and I saw many things at this hideout—Japanese fighters taking off and flying out of the airport, appearing from the direction of Battleship Island over the wide expanse of ocean, then immediately being attacked by American battleship artillery guns and by enemy aircraft machine guns. Yet attempting to hurl themselves into the enemy with black smoke rising in plums the Japanese small aircraft lost their balance and somersaulted, falling into the water, one after another. So, these were the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps. Pagan Island in the Distance… 66 Was not Major Mitsuyama of Akabane Reiko’s story included among those who perished in their fighter planes that plunged in the waters around Pagan that my elder brother and I watched almost on a daily basis? Are not those people whom Mrs. Torihama Toma saw off to battle also resting in the aircraft that sank into the sea around this island? I started to have such feelings after these three coincidences. There were also one or two American airplanes that fell into the ocean, but the Americans went out to search using boats and airplanes from morning until dark until they found the corpses. This difference caused me bitter disappointment, and this feeling of disappointment from those days still lingers in my heart. Sadly, the elder brother with whom I saw all these things went to heaven at the age of seventy-one in April 2001. It is regrettable; had he lived a little longer, we could have talked about this and other things. Posted 17 October 2002 “Daifuku Mochi: Rice Cakes Stuffed with Sweetened Bean Jam from an Unknown Pagan Comrade,” by Okamoto Eiko, (sixty-eight years old) from Kanagawa Prefecture I was six years old. We moved from Saipan to Pagan. I was in the first grade at Garapan Primary School.18 My memories of Saipan are white—the dress with lots of white frills and the white hat. The white uniforms of the Navy men. The white veils of the Catholic nuns. White roads. White houses. The white colors in the rays of the hot sun. There was a large breadfruit tree in the yard at my house that grew breadfruit as big as a child’s head. A lizard more than one meter long with green skin and white spots would occasionally walk by with heavy footsteps. One day, my father and mother who were both teachers were assigned to the isolated Pagan Island. Mother appeared to be opposed to it. The small wooden boat, when the sail was hoisted up, traveled fast. It was a three-day journey by boat. I could see the small, deep green colored Pagan Island across the blue, blue ocean. A black volcanic peak rose up, and coconut Pagan Island in the Distance… 67 trees lined the coast. The waves that broke over the coral reef were white in color, but the sand on the beaches everywhere was gray. I jumped onto a small concrete pier. In the small ponds of ocean water in the spaces among the rocks, I could see countless cobalt colored fish about the size of my pinky finger swimming in schools. On the black sand beach, the shells of the sakuragai19 were wet with seawater and sparkling in a mixture of colors of red, orange and pink. I forgot all about my small anxieties, and Pagan Island became my lifelong hometown. There were two classrooms at the school. From elementary school to the second year of advanced courses, there were around forty pupils. Made of wood, the floor was elevated and the corridors wide. Father’s rallying cry would echo during physical exercises, accompanied by the sound of the organ played by Mother. I do not have any memories of our studies, but I was secretly imitating characters that had been skillfully written by Tomoko, who was later killed by a bomb during an air raid. Many classes consisted of doing things outdoors—such as riding on the school’s bull cart and helping to pick cotton, or tending to the cattle and goats we raised. There was frequent laughter from faces darkened by the sun as we jostled together in the daytime under the hot, hot sunshine. Night. When you extinguished the lamp on moonless nights, there was pitch-black darkness. But there was no fear in spite of my childish mind. The ocean was always making soft noises. The rustling of coconut leaves was a lullaby. The beauty of moonlight nights was striking. Brilliantly and without a sound, the moonlight would pass through my body. I thought it was the light of the gods. In the forest below the cliff, there were wild bananas, oranges, mangos, lemons, and pineapples. I would figure out the time when they would ripen and then go to pick them. Tropical almond20 trees bore lots of small-sized green fruits that gave off a sweet odor, and beautiful jewel beetles with a glittering prismatic rainbow color would gather around these trees. Pagan Island in the Distance… 68 Later on at the Hôryû-ji Temple I saw the same beetle’s wings on a zushi. 21 The surprise made me fixate on memories of Pagan Island far, far away. For an excursion, we went to the other side of Mt. Pagan to Lake Bumei at the foot of the mountain. There was no map nor was there a path through the thicket of Japanese pampas grass, so elder boys made a path for us by using hatchets to cut the grass. Filled with a spirit of adventure, I strained hard to follow along behind them. We arrived at Lake Bumei. The mysteriousness of the place came from the scenery that made you swallow your breath. A cobalt blue lake sunk secretly beneath the sheer cliffs. Wild goats ran across the steep cliffs. Birds large and small whirled about without making a sound. There was also a crimson-colored strawberry finch.22 There were hot springs, and steam was coming out of a small pool of standing water. I also cannot forget the long-distance swim with all the students participating. We loaded up a boat with our lunch of bananas and steamed potatoes. The small pupils either rode in the boat or swam in the water around the boat. Reliably, the big guys were entrusted to keep watch over the group. Everyone strained hard to swim. Before long, the Navy and Army began to be stationed on this peaceful island and construction on the airport and military positions here and there got underway. The pupils were not aware of the impending disquiet and everyone spent their time on ruckus play. As part of military plans, school was relocated three times. As the tide of war approached, I saw armadas pass by on the distant open ocean, and at times shadows of submarines. At that time we had yet to know the terror of air raids. Was that around the time that fierce fighting was going on at Saipan, just before the gyokusai defeat? The first air raid in the early morning of 12 June 1944 started days of hellish destruction on the island. That day was a boundary in time—the school disappeared, friends became Pagan Island in the Distance… 69 separated, and those happy, laughing voices were extinguished from the island. For fear of daily air raids, we did not look up at the sun but drew our every breath in secrecy underground. Our food was sweet potatoes, wild bananas, papaya stalks, and snails. Somehow we extended our lives eating these things. Then one day, an American airplane distributed leaflets with poor sentences written on them saying that Japan had lost. Peaceful daylight hours returned to Pagan Island, and the laughing voices of children echoed once again. We were repatriated in March of the year following the end of the war. I wrapped Pagan Island tightly, deep inside my heart, and said sayonara to the island. March. The wind blowing down from Mt. Akagi in Gunma Prefecture was cold. For the first time I experienced frostbite on my hands and feet. When I had time I went out on a footpath through the rice fields to pick edible wild grasses. We boiled them and put them into steamed buns to increase the quantity of food even just a little. One such day as I was picking grasses next to a big farm house, a girl approached me and handed me five pieces of daifuku mochi [soft rice
cakes stuffed with sweetened bean jam] wrapped in a piece of newspaper. It was real food, the likes of which I had seen once long ago. She told me that she had told the Pagan Island stories I had talked about in the classroom to her father, also a repatriate from the island. Upon hearing the name Pagan, I shed big tears that fell on the package. There had been times on the island when in order to eat we had to scramble over food that had become scarce. I did not know his face or his name, but he was one of the island comrades. It is heartrending when I think about far, far away Pagan Island but when I recall those cakes from that day Pagan Island comes vividly back to life with happy memories. Posted 5 April 2002 Pagan Island in the Distance… 70 “Memories from Emigration to Repatriation,” by Yumita Chôko, (sixty-eight years old) from Tokyo Memories In 1936, my family moved to Tinian Island. My father (Bannai Torao) had gone to the island ahead of everyone else, so seven of us including Mother (Rinoi), my grandfather (Yagoji), four children including me, and our house helper left on the long boat journey for Tinian. The eldest boy (Shin’ichirô) who was fourteen years old at the time was left behind in order to pursue his studies at the home of our maternal uncle in Tokyo. The siblings who went to Tinian included Tamako (age ten), Kôsuke (age seven), Ryôzaburô (age five), Chôko (me, age three). The following year in 1937 came the fourth boy Rokurô, then after moving to Pagan Island the third girl Tadzuko came along in 1940, and the fifth boy Toshio was born in 1943. Also the sixth boy Kiichi was born in Tokyo in the middle of the repatriation process in 1946. I was three years old at the time and too young to have any memoires from the boat. The only thing I remember was when we descended onto the pier upon arriving at Tinian, an auntie with an unfamiliar face gave me a perfectly red apple and a round candy on a stick with a crystal sugar coating. Even now after more that sixty years have passed, I still cannot forget that first time I ever sniffed the scent of an apple. Two years later, my family moved from Tinian to Pagan. I also don’t have any memories from this time, but after moving to Pagan when I was five years old a very large typhoon hit the island. Our house blew away, coconuts were scattered all over the place, and the leaves on trees had all been blown away. I remember shaking with fear. This is my first memory of Pagan. Having lost our house in this typhoon, this time we moved to the location that was the farthest from the school where we settled. The place, called either Santate or Hafebo, was located at an elevated spot, so if you looked either east or west you could see the ocean. The twenty- Pagan Island in the Distance… 71 meter walkway from the gate to the house was lined in pine trees, and when you went under the shade of the trees you could hear the pine leaves rustling as they swayed in the cool, piercing wind. It was like heaven. When one took cover under the shade in this southern island, a crisp wind blew and there was no need for air conditioning. It was a long, long commute along the road from this house to school. To keep up and not lose to my elder sisters and brothers, I always ended up trotting along behind them. Then on the way back from school, my friends and I climbed mango trees and picked mangos. We searched for the oranges and pineapples that were ripe by smelling them. If we were thirsty we would climb coconut trees and pick coconuts. If there were islanders nearby, they peeled off the skin for us and we drank the coconut milk. By the time we arrived at home we were full. Some of my most important memories were formed along that distant, long road that I used to travel like this with my friends. Something also happened at the row of pine trees23 in front of my house. In order to defend Pagan at the time when the war drew near, soldiers were stationed in each area. They put up a tent near the row of trees and were cutting a pine tree. When Father told them he had been taking good care of the pine trees as protection against typhoons, a person probably with the rank of sergeant sat him down and beat him. My elder brother Kôsuke must have thought this unreasonable because, although the trees belonged to our family, Father had been beaten. He ran over to the commanding officer passing nearby, military sword hanging and leather boots squeaking. The commanding officer listened as Father’s situation was explained to him, and he got angry saying all of this in spite of the military’s indebtedness to civilians. Before long the troops moved to another location. Pagan Island in the Distance… 72 Compulsory Labor Sometime before my third year in school or maybe later, since most farming families cultivated cotton, every day the students went out to help with this task. Today was the day to pick cotton at my family’s place. The perfectly white soft cotton bloomed so full they seemed like they might spill over. The day was finally ending as elder brothers and sisters and I stuffed cotton into the baskets that hung from our hips. Tomorrow was the day we helped the Nihei family. My younger brother was still in the first grade, and he had to go to the distant school all by himself. I heard that just on that day my younger brother said he absolutely did not want to go to school, and cried saying he would not leave, but my mother scolded him and made him go. While we were taking a short rest after arriving at Mrs. Nihei Yôko’s house, we saw a formation of airplanes rapidly approaching in the eastern sky from the direction of Saipan. With wide-eyed wonder, Sasaki Kazuko, Tôyama, other people and I were bewildered at the sight of so many airplanes—one, two, three…. we had just began to curiously count them, when bam bam bam the air raid came pelting down. Unfamiliar with the other family’s air-raid shelter location, we ran in all directions, ducking under the roots of a banana tree and anywhere else one could hide. First of all, the airport was bombed, and black smoke billowed up from that direction. That day the attack was over in about an hour, and I wasted no time rushing through my goodbyes and returning to my house while I had a chance. At home, my mom who had scolded my younger brother Rokurô this morning was feeling pain in her heart. She thought that exactly around the time of the air raid, he was probably passing right by the airport, so he must surely have died. However, just then Rokurô happened to come back. “Mom, I was scared. In the forest above the cliff just before the airport, an islander held me in his arms and we were hiding,” he Pagan Island in the Distance… 73 explained. There Mother was crying as she held my brother close to her, “so, your not wanting to leave this morning was a foreboding sign.” That day Father was at the most dangerous spot of all when he went to participate in the airport construction, but he returned home without even being injured. The happiness of my family at that time was unrivaled. Air Raid After picking cotton at the Nihei house, I was separated from my friends—day after day there were air raids. Mr. and Mrs. Fukabori who were school teachers and their daughters Eiko (presently Okamoto Eiko), Yumiko, and the doctor’s daughter Higuchi Masako (presently Nishida Masako) all lived right in the middle of town so I did not find out where they were taking refuge until after the end of the war. At Pagan Island where we were all living, the Americans did not come ashore and the attack was from the air and the sea. This is different from Saipan and Tinian where residents ran this way and that, and then forcibly chose death. Every morning the airplanes came at around eight or nine o’clock. Rising smoke would be targeted for bombardment, so cooking for breakfast and lunch had to be finished by about seven. One afternoon when the air raid had finished and we were steaming sweet potatoes for our troops, without a sound a reconnaissance airplane returned and saw the smoke. Soon after that, just when we realized that a fighter plane had come back, the attack began to hail down upon us. At that time I thought I was going to die and I was so very, very terrified. Even though we were with our parents every day, the thought of parting with my parents and dying was so horrible. Yet our troops had come from far-away Japan to the island. How they must have been thinking about their own parents and feeling sad. Even my childish heart could understand this feeling. After the daytime air raid ended, all night from dusk until the dawn my elder brother Pagan Island in the Distance… 74 Kôsuke went by kareta [ox-drawn cart] to the military headquarters in order to make a compulsory delivery of sweet potatoes. On the return path when he came close to the airport, suddenly a timed bomb exploded. My brother said he thought it was naval gun shooting from the ocean. As he desperately rushed the kareta away from that place, in his head he thought, “Ah, here I am to part from my parents and I am going to die.” Ah, war is frightening, truly frightening. Shomushon Bay After entering the month of August, airplanes came on the usual daily schedule. Nevertheless, they kept dropping bombs only on the tall ocean rocks and this seemed strange even in the mind of a child. Then on 15 August, we found out from our troops that Japan had lost to America. Pagan Island also became an American territory, and my parents’ land so vast and beyond what the eye could see had all become American property. For that reason, we all had to leave the island. In order for repatriation to happen at any time, Japanese and Okinawan people assembled at Shomushon bay where there was a pier. Then around ten Americans and one Japanese interpreter came from Saipan. The first-born boy in our family had been working at the Post Office in Saipan, and having heard that Saipan faced gyokusai my Father thought that he must have died. Father went so far as to prepare a posthumous Buddhist ihai mortuary tablet for him. However, just by chance he asked the interpreter, “You don’t happen to know a Bannai Shin’ichirô?” The interpreter is said to have replied, “Mr. Bannai is alive. I am his friend Sugano Isami from the same Post Office.” Because of the war, the family lost its reclaimed land so vast and extending beyond where the eye could see. But Father probably thought to himself that it was a matter of great Pagan Island in the Distance… 75 celebration to return to Japan without having any of his eight children die. Okinawan people and Navy and Army troops went back on the first boat. After that, I heard fifty-six troops from the main unit stayed behind. While we were waiting for repatriation at Shomushon bay, for the first time in a long while I met with my friends again. We had no classes and played every day. It was about fifty meters to the ocean, and Pagan’s black sand has a rough feel to it, so if you lie down on it you become covered in black specks just like a sesame seed rice cake. Just about every day, we went swimming and caught fish. When our troops and my elder brothers threw in a stick of dynamite, with one blast fish came floating up and turned the surface of the bay completely white. At this signal, adults and children could take a vine from the beach bindweed24 plant and drag it through the water, stringing floating fish on the vine and taking away lots of fish. I remember eating all kinds of dishes that we made from these fish. We spent each day not knowing when they would come to get us, so in order to kill time our troops decided to hold a variety show. At night they practiced and built the stage. At last the day of the show arrived. Pounding on a barrel instead of a taiko drum, they performed traditional folk songs such as the Hanagasa ondo and the Yagibushi. It was quite a lively night. That night Higuchi Masako and my elder sister Tamako danced the Hamachidori no uta [plover song] together. This song had a feeling that was exactly right for Shomushon bay. While they sang the song, we could hear the soft swish, swish, swish sound of the waves nearby. “At the seashore on blue moon night/ the bird cries as it searches for its parents/ fading away into a country of moonlight nights/ the silver-winged plover.” When I close my eyes I do not think that fifty-six years have passed and memories of my youth come flooding back to me. Pagan Island in the Distance… 76 Chocolates While we waited for repatriation, we had received food rations from the Americans. Indeed, those rations consisted only of things I had never eaten before in my life, and breakfast, lunch, and dinner were all separate. Among the rations were various things, including chocolates, biscuits, chewing gum, bread, canned meat and fish, and canned egg yolks (we made omelets from these). There were watermelon, melons, bananas and various other fruits. During and after the war there was no rice on Pagan and staple foods were wheat and sweet potatoes, so I was very surprised that the lives of Americans were so advanced. There were many people in my family, and we received many portions of rations so we thought we would make efforts to bring some of them back as souvenirs to our hometown in Japan. Other households also planned to do this. Additionally, because we would return to a cold place, one blanket per person was distributed. It was a light, good quality blanket. Then at last in March a ship came to get us, and I parted with the delightful Pagan Island. Our port of arrival in Japan was Sasebo [Kyûshû]. During the baggage inspection at Sasebo, the rationed food provisions and blankets were all confiscated citing lack of documentation. The Japanese-made blanket we were given in return was a shabby looking as if it were made totally from cotton scraps. There were many people in my family and in addition one person had become sick, so we remained in Sasebo for about one week. Then we noticed at the street stalls along the highway that they were selling those same candies and canned foods that were supposed to have been confiscated. I could not help but feel vexation over being robbed of the precious homecoming souvenirs and anger at the filth of the Japanese inspector. When we arrived in Tokyo, Mother gave birth to her ninth child. This sixth-born son was named in commemoration, “Kiichi.”25 My Pagan Island in the Distance… 77 elder brother who had returned home a little before us to Tokyo had come to meet us there. Standing before him for the first time, I was embarrassed and unable to say anything. Posted 30 January 2002 “A Short History of Pagan Island,” by Kameoka Shin’ichi, (eighty-two years old) from Fukushima Prefecture Through the Landing at Pagan Island In Konshun, Kantô Province, Manchuria, two hundred troops had been specially unitized within the Tôyama Division. They passed through Korea’s Ranan, Genzan, and Keijô [Seoul] to arrive in Fusan [Busan]. On 3 March 1944, the five thousand-ton Takaoka Maru filled with troops and supplies arrived at Tokyo bay offshore Kisarazu, having gone through Shimonoseki, the Inland Sea, and the port at Kushimoto. This was done in order to organize a large-scale transport convoy. Around that time, Tokyo Bay was conducting blackouts after dark in preparation for air raids by enemy airplanes. From Kisarazu Bay if you looked toward Yokohama or Yokosuka on the opposite shore, lamplights flickered in the dark night giving a poetic sentiment to this tension. The deckhand gathered together all members of 1st Mountain Artillery Company on the deck. They faced toward the distant Imperial Palace and sang military songs in chorus. Praying at Daybreak Oh, this magnificent transport ship Farewell to the Fatherland, may it be glorious We bow to the skies above the Imperial Palace And pledge this resolution26 This exquisite military song is a famous tune composed by Mr. Koseki Yûji, a revered senior Pagan Island in the Distance… 78 member from my home Fukushima Prefecture. It was a piece of work from when Mr. Koseki was about thirty years old. It is more of a popular than a military song, and hearing it moved me to tears. On 12 March, the transport ship convoy quietly left Tokyo Bay. In the open ocean near Izu Ôshima, an enemy submarine suddenly attacked us. The convoy’s flagship Tatsuta Maru was hit and sunk, and the convoy fell out of formation and dispersed in disarray into the darkness. On 13 March, people ranking as company commanders and above were given the signal to assemble in the cabin of the Takaoka Maru, where an order was issued to make a landing. The essence of the strategy was as follows: “Pagan Island is a main point of national defense and we shall most solidly defend and secure it as part of the Saipan-Tinian Air Base Group.” Along with this order, maps of Pagan Island were passed out. Consequently, the goal of our actions became clear. Map of Pagan Island The map of Pagan Island (I still possess this map) says it is a Naval survey of 1917. It was prepared immediately after Japan took use of the island as part of the Mandated Territory upon the end of the First Great European War.27 Using this map as a base, a summary of such military bases as the airport and others were written thereon. I imagine that around 1917 some local people lived on the island. Also, considering the precision of the map, I think the group of surveyors consisted of more than ten people for whom production took more than one month. On the map, the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pagan in 1922 was specified, along with the elevation of Mt. Pagan at five hundred sixty-seven meters. The mountains on the southern portion of the island were specified to be Mt. Maru five hundred three meters, Mt. Tsurugi five Pagan Island in the Distance… 79 hundred forty-one meters, and other nameless mountains at five hundred seventy-four meters, five hundred twenty-eight meters, and four hundred twenty-seven meters. At the island’s southern tip called Perirû [Parialu] there was the fountainhead for a hot spring. Also noted down on the map there are: two hundred Japanese; a nanga employee28 of the Nankô Suisan [South
Seas Development Corp, Fisheries], one policeman, coconut crabs, and big lizards. The entries as to two hundred Japanese, etc. had been made around 1937-39 and I believe that Nankô Suisan’s name is that of a resident representative of Nan’yô Kôhatsu Kabushiki Gaisha [South Seas
Development Corporation]. The airport and other military facilities were completed around 1938, and the residential areas and the public elementary school probably opened around that time or afterward. Civilians probably gradually increased in number around then as well. On 18 March, the Takaoka Maru arrived at Pagan Island. Using human-wave tactics, a four-ton truck and other cargo were rapidly unloaded onto the area around the wharf at Battleship Island. Now the ship appeared to move quickly. The captain and his deckhands beneath him were in formal attire as they waved their caps, saying “sayonara” in the so-called cap waving (ceremony). Thus the ship carrying remaining troops bade farewell to Pagan and left port bound for Saipan. The People of Pagan Island Pagan is an island originally born of a volcano. The whole island is covered in volcanic ash, volcanic stones and kaya29 reeds. There may be no roads, but it is not inconvenient to walk around. As far as obstacles, there was the lava that flowed out of the north side of Mt. Pagan during an eruption that formed the Garapan belt. 30 For the most part, the back side of the mountain was the Garapan belt, and there was no space for people to live in this area. At the center of the island, the eight to ten-meter-wide road was the main road that ran Pagan Island in the Distance… 80 from the southern hills of the cliffs [Gake-yama], via the peak of the cliffs [Gake-yama], then passing between the airport and Battleship Island, and leading finally to the katsuobushi [dried
skipjack tuna] factory (observatory). Directly beneath the cliffs [Gake-yama], there was a military-use road that ran from Battleship Island, passed by the southern tip of the airport, and ended up at Unai Dikiki [lit. “small beach” in the Chamorro language] on the west side.31 Along the main road there was a police substation and the public elementary school, and sandwiching the road were homes and stores numbering around thirty. Most of those shops had tin roofs, and in order to provide ventilation through the walls they were constructed as shacks. The Police Substation and the Public Elementary School If you passed by the eastern point of the airport, you would dead end at the police substation.32 Immediately to the side of this was the ocean. This building was about thirty tsubo33 in area and was painted white. One member of the police patrol, the manager and his wife lived there. There were no children. The building had an office and a main living space, and was about twenty-five tsubo. A six tatami mat-sized storeroom next door also served as a detention room. The chief and his wife were both around forty years old. They were both refined, small-statured, skinny people. They always hung bunches of bananas under the eaves of the substation. Even up to now I cannot recall the names of the chief, his wife, or the police patrol. On the west side of the arterial road was an approximately fifty-tsubo school,34 and the school grounds were relatively spacious. But then the neighborhood around the school was flat ground, and so all of the surrounding area was like an exercise field. The school principal was Mr. Fukabori, and he and his wife were both from Gunma Prefecture. The male teacher of about thirty-five years old was a gentle person, but his wife, also a teacher, was fairly outspoken and would scold troops and civilians for doing bad things. There was a large toilet at the north side of Pagan Island in the Distance… 81 the school that I would sometimes use. First Lieutenant Honda Kiyoshi of the Mountain Artillery Company had been working as a middle school teacher, so he often visited the school and had lively conversations about education. He went on an official trip to Saipan to receive weapons and construction supplies (primarily cement), but because of the American invasion he died in battle and never returned to Pagan. In January 1986, the actor Kayama Yûzô went ashore at Pagan Island during an exploration of uninhabited islands in the central Pacific on board a homemade yacht. This was five years after the great explosion of Pagan Island on 16 May 1981. According to Kayama, they saw what appeared to be a clinic and school near where the elementary school used to be and medical tools and teaching materials scattered in buildings that had been partially destroyed from being struck by lava rocks. Also, Mr. Hattori of the Mountain Artillery Company who accompanied Nippon Television Network Corporation reported as his testimony that the fallen volcanic ash had piled all the way up to the roof of the school remains. Even today, if you were to excavate the school remains, I think nostalgic relics of that era would emerge. The place called the armed forces was a place of severe military discipline, and leaving the military position was thought of as fleeing in the face of the enemy so the troops seldom had contact with civilians. My company (First Company Kameoka Unit) was in charge of the defense of a vast region that covered the airport including the cliffs [Gake-yama], the school and the periphery of the arterial road, and the area directly beneath Mt. Pagan. We would patrol each area day and night for position construction and anti-hunger measures. Because of this duty, I became somewhat acquainted with civilians and I am happy that this has allowed me to spell these memories in a manuscript just as I remember them. Posted 15 August 2001 Pagan Island in the Distance… 82 “The Island of My Birth,” by Miyashiro Seiichi, (fifty-seven years old) from Okinawa Prefecture On 20 January 2001, an assembly of Pagan Repatriates opened their annual meeting. Around thirty people participated, and a fun banquet was held where the topic of discussion was memories from a half-century ago of that paradise in the south. Each person reported on their recent conditions, and there was entertainment and informal conversations. The meeting lasted just over three hours, but it felt like no time at all. Participating seniors included my uncle Miyashiro (age ninety-one), my father Miyashiro (age eighty-eight), and young people included fifty-five year-old Mr. Shiroma and the second youngest being myself (born in 1943). Among the elders were recollections of the good old days on the island, and meanwhile I turned my thoughts toward the faraway island where I was born but have yet to see (meaning an island about which I have absolutely no memories). Since I was small I had heard I was a “South Seas returnee” but the first time I became conscious of the name Pagan in writing was during my high school entrance examinations. At that time, I got a hold of an abridged record of my family registry that said, “born at Degusa, Pagan Island, South Seas Archipelago.” Pagan was a dream island in my imagination although I had heard about through my father’s occasional stories. After I began participating in the “Pagan Island Repatriates Assembly” a few years ago, however, this place has assumed a real meaning. In addition, I saw at this year’s gathering the booklet Harukanaru Pagantô yo that Mrs. Okamoto has taken great pains to collect, edit and publish. I read the whole thing in one sitting, and I immediately accessed her website. I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Mrs. Okamoto for preparing and administering the superb website. I was introduced to this beautiful paradise when I saw it for the first time in the color photographs on the website, and I was really moved. I came to learn that, “The Island Pagan Island in the Distance… 83 of my Birth” was really a southern paradise. And a war also took place at that paradise. It remains a wonder to me how everyone on the island was able to return to Japan without injury. Nowadays it seems difficult to visit the island, but if given the chance I would definitely visit at least once. It would be nice to go while my aged father is still feeling well… Mr. Jahana Yoshiharu’s “The Pagan Island of My Memories” is a wonderful song, and it is a tune that anyone can quickly hum. I want to sing it in chorus with everyone at next year’s “New Year’s Gathering.” For the time being, I am writing this letter because I want to express that I was deeply moved by the website. I will write again. I have come to the end, but once again please allow me to express my sincere thanks to Mrs. Okamoto (system operator) for creating and administering the website. Please continue to enrich the website well into the future. Posted 24 January 2001 “The Children of Pagan Island,” by Okamoto Eiko, (sixty-seven years old) from Kanagawa Prefecture At the Pagan Island elementary school, there were about forty pupils from first grade through the second year of advanced courses. There were two classrooms and two teachers, my parents. Our family residence was a two-room house next to the classroom. It had a large wooden hallway which was our playground. The yard was big and was encircled by coconut trees. We had two round concrete water tanks for holding rainwater, and we also played on top of those. We would spend the whole day bouncing balls or juggling beanbags. When the after-school dodge ball game ended everyone went home, leaving only my younger sister and me behind. The school would suddenly get quiet. At night the sound of Pagan Island in the Distance… 84 rustling coconut leaves and the rumbling of the ocean would draw near. For my entire life after this period, I have thought of these as the nostalgic noises of my hometown. And from the school campus, the view of the beautiful sky at dusk during the sunset made the vivid shadows of coconut trees look like kirie paper cutouts. The stars that came out in the evening remain in my eyes like the brilliance of diamonds. At night there were only lamps. I slept soundly in the moonlight coming through the window. While I slept I thought of the many friends I would meet and felt joy anticipating the games we would play the next day. My memories of studies at school include the abacus, dodge ball, swimming, playing on the beach, sketching, and caring for goats and cattle to whom we were indebted because they facilitated the school’s mode of transport –a kareta [ox-cart]. Pagan was probably an island that I saw through sketching it. What vividly comes back to life are things like the papaya trees at the school, the bright red canna, 35 and the indomitable thicket surrounding pineapple fruits. I drew scenes full of dark verdure and various green colors that the sunlight would bring into view. In the middle I drew a very large papaya tree and fruits. Under that were the red canna, and on the ground I drew the low thicket of pineapples. “That’s very good.” Mother’s comment made me happy. This is the only time I can remember hearing a softness in Mother’s voice. Never content to be second best, I had many esteemed rivals. There was the talented sketch artist Moromi Kôjirô, elder-sister Tamako who was good at dodge ball, Yumita Chôko the master swimmer, Tomoko who was good at writing characters, fashionable Uchima Shizue, the strong and cheerful Hikari-chan, and many more. Everyone’s skin turned completely black from the sun. The boys had close-cropped heads and the girls had bobbed hair, and everyone’s eyes sparkled. Even now, those same eyes are staring at me in my heart. Pagan Island in the Distance… 85 The other day, I received pictures taken by a Mr. Ôhashi Yoshihito36 who used to be a pilot for All Nippon Airways international routes. The photos were of the Pagan Island volcano that he was able to see in the sky. In the vast ocean Pagan Island stood alone, and it was blowing smoke up out of the volcano. Feeling lonely and sad, I could not take my eyes off the island for long. Now Pagan Island is devoid of people because of the devastation of the war and volcanic eruptions. The rich greens of the old days have been cut in half, and the island is now covered by yellow earth. I cannot go back there to visit, but… the beauty of the quiet colors at dusk, the greenery, the flowers, the fruits, the small birds, the vivid colors of the fish and shells by the sea, and the friends with whom I played so many times… Pagan Island is my treasure. It is a treasure of the twentieth century. Posted 03 December 2000 “Living With Few Resources,” by Chino Yoshikado, (eighty years old) from Nagano Prefecture In a sudden change from the severe cold of Manchuria, I went into the eternal summer of Pagan Island. The drastic change in temperature brought about severe physical strain. Opposed to the heat during the daytime, the nights however were comfortable. Being blown by a cool breeze, viewing the Southern Cross twinkling through the shadows of coconut leaves, I thought I had come to a dream island in the romantic South Seas. I had begun to wonder if the war would really start here on this island. In no time the air raids began—they came day in and day out. But what was the most troublesome was the fact that there were not enough resources as supplies were cut off. 1. We cut down locally grown hard wood trees called Ironwood37 and used them as Pagan Island in the Distance… 86 materials for the construction of the positions. We called them American pine trees. 2. Coconuts were food sources. These were said to have been planted some time ago by the Nan’yô Kôhatsu Kabushiki Gaisha [South Seas Development Corporation] and the forests were growing in well-organized formations. We were saved by food made from the dried coconut meat called copra, coconut oil, and the inside of coconuts that ripened, fell to the ground, and had germinated. This last type of food was called “coconut bread,” because it looked like bread. 3. We made pumpkin shoots and papaya roots into pickles by soaking them in seawater. We found lots of plants growing in the wild, and sometimes we grew them ourselves. There were things like red peppers, tomatoes, yams, pigweed,38 Judas-ear mushrooms, mangos, bananas, lemons, and pineapples. Nuts could be gathered from a tree of the nut family that grew in the island’s interior resembling the Broom tree39 (we called them windbreak forest nuts). Some units made miso paste from these nuts. Among vegetables we grew were okra, tapioca, arrow root (the above-ground part resembled myôga [Japanese ginger]; the tuber below the earth included starch), pumpkins, eggplant, and melons. The vines from the sweet potatoes were cut and used for propagation. From about six months after the landing, cultivation little by little came to be on track. 4. Local Salt Manufacturing—In the shadows of the rocks by the shoreline, we would bend sheets of tin to use them as pots. Placing the makeshift pot on a wood fire and evaporating the liquid made salt. 5. Inhabiting creatures— Coconut crabs (that walk forward, not sideways), geckos, monitor lizards, snails, and rats. Once, I came across a wild honeybee nest on the inside of the Pagan Island in the Distance… 87 hollowed-out part of a tree. Each honeycomb was about fifteen centimeters by thirty centimeters, and there were about five honeycombs. We harvested the honeycombs under the darkness of night. This was a very precious item. When we tasted the honey we felt dreamy, like we had gone to heaven. However, that time we received “omimai” [courtesy calls] in the form of stings in five or six spots at the same time. 6. Fish—When the katsuo [skipjack tuna] boat would come back to the port in the evening, sometimes we gathered up what little we had in our wallets and bought one fish for two Yen. This was a precious item. With great care we hung it from the ceiling, and at times the fish during the night emitted a blue phosphorescent glow and went bad. The troops at the encampment by the shoreline were blessed with a large volume of fish killed by the shock from the explosions of bombs dropped into the ocean by enemy airplanes. After the end of the war, we were given permission to use dynamite and organized groups to collect the fish. There were times when one stick of dynamite brought one hundred and twenty or so mullet fish to the surface. 7. Diseases were Amoebic Dysentery—An outbreak occurred due to a shortage of the remedy (emetine hydrochloric acid). Tropical boils. Dengue fever. Many cases of malnutrition caused by food shortages. 8. Fuel—As part of air-defense, we were especially wary about bonfires so we made careful use of charcoal that had been removed from the earth while plowing for cultivation. These had been destroyed by fire during an eruption by Mt. Pagan that occurred some time ago. Because these were buried under the ground, large trees were unearthed in their original large form. These were used as a smoke-less fuel that was helpful since it could be used during the daytime. Pagan Island in the Distance… 88 9. Other—During the bodily inspection prior to boarding the repatriation vessel, my omamori [talisman] pouch was discovered and I was cross-examined about it. I did not know how to reply, but then I quickly said it was a ‘mascot’ and I was given the okay. An impression still remains of the local islanders as we left. Some of them saw us to a place near the dock and watched as we boarded the ship and sailed out of sight. Posted 16 November 2000 “Military Facilities on Pagan Island,” by Kameoka Shin’ichi, (eighty-one years old) from Fukushima Prefecture It is unclear when the opening or completion of military facilities took place at Pagan Island because there are no remaining records. Due to bombing by American airplanes like the Lockheed Grummans and B-24’s, on 16 June 1944 these facilities were blown away in less than 48 hours.40 Outline of Military Facilities 1. Airport—Total area eighty thousand tsubo, (with six hundred meters on its north-south axis and seven hundred thirty meters on the east-west axis).41 2. Hangar—Large enough to accommodate about ten Zero fighter airplanes. 3. Navy barracks—four buildings. 4. Fuel and Ammunition magazines—in the middle of the slope at the cliffs [Gake-yama], a cave was dug out under the precipice. Around two hundred drum cans of gasoline were stored in there. 5. Shelters—On the western end of the airport in the middle of coconut trees, there were two units in the style of pillboxes (each accommodated around twenty people). They were made of concrete. Pagan Island in the Distance… 89 6. Construction to flatten the top part of Battleship Island. 7. Wharf—It was built at the cove of Battleship Island with concrete (about thirty meters). The above facilities were planned and executed by the Navy, and if valued at the going rate (currently) this large construction would cost more than fifty billion Yen. I estimate that the number of workers required for this construction totaled one hundred to two hundred people, and the time period was around two to three years. On 18 July 1944 gyokusai happened on Saipan, the island where the administration offices existed. When Saipan and Guam also collapsed, all documents about the administration of Pagan Island disappeared. Is there anywhere one can go today to find remaining records relating to the above? Events of the era we lived through seem to have passed into oblivion in this current time of ours. In those days, the wells of the cliffs [Gake-yama] were also dug out and utilized concrete construction. It is thought that the construction occurred from around 1939 through 1941. The population of residents of Pagan Island quickly increased because of the aforementioned construction. They must have used a considerably large number of ships for bringing in the materials. The construction was based on Naval fortification regulations, so plans were concealed. Workers were gag ordered, and lips were sealed regarding all activities. Mr. K. of the Pagan Island Garrison First Company talks about having been engaged in these operations, but he has never come out with details about this construction. Including local people, the approximate population of residents of Pagan Island at that time was four hundred fifty. Including construction workers they comprised a substantial number of people, and I would imagine that there were some commercial dealings between the residents and the workers. There were even snacks. A police substation and a school must have begun to Pagan Island in the Distance… 90 operate because of the increase in the population from around that time. Posted 25 September 2000 “Sweet Potato Fields,” by Kameoki Shin’ichi, (eighty-one years old) from Fukushima Prefecture Pagan Island is made of volcanic ash from eruptions and other materials that provided for good harvest from climbing vine plants. They include melons, sweet potatoes, bananas, eggplant, watermelon, and cucumbers. The eggplant in particular was a strange plant which, unlike ones harvested on Japanese fields, grows its trunk to the size of a tree and its fruit to the size of a human head. After the fall of Saipan in July 1944 the supplies were replenished no more, and the whole island suffered from starvation. Sweet potatoes saved the situation. Originally islanders brought them in as animal food, but it oddly suited Pagan and it was found out that they could be harvested in three months. For one soldier to live on sweet potatoes it would require one tan42 [991.74 square meters] per person, so the entire island became sweet potato fields. Pagan was covered in kaya or miscanthus grass. 43 From up above, the green potato fields stood out clearly amidst the kaya and alerted American armed forces to the fact that human beings were living in that area. The fields became the target of bombings and underwent many attacks. Posted 4 September 2000 Pagan Island in the Distance… 91 “Yearning for My Hometown,” by Jahana Yoshiharu from Okinawa Prefecture Time slips forward the nights and days dash away, entering a new century unanswered love accumulates From bygone days Numerous dreams Piled up like a mountain Yet no time to speak of them Unanswered love accumulates Ah nostalgia Friends who grew up on Pagan Chasing dreams shall bring back That day and those times Looking back at the tree-lined road that is my life Sometimes degenerate a path of thorns Posted 17 July 2000 “I Will Defend to the Death My Senior Officer’s Ashes,” by Tajima Nobuo, (eighty years old) from Gunma Prefecture Death by Accident The temporary position construction had been completed, and ammunition had been made ready for gun carriages to shoot in the direction of an enemy landing at any time. We wrestled with construction of the air base’s extension that was to defend against an enemy attack. Pagan Island in the Distance… 92 Sometime around the end of April or the beginning of May, troops from each position were gathered and started using as barracks the hangar that was at the outer fence of the naval air base. Excepting that one bomb drop made by a Lockheed aircraft, uneventfully we engaged in daily airport expansion construction, which was progressing smoothly. Our main job was to load the rocks blown apart by engineer corps members into handcarts and transfer them to outside of the airport. Engineer Corps members were also blasting away rocks that got in the way of the arrivals and departures of aircraft at Battleship Island. One of those days (May 22) in these conditions, each squad was returning to the barracks after completing the day’s work when all of a sudden, an evacuation order came from the engineering troops and everybody dove underground into the evacuation shelters (open holes had been dug at several locations). Only our own squad’s Lance Corporal M. did not make it into a shelter. He was standing there looking outward and did not come inside the shelter in spite of our repeated, strong urging, “hurry, get in here.” Just as another, “hurry, get in,” was yelled, it was too late—a boulder sent flying by the dynamite blast was already coming down on his forehead, and he fell unconscious. We called for a medical orderly and a stretcher. Hearing of the incident, the company commander rushed in and said, “I am going to attend to him, and the Tajima Squad will retreat to the barracks.” We did so but felt ill at ease about the Lance Corporal’s injury. While they were carrying him to the field hospital, they say he was yelling “bakayarô” [idiot]. His head must have hurt so bad it made him crazy. We learned that immediately after arriving, he drew his last breath. All the troops listening to the news of his death suffered and mourned and said with one voice, “why did the Lance Corporal not come into the shelter?” One cannot simply call it an accidental death. His unexpected death was such a waste. We mourned over the fact that he did Pagan Island in the Distance… 93 not even think of his own safety. The following day his body was received from the field hospital, and all members of the squad went out to gather fuel. We piled his remains beneath the cliff on the north side of the cliffs [Gake-yama], which allowed us to escape the eyes of the enemy. We placed his remains wearing the same clothes he had on when he died on top of the fuel and we cremated him. We placed the ashes into a plain wood box. We laid the box to rest above our heads in our sleeping quarters, and we lived together under the same roof. Those of us in the Second Company dug a hole at a spot fifty meters from the hangar, and put in things like guns and swords, steel hats, and lace-up boots to save them from an enemy air attack that could come at any time. Those efforts were rewarded: we were able to keep our bayonets intact through the end of the war. (There were lots of other military division troops who would wear burned and rusted swords while fighting). During a subsequent air raid, I lost my lace-ups in the fire. I was wearing sports shoes with worn-out soles (Tsuki Hoshi or moon and stars brand exercise shoes44) that I had set aside for an emergency. Aside from work, I wore zori made by tearing coconut leaves. The sandals would keep up for three days and have a light feeling to them. Under Private First Class K’s guidance we prepared zori sandals for many a foot. Morning of the Big American Air Raid On 12 June 1944 the American forces bombed our military on Pagan. That day I was the non-commissioned officer on duty. After breakfast, I had assembled the patients in the largest room in the barracks along with Petty Officer S., and we were waiting for the military surgeon’s arrival when a roaring sound alerted us to an approaching formation of aircraft. Petty Officer S. had just started to say, “Today our forces are really full of spirit…” and then paused a moment Pagan Island in the Distance… 94 while he peered through his binoculars when shells started falling on the roof of the hangar with a para para para sound. It was machine gunning by the enemy Grumman plane. The Petty Officer shouted, “Enemy airplanes!! Take shelter!!” and then said, “Tajima, hurry and escape” as he ran toward the air-raid shelter. None of our airplanes were in sight. Before we knew it the Grummans were delivering air strikes as they pleased, and incendiary bombs falling on the roof of the hangar caused it to quickly go up in smoke. I tried to escape into the Navy’s air-raid shelter, but I could not get the door open no matter how I tried. Hugging the outside of the shelter, I watched the enemy’s ravaging and saw that only one of our Navy’s machine guns was making all-out efforts to fight against the attacking Grummans. I saw with my own eyes the gunner, naked above the waist, shooting down a Grumman plane and admirably exhibiting the spirit of Japanese manhood.45 (Our Navy’s machine gun at that time was not on a ship but had been mounted on land, and he kept shooting until the enemy airplanes were gone). Ashes that were Cremated Twice It seemed that the first air raid lasted for dozens of minutes, but presently the enemy planes made formation and flew far away over the open sea. Under these conditions, those from the company who had gone to work at the airport base came back. They were unharmed because they had hid under the hand carts, I was told. Just then, platoon leaders and Lance Corporal M. came running back from their reconnaissance positions and a roll call was taken. “Hey, this one is from Mountain Gun,” a voice came from Infantry. I went there to find Private First Class K., who seemed to have been hit by a machine gun bullet as he was escaping. The roll call having been made, our squad had an important job that had to be accomplished in a hurry before the second air raid came. This was to collect the remains of Lance Corporal M. that had been burned Pagan Island in the Distance… 95 when the hangar went up in flames. We went to a place where I seem to remember laying his ashes to rest with Kaneko, Yamaguchi and others. Stepping on the hot burnt ashes and rummaging in the coals with thick sticks, we somehow managed to pick out solid bones. We were able to endure the extreme heat because in the end had retrieved the ashes of the Lance Corporal. We put the bones into a duffel bag and Private First Class Kaneko carried them on his back. When we returned to our position, we placed the bones in an improvised wooden box. We laid the ashes in the underground tunnel, and thereafter even after our position changed he was still with us. Although the bones were cremated twice, among the soldiers there was a feeling of pride and satisfaction for having protected the genuine bones of Lance Corporal M. By an order from the Battalion Commander, units were dispersed and each headed to assume its position. After the gyokusai of our forces in Saipan, the American invasion of Iôtô [Iwo Jima] began. Our Pagan Island was right in the middle of the flight path of their Stepping Stone Campaign.46 Furthermore, they resorted to psychological warfare and for a while in the middle of the night the searching eyes from passing enemy cruisers threatened all four sides of the island. Until the enemy left at dawn, we were unable to sleep. The means to transport food had been cut off, and we had no choice but to plan for selfsufficiency. From that time onward under enemy forces’ air raids, while also working hard to maintain position construction, we had to do our utmost to focus on surviving by exercising our ingenuity whether it be by collecting coconuts or catching snails. We began by taking care of the abandoned cotton field where we started cultivating sweet potatoes. It was long three months until the potatoes emerged, but words cannot describe our pleasure when harvest time finally Pagan Island in the Distance… 96 arrived. Posted 12 June 2000 “The Truck and the Daihatsu Landing Craft,”47 by Kameoka Shin’ichi, (eighty-one years old) from Fukushima Prefecture On 20 October 1945, the carrier Chôun left the island for demobilization, carrying one thousand eight hundred forty-five members of the Pagan Island Garrison. On 6 March 1946, fifty-six members from the Garrison’s headquarters along with the remaining one hundred forty Japanese civilians on board the destroyer Hatsuume safely returned to Sasebo port. This was how Pagan Island became an uninhabited island. However, aside from the official record described above, twenty indigenous Chamorro people left the island to an unidentified destination. Right after the end of the war in 1945, Higa Kazuko and dozens of others made the voyage to Anatahan Island, and this was reported in the mass media with photographs of the queen of Anatahan Island… Anatahan Island was located to the north48 of Pagan Island and had abundant water and natural food. During fine weather it could clearly be seen it from Pagan Island. I wonder, isn’t there a certain number of residents inhabiting Anatahan at present? Means of Transport on Pagan There was one truck… it was a Nissan vehicle with about a five-ton capacity. It was mostly hiding under the shade of trees during air raids and not visible, but on occasions it was valuable for use in transporting heavy items. As we had no replenishment of gasoline and there was a standing policy to save resources, the truck was rarely seen running. There was one Daihatsu landing craft… it belonged to the Engineering Brigade. With a gas engine, it could accommodate around thirty members. As soon as we landed on Pagan, Pagan Island in the Distance… 97 officers of the rank of Company Commander and higher got on board to go around the island on a reconnaissance tour of island positions. It was troublesome as the waves were rough. Numerous flying fish jumped into the craft. It appeared to be an island that was both hard to attack and hard to defend. What has since become of the truck and the landing craft? They were left behind in Pagan and must have rotted away by now. Posted 10 June 2000 “In the Lemon Bush,” by Okamoto Eiko, (sixty-seven years old) from Kanagawa Prefecture Pagan Island had many wild lemon trees. The glossy yellow fruit would hang heavy in the middle of a thicket of deep green leaves. During peacetime, Mother diligently made candied lemon skins. After simmering the lemon skins gently in syrup, they become transparent like yellow jelly and would become encrusted with sugar crystals. From that day incessant air raids by B-29s began and on Pagan there was nobody living on the ground under the sun, but in underground air-raid shelters. On one such day, a quiet night came without an air raid at dusk. I had the illusion that we had gone back to the days of peace. It was as if moonlight was stinging my body. We placed a drum can in the shadows of the lemon tree thicket in the yard and the family took a bath for the first time in a month. When it was mother’s turn, I watched the fire. Then I happened to see mother’s body that was lamentably all skin and bones. I was extremely sad and was suppressing a cry. I wept so hard that my chest began to hurt. Mother had a fiery temper and I used her as a negative example. But then, even now when I hold a lemon in my hand I again become that person who wept with all her might and I long for Mother who has Pagan Island in the Distance… 98 become a star in the sky. Pagan Island is lemon in color. Posted 3 June 2000 “At the End of a Desertion,” by Sakamoto Masao, (seventy-nine years old) from Tokyo Air raids by enemy airplanes caused so much damage to the Pagan Island Garrison food supply that it was nearly wiped out. Right away all officers got together and after various discussions decided that all units would engage in position construction during the day and the production of sweet potatoes at night. This was because they had learned from island residents that sweet potatoes may be edible in two to three months. We troops from the headquarters were under the command of 2nd Lieutenant S. to gather at night to clear and cultivate the nearby land. We wrestled each evening with the work of clearing and cultivating the land that grew thick with reeds. “They intend to make us work even at night,” soldiers grumbled, yet they had no choice but to do it because it concerned the food that would be our lifeline. Into the softened earth we placed stems of potatoes given us by residents, having been told that the potatoes would grow in two or three moons. To our chagrin, however, we learned from the residents that they had been producing these seedlings for pig food. “Are we soldiers on the level of pigs?” the grumbling continued. But then again there was no choice: we had to eat before it was time to harvest potatoes. So we bought potatoes produced by the residents and cooked them with rice. It was made of two or three large-sized potatoes with grains of rice sprinkled here and there. It came with a bowl of soup made of potato stems. The soup was harsh and black, and the stuff was pig food—watery and not sweet. But once in the stomach it gave the felling of fullness. Life continued in this way for one year and a half, and even now I wonder how we stayed alive. Pagan Island in the Distance… 99 In those days there were numerous big “snails” on Pagan Island. After a rain squall, so many would swarm all over the tree trunks making them appear black. It was a disgusting sight. After we landed on Pagan and food supplies were rich, the island’s elementary school students gave us a truckload full of snails. Those on cooking duty quickly learned how to cook them and they appeared in every meal. No one, however, would touch them and they were thrown away as leftovers. Yet now when there was no food they were eating boiled “snails” calling them “delicious.” There are also many “wall lizards” [achiak, geckoes]. Sometimes they gathered because they were attracted to the sweet fragrance of bananas. So long as there was time to spare everyone was chasing “wall lizards” and, at night, roasted and ate them. Once you got used to them, geckoes tasted good in a peculiar way. There were also lots of big “rats.” Once one person made a rattrap out of a large empty can, then everyone else strove to make nezumi tori [rats
bane] by placing the cans at the back of the barracks at night. In the morning there would be big rats rattling around violently inside the cans. They would soak them in water to kill them before skinning them and removing their innards, and then roast them. Rats had the taste of suzume [gaga pale, inland sparrows]. But after one month passed all of the rats disappeared, and those empty cans sat there idly. That was the end of roasted sparrow fare. There was a remarkable weakening of the soldiers from the Signal Communication Unit who were living in the same basin as us men from the headquarters. Was this the result of the food shortage in addition to the heavy labor persisting from day to night? It would take some more time until potatoes would be produced in the potato fields that we prepared by steadying ourselves on our staggering feet. Could they endure until then? There was a small forest between the headquarters and the Signal Unit. There were lots of Pagan Island in the Distance… 100 “snails” there. During daytime work, whenever they could hide from the eyes of the commander, four or five corpsmen at a time would appear there and cook and eat “snails.” However the smoke would rise above the forest and before long enemy airplanes would begin shooting and the troops would run back. I saw that kind of thing happen almost every day. That is how hungry they were. It was a fight against hunger more than a fight for their lives. One day a soldier disappeared. Two or three days later, there was a report on the “desertion” to the headquarters. There had been several deserters who could not endure the work of position construction. But we were on a small island, and where does one desert to? They were quickly caught and shot dead. But the solider who ran away this time was not so easily caught. Was he hiding deep in the jungle? Then there was a report on the theft of a cow that had been kept by a resident. The deserter was caught in a hut he had made at a distance beyond the residence and deeper into the jungle. It had been a little longer than three months since his escape. He had killed the stolen cow and used miso paste to preserve the meat which was loaded into a barrel. The story has it that he hid the barrel somewhere in the hills and never revealed its location to the end. A few days later the Commander ordered the warrant officer to execute the deserter by shooting. But ultimately the warrant officer could not pull the trigger, so the Commander shot him. Several days after that, the warrant officer committed suicide in his living quarters in the shelter. It must have been because of his responsibility for his subordinate’s desertion. This is a miserable story. Posted 29 May 2000 Pagan Island in the Distance… 101 “Travel Accompanying Data Collection at Pagan,” by Hattori Hideo, (eighty-two years old) from Tokyo “Perusing Remaining Japanese Soldiers on a Southern Solitary Island!” It was the early morning of 2 May 1989. I received a sudden phone call from a total stranger, Producer T. of Nippon TV Information Bureau. The point of the phone call was that Producer T. during his trip to Saipan during the New Year holiday met an American who told him that he had an encounter on the isolated island of Pagan with a man who appeared to have been a Japanese soldier who survived on that island. He told me that he called me after finding out about me, Hattori, who was one of the editorial staff members of the Pagan Island Garrison Record. He had found this information after checking at the National Institute for Defense Studies, Defense Agency, back in Japan. From Narita Airport to Pagan Island After that our discussions progressed quickly. A half-month later on 19 May, Producer T, his four staff members and myself, the total of six departed from Narita Airport to Saipan. After we arrived on Saipan that afternoon, and we visited the residence of Mr. Gottwald49 (the one who had discovered the Japanese soldier) in the suburbs of Garapan, and had a discussion. Six Japanese, three Americans, and ten local members formed a three-party cooperative search team. Until 22 May, we engaged in video-taking and information collection of war remnants on Saipan, atomic bomb loading pits and others. Departure, 22 May. In total there were nineteen people in a catamaran owned by Mr. Kimo, a yacht, and the support group’s two canoes. We went from Saipan across the ocean surface to places like Anatahan and Agrihan, traveling around five islands in total. Threehundred fifty kilometers going north, the voyage lasted about thirty-five hours. We landed at Pagan Island in the Distance… 102 Pagan Island in the early morning of 24 May. I had been too excited to sleep at all on the previous night. After being away for forty-four years, Pagan Island glittering in the morning light was beautiful and dreamlike. Deeply Emotive Pagan Island This Pagan Island is a small island, twelve kilometers long and four kilometers wide. Here our two-thousand seven hundred Garrison members received relentless and remorseless attacks from the American forces and squirmed in fear of death and starvation for nearly two years. They say that even after half-century has passed, some war comrades are still living on this island. Seeing the island of Pagan before my eyes, I was simply in a daze and completely forgot my senses and words. Upon landing at the island’s wharf, right away we started a memorial ceremony for the four hundred honorable spirits50 of those who died in action and from diseases. We constructed an alter at Battleship Island and dedicated Yasukuni Shrine’s sacred sake and offerings that I had brought from Tokyo. When I put my hands together and paid homage, in a rush my heart started beating so fast I became unmanned and wept. Search Activities Start Right away we went to the southern point of the airport. As a contact place with the remaining Japanese soldiers, we saw to the installation of the Japanese national flag at that spot. Next, we rode in the helicopter rented from Saipan and scattered ten thousand handbills over the entire island. The next day, we rode the yacht around the island and called out through a loudspeaker and searched the land. The daily temperature was thirty-eight to thirty-nine degrees Celsius [over 100 degrees Fahrenheit], and every day it was a forced march under the blazing sun. Furthermore, we faced unexpected difficulties one after another. The cattle, pigs, and goats kept by the previous islanders, Kanaka, and Chamorro people had been left behind unattended Pagan Island in the Distance… 103 since the end of the war. The few thirty to forty head of livestock multiplied naturally into seven to eight hundred head of cattle that have become dreadfully wild. Because of this, we decided that it was dangerous for us to live on the land in tents. What’s more, with our small group of people we were unable to walk on the island. In 1981, Mt. Pagan repeatedly erupted on a large scale and ash that fell then made it extremely difficult to walk. During the war it took about thirty minutes on foot from Battleship Island to Lake Raguna, but we gave up walking and rode on the yacht to get to Lake Raguna. Although I really felt fatigued, I nervously anticipated that I might encounter a Japanese soldier51 who had remained, and I lost myself in just walking around. Since I left the island forty-four years ago, the battlefields and war remnants on island’s interior have remained exactly as we left them. At the airfield air-raid shelter, there was a bullet stuck [in the concrete] which had rained down in machine-gunning from a US Grumman airplane. A Kamikaze Special Attack airplane (Zero Fighter) from our Navy forces had made a crash-landing and still sat at that spot. Also still intact were the mountain gun position we built in the sheer cliffs, the sand gate, the ammunition depot and other sites we had constructed halfway up the cliffs [Gake-yama]. Since those days a half-century had brought us to the present, and as I stood there taking in the sight before my eyes on the former battlefields, there was only deep emotion. Unfortunately however, on 10 June we returned to Narita without confirming the presence of our comrades in arms. One month thereafter, from 15 to 22 July I visited the island again as a member of the second search team. No survivors were found, however. Regarding this, Producer T commented as follows at the end of the televised program. “We wish to choose not to draw conclusions from these searches. However, even now Pagan Island in the Distance… 104 after only a month and a half has passed, something still weights heavily in my chest. Mr. Hattori must be of the same thoughts. Only heaven knows whether or not Japanese soldiers remain on Pagan, but surely we were questioned by the vision of remaining Japanese soldiers. Mr. Hattori says this vision has followed him for most of his life and shall never leave him. According to him, the sengo [postwar period] has not yet ended.” Posted 12 May 2000 “Singing ‘A Coconut’ on a Moonlit Night,” by Satô Fujio, from Ibaragi Prefecture I departed Pusan Harbor on 3 March 1944 and made landfall at Pagan Island on the eighteenth. At daybreak I saw a beautiful small island that was all green. I fondly remember the first time I saw the peaceful island covered in coconut trees, and the beauty of the moon reflecting on the ocean. We did not know where our enemies were. On Pagan you could see the light of a cigarette clearly from a ship, and a strong order had been given prohibiting cigarette smoking. Places like Battleship Island and Shomushon Bay presented the scenery of a beautiful southern island. From that night on for one year and eight months through 10 October 1945, the day of repatriation from Pagan Island, the way we lived might as well have been described as naked bodies battling against the heat. Two machine guns were assigned to our eight-member squad, with the order to defend the southern coast area from Santate through the front of the Kawashima unit. We could not smoothly construct our encampment, so we had to ask for assistance from the engineers group to hurry the completion of the position construction. Building a pillbox out of concrete on a mountain slope was to me an unfamiliar, big job. That pillbox still remains intact, I presume. Pagan Island in the Distance… 105 After the completion of the encampment, the battalion commander did not allow us to take a nap there on account of the construction delay. That made three of us live under a rock at the beach for a while, where sometimes we were surprised by hermit crabs crawling in our clothes. It was a time of laugher and hardship. Moonlit nights on the island were splendid. We enjoyed singing songs from our birthplaces and viewing the moon at the house in the highlands owned by Japanese who lived there with his children. The four or five of us sang songs like “A Coconut.” I also have many memories of Sergeant A. who was in charge of collecting salt at Santate. At around that time almost on a daily basis I made time to pay comfort visits to him and returned with his gifts of such goodies as sweet potatoes, edible wild plants and snails. After demobilization, I visited his house in Yamagata Prefecture, and we engaged in lively conversations over the memories of Pagan Island. Once when I went to inspect the airport area alone, I was chased by a Grumman and barely escaped with my life. I looked around me and saw that beer bottles bought from Saipan were scattered about, which for a moment made me recall the days of peace on Pagan. In May 1981, there was a report that Pagan Island a sudden eruption. After that, I received letters from some of my fellow members who went to visit Pagan Island. I think I would like to visit the island at least once, but I am already almost eighty years old and I guess I cannot overextend myself. Posted 12 May 2000 “The Kid With the Lizard,” by Tajima Nobuo from Gunma Prefecture The artillery unit of the Kwantung Army left the benumbing cold of Konshun and took a Pagan Island in the Distance… 106 sudden turn and landed in the subtropical eternal summer of Pagan Island. It was March 1944. Only one vessel, “Takaoka Maru” which we were aboard, left the fleet and headed toward Pagan Island. We bore resentment toward the other ships that headed for Saipan. To think that fate clearly separated us at that time, however, fills me with deep emotions. The sweet smell of the flowers and fruits of perhaps papayas, coconuts, bananas, breadfruit, lemons and the like drifted over from the land of this isolated island to the deck of the vessel anchored in Shomushon bay. Surely this was paradise on earth. I had grown up in a prefecture without any ocean and I was content just looking at the sea. With the shape of Mt. Pagan and the entire island covered in green, I felt as though I had come to a land of dreams. Upon landing, we assembled our gun carriage and transported it to the southern slope of the cliff [Gake-yama] where it was installed in a temporary position. In order to decide the position of each platoon, all company members were gathered at the grounds of the Navy government building at the southeast edge of the island. For several days troops used blankets on the ground and engaged in daily routines there, and after that we were dispatched in platoons and squads to different positions. Sometimes we engaged in the construction work of expanding the Navy air base. By the time the position construction had advanced considerably, I became acquainted with Japanese in various parts of the island, and there were times when I visited the villages of Kanaka tribes. Sometimes I saw Japanese children who lived in the neighborhood of the Kanaka tribes walking with something tied to a leash. I thought it was probably a puppy, but I was very wrong. It was a baby monitor three-foot-lizard.52 They were also playing with it by pulling on its thirty centimeter-long body. This scenery definitely could not have been imagined on the continent or in mainland Japan.53 Pagan Island in the Distance… 107 Next to the coconut tree forest in fields owned by a Japanese man, there were pumpkins and sweet potatoes. Their sprouts and young leaves were used as ingredients for soup and filled our stomachs. At the time when we landed on that peaceful, beautiful island, who could have imagined that it was right in the middle of the Pacific War? Earlier in around May, one enemy Lockheed twin fuselage airplane dropped a bomb over the airport area and ran away, which gave rise to a sense of cautiousness for a time. Finally on 12 June, at the same time as the air strikes on Saipan, our island was hit with air strikes by formations of Grumman airplanes and our Second Company suffered the first deaths in action. Pagan Island was turned into a battlefield crucible. I heard that Saipan faced gyokusai on 7 July. This island continued to be troubled day after day by bombing and strafing from the Grummans. The enemy had begun the invasion of Iôtô [Iwo Jima], and the numerous calamities and horrible battle scenes continued without end. On 15 August 1945, handbills advising to surrender floated down all over the island. On 3 September the surrender documents were signed, and on 30 October we landed at Uraga Harbor and were discharged from military service. We must not waste the lives of comrades who fell in action and were scattered across the battlefields of the Greater East Asia War. I firmly believe that there is only one way to repay the spirits of those soldiers who died in action, and that is to preserve world peace. Posted 12 May 2000 “The German Battleship Emden,” by Kameoka Shin’ichi, (eighty-one years old) from Fukushima Prefecture The Ocean at Pagan Pagan Island in the Distance… 108 Pagan seems to be an island that formed from rising underwater magma. For the most part there are no beaches, and the ocean floor descends quickly. On the island’s southernmost point at Perirû [Parialu], Oyako Iwa [Mother-and-Child Rock] projects up sharply from the sea (about fifty meters). Rising up from the sea as mountainous cliffs, there are also Mt. Hikari (five hundred forty-one meters) an unnamed mountain (five hundred forty-eight meters) and another unnamed mountain (four hundred twenty-seven meters). This part of the island is untrodden. In the days of the first great European war (1913-1917),54 there was one German battleship, Emden, in the central Pacific Ocean (the Marshall Islands). They had gone to war against the Allied Powers that included Japan. It is said that Emden used Pagan as an island to seek refuge from typhoon, and as a place to wait for the wind, but regarding this there are no records remaining. Near Oyako Iwa [Mother-and-Child Rock], a dozen dolphins were turning around and over each other as they swam together. This could be observed even from a distance. Katsuo [skipjack tuna] used to swim in schools in the open ocean around Apan Bay and Shomushon Bay. The katsuo schools held an extremely large number of fish, and they made quite a noise as they swam. From around 1941, fisherman from Tosa went ashore at Pagan in search of these fish resources and began the production of dried katsuo. From Tosa to Pagan Island is about two thousand kilometers. How skillfully did they travel to Pagan Island–only about ten to twenty fishermen made it over safely by being tossed around in a motorized sailboat with an engine that made a pon pon noise. The katsuo were taken onto the island, immediately filleted in three pieces, boiled in hot water, and then smoked. This work was done in the basin of the Navy Observatory near Lake Raguna. However, even one fish from those big schools of katsuo was not to be found after just one bomb from the enemy. Diseases of Pagan Pagan Island in the Distance… 109 Pagan has a subtropical climate and an average temperature of twenty-five to thirty degrees Celsius [seventy-seven to eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit]. All year round it is a paradise where there is no need for jackets. There are neither snakes nor poisonous insects. Sometimes a one to two meter long lizard would show up, but they are harmless. There are no malaria mosquitoes. All throughout areas in the south, there were always malaria mosquitoes that troubled us. But there were none on this island. “Dengue Fever”–For the most part there were no patients suffering from influenza. However, there were sporadic patients with dengue fever. Dengue fever causes high fever, and joint and muscle aches follow before a rash appears. There are severe headaches. While this disease is not deadly, even now there has been no discovery of a specific medicine. It is said that the tropical striped Shima mosquito55 can carry the dengue virus. After one week, one’s temperature returns to normal. There was a considerable outbreak of dengue fever, but the numerous cases did not become severe so it was not a problem. “Amebic Dysentery”–This disease infects the human body and causes a fever, a stomachache, and diarrhea. Because there are neither natural wells nor running rivers on Pagan, we collected rainwater from daily squalls in a catchment tank. Consequently, the tank was crawling with amoeba bacteria. The disease latency period is very long, and one can become sick after the passage of three to five years. Amebic dysentery can cause liver dysfunction that leads to death. On Pagan dozens of soldiers and civilians came down with this disease. There were also people who became ill with dysentery a number of years after being repatriated from Pagan. In short, the cause was that they used water contaminated by amoebic bacteria without boiling it to sterilize it. It is easy to recognize these amoeba bacteria under a microscope. In the end, amoeba bacteria eat the liver Pagan Island in the Distance… 110 and cause liver abscess, and it is a terrible disease that can lead to death. “Tropical Ulcers”–For the most part, the residents of Pagan did not use shoes. Because they used straw sandals woven from thatch (zori or waraji), the toe area was damaged and bacteria entered there, causing ulcers. It was extremely painful. I thought about dealing with it by taking out the affected part using scissors or tweezers. But because there were no sterilization materials at all such as iodine or alcohol, about half of the troops suffered from these ulcers. Even after demobilization this disease troubled me. Posted 10 May 2000 “Beneath a Dim Lamp,” by Saburi Rokurô, (eighty-seven years old) from Hyôgo Prefecture On Soldiers and Light, Water, and Clothing There were no electric lights. Before fighting against the US Air Force, we managed by the use of candles we had brought from the mainland [Japan]. After the surrender of Saipan there was no replenishment of supplies so we substituted coconut oil in lamps (without the ascidian) using hand-made wicks. We extracted oil from ripe coconuts. We used a fragment from a US Air Force aircraft to make a grader for the coconut, and then we heated the graded coconut. As a consequence, after the war as we were being repatriated on a ship we were dazzled by the ship’s electric lights, and these troubled us. We used water carefully before and during the war, but to wash off the body we had to wait for the rainsqualls that would come regularly. They would come with a rushing sound, and using soap for hard water we would wash before the squall passed. People who were bad at this could not wash off the soap on their bodies even after the sky cleared. The people of the island Pagan Island in the Distance… 111 said that the water with mosquito larvae was of superior quality. They would whack the water surface with a ladle, and the mosquito larva would sink to the bottom. Then they would drink the water. There were no more supplies after the collapse of Saipan. My pants were always torn and I kept patching them until they were three or four times the weight of new pants. The tômin [islanders] cultivated cotton and coconut trees doing subcontract work for the Nan’yô Shokusan KK. 56 They included Japanese, Koreans, Chamorros, and Kanaka. The Kanaka were slightly intellectual, but the Chamorros had big bodies and looked like ogres. We were able to harvest a starch called tapioca that was delicious with a stickiness of a high quality rice cake. Compared to the troops taken to Siberia, as long as we did not get sick we were able to survive thanks to the availability of food. We really must appreciate those snails and coconuts. We were demobilized around the middle of October 1945, and returned to Uraga by way of Chichi Jima, Ogasawara Islands. Posted 4 May 2000 “An Erupting Solitary Island,” by Kameoka Shin’ichi, (eighty-one years old) from Fukushima Prefecture I send my congratulations on the setting up of this homepage. I send this email just as I remember things. Mt. Pagan In 1917 right after the Marshall Islands became part of the Japanese mandate,57 according to the records of the Navy survey corps, the height [of Mt. Pagan] is five hundred seventy meters. The form of the mountain is not rough like Fugendake peak of Mt. Unzen [in Nagasaki], Pagan Island in the Distance… 112 nor is it bleak like Mt. Osore in Hokkaido that is characteristic of northern provinces. In the days of peace, Mt. Pagan was a quiet and tranquil mountain. When we were preparing for demobilization in September 1945, on one occasion all Company members climbed Mt. Pagan together. It took us more than two hours along the zigzagging, animal trail-like mountain path, and as we climbed step by step we nearly slid back down into the black gravel. Shaped like a suribachi58 bowl, the crater at the top was about three hundred meters [in diameter], and a little steam rose up from the spot that seemed to be the fire pit of the crater. Then the senior military surgeon, Oda Tatsumi, said the following words: “In the future, it might be that Mt. Pagan would erupt several times spewing lava flows and piling up ash. Any and all animals would die out, and in time, emptiness would rule over a barren, isolated island.”59 Nevertheless, if there had been an eruption while we were defending this island, with the disappearance of the Three Sacred Treasures,60 namely papaya roots, sweet potatoes, and snails, all the members of the detachment would have starved and perished without fighting. There is nothing as terrible as a natural disaster. Military brass at the time dispatched an outfit of around two thousand troops to this island without factoring in natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions. What were they thinking? Pagan Elementary School The elementary school was built on level ground at the foot of Mt. Pagan. It was a singlestory building with a tin roof, with an area of about one hundred sixty-five square meters. 61 It was divided into two rooms: in one with the area of about thirty-three square meters62 lived the principal, Mr. Fukabori, and his wife; the neighboring room was the classroom that had an area Pagan Island in the Distance… 113 of about one hundred square meters.63 With a perpetual lack of teaching materials, they taught thirty to fifty children in this place across the vast ocean that was around three hundred kilometers away from the Nan’yô-cho government office. The two Pagan Island government employees included the principal and the sergeant at the police substation. The substation was built along the seashore about two hundred meters from the elementary school. The police sergeant was also living together with his wife. Around May 1944, about ten indigenous people made a comfort visit to us at the schoolyard. They wrapped grass skirts around their waists and danced a light hula for us to the tune of a harmonica. It was a beautiful night with an early summer moon. Posted 1 May 2000 “From Manchuria to Pagan Island,” by Ujiie Otoji, (eighty-three years old) from Fukushima Prefecture I defended Pagan Island from 18 March 1944 until 20 October [1945] as part of the Third Mountain Gun Company. On 12 June, three of my fellow soldiers were killed in action by the first air raid. I was drafted in 1938 and participated in the Second Sino-Japanese War. On 31 May 1941 I was discharged. The following year on 16 May 1942, I was again drafted to serve in Manchukuo. On 24 February 1944, I departed the state of Manchukuo and went to Pagan Island. I was stationed at the position on the right side below the Navy observatory and beside the bonito [skipjack tuna] company. In those days, there was a female called Tama-chan who was the object of adoration among fellow troops. Before the air raids started, we often saw her with a bull cart stacked with drum cans and drawing water. When a bonito [skipjack tuna] boat came back, we used to Pagan Island in the Distance… 114 hurriedly buy one, make sashimi and eat it. Battleship Island, Apan Bay, Shomushon Pier, Lake Raguna, these all conjure up nostalgic memories. I treasure a video I recorded from Fukushima TV’s broadcasted program about searching for remaining armed forces on Pagan Island. Sometimes I will replay this program and watch it. I am have become an eighty-three-year-old aged man, but I experience a surge of energy in this old body when I think of those days. I would like to wish all of you good health. I took the liberty of writing this although it may be deemed discourteous. Posted 29 April 2000 “The Food that was Destroyed,” by Sakamoto Masao, (seventy-nine years old) from Tokyo We arrived at Pagan on the morning of 18 March 1944, and from the transport ship the island appeared to be a peaceful and tranquil place. Mountains dripped with greenery. Smoke rose from the houses lined up along the shore where people cooked breakfast. It felt like war was the event of a distant country. However, that hope for peace was broken in around three months. On 12 June, simultaneous with the enemy landings at Saipan Island, from morning to night Pagan was also hit over and over with gunfire and bombs rained down. On that day, nearly forty comrades in arms lost their precious lives. But the most disappointing of all was that the food that had just come from Saipan on the previous day was annihilated. This was the reason that hundreds of comrades died of malnutrition later. I still have too many memories of Pagan to tell, and for now I will end here. Posted 26 April 2000 Pagan Island in the Distance… 115 11. Everyone’s Voices This section consists of everyone’s contributions. The theme of this area is free, including topics like war and the island. Beyond specifying your name (pennames are an option), prefecture of residence, and your age if you don’t mind, please feel free to send a contribution via e-mail. Please write “Minna no koe” as the subject of your e-mail. You can contribute here – pagan. When chosen for publication, there may be cases where corrections will be made to the extent that the substance may not be altered, such as paragraph indentation and punctuation marks. As a rule, an e-mail address will not be publicized unless you wish it to be and so advise me. I will never use your e-mail address unless there is a necessity such as confirming the content of your contribution, so please feel safe to make your contribution. There are no cases when this editor would send you unnecessary e-mails, and if you have any doubts please contact me at the above e-mail address. It may take several days from the time when your contribution is received until it is posted. In order to avoid redundancies, please allow me to assign a title for your comment. Contributions will be published in the order of newest to oldest. “My Grandfather’s Change of Battlefield, from Manchuria to Pagan Island,” by Mrs. Koguma (thirty years old) Greetings. I am a thirty-year-old housewife. When I ran a computer search for Pagan Island, I found my way to this home page. I have a grandfather in Nagano Prefecture. Ever since I was small, I have liked my grandfather’s stories about the war. Even now, I hear them every time I return home. The name of the island that I memorized there is Pagan Island. This year my grandfather will turn eighty-five years old. He is still in good health, enjoying things like farm Pagan Island in the Distance… 116 work and gate ball games. Back in those days, my grandfather is said to have been a sergeant. He used to always say, “If you think this old man’s war stories are lies, just ask so-and-so down the street.” But one by one his comrades in arms passed away. As they progressed in age, it became difficult to get together and these “Gôyûkai” (Bravery Association? Association of War Veterans?64) closed down. Right now my grandfather has lost his strength as if he has lost his youth. Incidentally, my grandfather also changed his battlefield from the Manchurian border to Pagan Island. Stories from Manchuria include: frostbite causing injuries on his toes; almost being buried because he was shot in the chest and assumed dead; being merely the son of a farmer he studied on the toilet and became a sergeant; there was not a single Korean who betrayed my grandfather. Stories from Pagan Island include: becoming friends with islanders; catching creatures like octopi and coconut crabs at the seashore; a comrade sleeping next to him was found the following morning to have died due to malnutrition; treating injuries without anesthesia. If I were to count the number of stories, they would be endless. The last time, he showed me the list of names from his military unit. I think my grandfather is a man who perhaps has more perseverance than most people. The experience of war that was etched onto his mind and body not only makes him a stubborn grandfather, but I think they were “experiences that will continue to brainwash his spirit and sentiments until he dies.” This alone makes me terrified of wars. The next time I return home, I intend to show him this website. If I show him this site, I believe it will make him happy and he might start to “feel like he had just met with his dear old fellows for the first time in a long while.” Sometimes on my grandfather’s behalf I visit the Yasukuni Shrine. I put my hands together and ask, “To all of you who were my grandfather’s Pagan Island in the Distance… 117 friends, my grandfather is doing well as always. He is not coming to you yet. Please see to it that he lives a long life.” As long as my beloved grandfather is alive, I will consider Yasukuni Shrine the tomb of his friends. I visit in place of my grandfather because it is the gravesite of my beloved grandfather’s friends. My grandfather talks to me about the war because many important people and time were lost, but also because it was his youth. I have heard it said somewhere that thanks to my grandfather and others, “we have gained peaceful time sufficient for the duration of a human life.”65 If this is true, then very soon it seems like peace will end. In order for this to not happen, what should be done? I am embarrassed that I still think about it as though it is somebody else’s business. Posted 24 October 2006 Okamoto’s Response: A terrible war, but to your grandfather that terrible war was his youth. I feel keenly that, thanks to the members of the generation who spent their precious youthful days at war, todays’ Japan exists. I have talked to some members of the War Veterans Association who were assigned to Pagan Island from Manchuria. I may have met with your grandfather’s comrades in arms. Please give my best regards to your grandfather. “Thinking of ‘the Significance of Life and Death,’ and Degenerate ex-Tokkô,”66 by Mr. Saitô Akira, from Saitama Prefecture My elder brother was a member of the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps. However, he was standing by at the Navy’s Kanoya Air Base in Kagoshima Prefecture when the war ended. He told me that it was fortunate that there were no airplanes for him to fly. Anyway, he also told me that when the end of the war was nearing and he was ready to fly away there were not enough airplanes. There were large numbers of Kamikaze Special Attack Forces on standby for deployment to the battlefront who instead sat with nothing to do but face the end of the war. Pagan Island in the Distance… 118 One would think this would be a happy thing. Yet afterward, when I would think about how the worlds of the so-called “Fallen Kamikaze Attacker” outlaws had run riot, strong pressure brought about fissures in these peoples’ ways of living. He began to want to think that it did not matter whether or not life has total meaning, and he began to descend from “the conviction to aim toward death” to “the loss of the aim to live.” For a while my elder brother was spending every day sulking. His dislocation was just too immense. Regarding the “meaningfulness and meaninglessness” of “life and death,” I think this brought about his long period of a confused and disorderly state. The serious psychogenic wounds were not less important than physical damage. Once again I could see the way that war’s destruction goes beyond the concrete. This was not limited to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps. These fissures were not just experienced by people who volunteered or were summoned, but I think this was the fate that all soldiers carried equally on their backs, and it was something that more or less existed among the national public in general… Incidentally at that time in my case as an elementary school student, I was quite childish, and my head was filled with incomprehensible confusion. Things did not seem like they were simply a case of, “the war is over, that’s good, that’s good.” To all of you who participated in the war on Pagan, I wonder how you feel about this. Posted 19 October 2006 Okamoto’s response: I see your elder brother had a hard time. I also had the opportunity to talk to a person who had faced the end of the war right before his Tokkô [Kamikaze Special
Attack], and that person also seemed to have complicated feelings about his own survival. I have talked many times with members of the Pagan War Veterans Association, and everyone was kind enough to share their various war stories of experiences, but he would keep his mouth shut about Pagan Island in the Distance… 119 the part that would step into matters of central importance. And while I kept listening to their stories, they started to tell me bit by bit about their painful memories. I think, as a matter of course, members of the public in general have lived with various feelings [about this topic]. That is why when I was making this page, as much as possible I was careful to avoid ideological matters. I felt that if I would be partial to only one ideology, then it might hurt the feelings of people who have different ideologies and make them shut their mouths. Mr. Saitô, else please share any other valuable stories you may have. “The Great-Uncle who Perished at Pagan Island,” by Bubiko-san I am glad that I could learn about Pagan Island in detail for the first time [through this
website]. My grandmother’s elder brother died in the ocean off the coast of Pagan Island in June 1944. Each time I visited his grave, I wondered about what kind of place it was where my great uncle died when he was young and this thought got stuck in my mind. I am thankful that I was able to learn about various matters on this website. Posted 18 January 2006 Okamoto’s Response: It is I who should be glad that this is useful. I think you will be able to learn about your great-uncle through the veterans war association book called, Pagan Island Garrison Record. 67 It is rather hard to come by, but places like used bookstores might have one for sale. “The Beautiful Pagan Island that Raised my Mother,” by Yuda Atsuko (thirty-four years old) from Tokyo The other day my friend and neighbor, Shinchi Masako, made me aware of the existence of this website. I am the daughter of, “Chôko-chan, the master swimmer” who appeared in the Pagan Island in the Distance… 120 contribution by Mrs. Okamoto. Ever since I was little I was occasionally told about life on Pagan Island and about childhood war experiences. Even though these were stories from wartime, my mother’s were about such things as delicious coconut crabs, the unforgettable taste of drinking coconut water after climbing up a coconut tree, and swimming and catching fish all day long in a beautiful ocean. As a child I could only be envious. I often thought that Mother’s cheerfulness and strongmindedness had been nurtured from those days. Having become an adult, however, I started to learn about the lives of the Pagan Island people during the war and the tragedies that were the shadow side of this existence. I realized that the situation in which Mother and her siblings, Grandfather and Grandmother had been placed was never an envious matter. They had been forced into a life that I could not imagine even if I tried. These are stories that us young people should not forget and should be passed down from generation to generation. Mother is now sixty-six years old, and she has begun to talk about those far-off days of life on Pagan more often. My own children now enjoy listening to her stories. As usual, when Mother talks about the happenings on Pagan she does so happily with the smile of a young girl. I hear that there was an eruption on Pagan, and because of this the island does not look the way it did back then. But Chôko-chan’s Pagan Island imagined by my children and me is a southern, dream island with beautiful flowers ever blooming in profusion. Posted 29 September 2001 Okamoto’s response: I received an email from Chôko-chan’s daughter. I had never imagined that a connection might be made through the internet to such a degree. It is a wonderful thing to share Pagan Island in the Distance… 121 someone’s experiences. Atsuko-san grew up listening to her mother’s stories of her experiences and her children now happily listen to such stories. Chôko-chan’s Pagan Island will continue to be alive, I believe, as long as there will be people to listen to these stories. I express many thanks to Mrs. Yuda who made this initial connection. Please give my best regards to “Chôko-chan.” “The B-29 that Attacked a Naval Preparatory School,” by Ishida Takeji (seventy-three years old) from Saitama Prefecture68 On 15 September 1944 came the news, “You are hereby ordered to serve as Fifteenth Term Aviation Preparatory trainee, First Grade.” I entered the Tsuchiura Navy Flying Corps three days before my eighteenth birthday. It was a time when strong indications of defeat were prevailing, having past the middle stage of the lengthy Pacific War that lasted for one thousand three hundred forty-seven days, about five years. That same year in July the Japanese military faced gyokusai at Saipan in one corner of the Mariana Islands. Then on the eleventh of that month, B-29s from the Mariana Islands air raided Tokyo for the first time. From that time until the end of the war for nine months, around nineteen thousand airplanes bombed the Japanese mainland day after day and the records show that almost all cities burned down. I joined the military around the time when US forces were putting all their might into hurriedly transforming Saipan Island into a military base from where they would create a headquarters for bombing the Japanese main islands. Therefore, for the first six months my service involved foundational academic training as a pilot. The last six months was spent on base maintenance. With the Tokkô airplanes [Zero Fighters] on secret standby, we fled air-raids by moving to Ibaraki, Okazaki, and Chiba’s Bôsô peninsula. It was 10 June 1944 when I stared hell in the face and witnessed both great misery and Pagan Island in the Distance… 122 bravery when the units stationed at a base were heavily bombed by B-29s. On 1 June came the, “Termination of Education.” Then on 5 June the “Classified training Aviation Command Order No. Nineteen, …attached to the Misawa Naval Flying Corps” was issued. We were making preparations to move on the morning of 10 June, that Sunday, and we had plans in the evening to depart from a nearby station. A “Precautionary Warning” came that said, “A formation of several enemy craft is heading North over the Bôsô Peninsula.” Our base had not yet been made a target despite the daily air raids. “Here they come again,” was the reaction since we had grown accustomed to them. About thirty minutes later came the message, “A large enemy formation is moving northward past Kujûkuri. Red alert. All members, take shelter immediately.” Leaving behind two to three people who were taking their turn on duty, we all headed to the cave-type air-raid shelter made into the side of a slightly elevated mountain on the northwest side of our corps. It was a solid air-raid shelter with a ceiling supported by beams of large wood. It was hot and humid and people would not go inside the shelter but would stay outside on top of the mountain, especially the reserve students who entered the military in the last year (October 1943) due to the policy of student mobilization. After the war ended, they thought about going back to school, so there were many people who opened up their books and studied on top of the air-raid shelter. Maybe ten minutes passed. Large drops of rain fell like in a shower, making sounds as they hit the leaves on the trees—these sounds mixed with the sounds hyuuuu, zaaaaa—the unique noises made by falling bombs. The first wave of B-29s directly hit the air-raid shelter. Without time to consider friends at the entrance to the air-shelter or reserve students on the mountain, all I could do was cover my ears with my thumbs, hide my eyes with my index and middle fingers and put my head between my knees while laying prostrate on the ground. It was a direct bombardment at the location of the Pagan Island in the Distance… 123 air-raid shelter. The explosive 250 kilo bomb, the dense cloud of dust, the sulfurous smoke whirling around in a cramped shelter… but this air-raid shelter withstood it well. The civilian houses and rice fields in the vicinity were in wretched condition because of the large number of bombs that had been dropped… it lasted for maybe ten to twenty minutes. Our senior officer heard the sound of the bombs falling and had quickly taken refuge deep in the air-raid shelter (we whispered that, as might have been expected, he who had experienced actual fighting would be so nimble). Maybe thirty minutes had passed when we heard the senior officer say, “There are many dead and injured on top of the shelter, and we are going to rescue them. Fall in.” There must have been about ten of us comrades who, upon hearing our commander’s voice, jumped out of the shelter and headed up the mountain. It was a terrible sight too awful to be described on paper or orally. After the blast of direct hits by bombs, a large number of causalities writhed in agony while clothed in the full dress of three different types of combat uniforms. On the order to “transport the injured to the corps building,” four of us members searched for the nearby shutter and transported people on this hastily constructed stretcher to the front gate of the corps building that was about five hundred meters away. At that time the corps building and barracks were not bombed and remained intact. But while we on the way back to the air-raid shelter for another transport, the second attack wave of bombers arrived and this time the unit and the barracks must have been their target… the sound of the falling bombs hit our ears just as we dove into the air-raid shelter of a civilian house in the neighborhood. Alongside the people from the civilian house, the bombs rained down on the four of us. These were my personal experiences of extreme fierceness, misery, and terror. The sound of dropping bombs, the sounds of explosions, flames burning civilian houses, domestic animals Pagan Island in the Distance… 124 running this way and that way, and the scared and trembling people of the civilian house. I was a young thing at eighteen years old and I did not know what kind of action I took or what words I spoke as a service member of the Japanese Navy. Right now I do not remember everything. How in the world did I survive? I can remember only the fragments left at the bottom of my eyes, and I do not have detailed memories. I narrowly returned to the shelter with my life. I conveyed the message, “both the corps building and the barracks are undergoing intensive bombing at present.” I think I was inside the air-raid shelter the whole morning. The corps building and the barracks were both destroyed, and the bomb craters in the First Drill Ground made the place look like a beehive. The barracks building toppled down to its broken knees and was beyond recognition. I wondered what happened to the injured people whom we had first transported. The well-being of our comrades who were left behind as on-duty members was totally unknown. The neighboring Second Drill Ground was undamaged. (It was completely free of scars from the attack… and there were whispers that we should have escaped there). That evening we gathered at this ground and left behind the corps that had been thoroughly wrecked, heading toward a nearby railway station for a transfer to an unknown destination. Posted 30 May 2000 Okamoto’s response: Mr. Ishida, I wonder where you headed after this? He says he will write again with a sequel. As I read his contribution, I thought about when I was an eighteenyear-old without any sense of responsibility. Having started this website and learned about experiences of senior citizens, I am keenly aware that the peaceful world I have been contentedly living in does not exist without a cost. Mr. Ishida was kind enough to contribute a note entitled “The Clouds Flow” by his aunt who made her homing [journey] from Palau that took four months. By all means please read this Pagan Island in the Distance… 125 story that is an extremely important resource about one civilian woman’s experiences. The story “The Clouds Flow ” by Matsushita Kuwa is here: http://www.dd.iij4u.or.jp/%7Epagan/palau.html. “I am on my way to a Tokkô [Kamikaze Special Attack] Base, Sayonara,” by Ishida Takeji (seventy-three years old) from Saitama Prefecture The Tsuchiura Flying Corps were wiped out by a large air raid on the morning of 10 June 1945. Before my eyes that morning laid numerous causalities including classmates I had been with up until that morning and promising Naval reserve student officers. That evening, we got on a train leaving Tsuchiura station and went to an unknown destination. “To a Tokkô [Kamikaze Special Attack] base near the seashore, it seems,” came an unknown whisper… Although the slatted shutters on the train windows were closed tightly, at times a smell of smoke and the sea tide wafted inside… I never dreamed that we were moving so far west along the Tôkaidô [East Sea] Road which was my home. The next morning, we arrived at a station unknown to me–Okazaki station in Aichi Prefecture. We wondered if the place where we were stationed used to be an old horse racetrack. This is because there was a pond in the middle. We spent less than thirty days living here, and I have faint memories of this time. In July 1945 there was another transfer, with the order from the commanding officer that stated only, “go east.” The whisper was, “prepare the base and Tokkô [Kamikaze Special Attack] members will meet the enemy in case US forces land at Kujûkuri, Chiba Prefecture.” In the middle of the night, we got on the train at Okazaki Station. It stopped at Hamamatsu for a while. The previous night, a US task force bombarded the city from a battleship. It was a miserable sight to see from inside the train. Pagan Island in the Distance… 126 As before the train slatted shutters were closed, with permission for a little opening because of the excessive heat and humidity. It was perhaps around eight o’clock in the morning when I was lucky enough to look out the left hand window to see the station name “Shimada.” My hometown of “Yaizu” was two stops ahead. I made preparations to communicate somehow with my family by throwing the only notebook I had out of the window. I scribbled, “To the person who picks up this notebook, please deliver to East Mashizu Village, XX street, house number XX.” “Takeji is being transported on a train… on the way to a Tokkô [Kamikaze Special Attack] base in either Aomori or Chiba. Sayonara.” A comrade next to me was cooperative. He said, “The instructor is asleep. When we are at the right place I will open the window. When you see someone quickly throw it out the window.” We passed by “Fujieda Station” and then slowly by “Yaizu Station.” No one was around until we crossed the Seto river railway bridge. The road following the railroad tracks on the left side continued until the tunnel at Nihonzaka. This road was nostalgic, and just a little bit west of here was my old elementary school. When the emperor of the former country of Manshû passed by,69 classes were cancelled and we lined up single-file. We bowed our heads until the train passed and faced our handmade Manshû national flags toward the Imperial train to welcome Emperor Fugi. It was the same road where, holding Hinomaru [Japanese national] flags, we sent off troops being dispatched from the Shizuoka regiment. About three hundred meters in front of the tunnel was the shadow of two people (maybe a construction worker for the bullet train/ Shinkansen?). I opened the window about fifteen centimeters and threw out the notebook. What left an impression upon me was that they did not pick it up but just looked at me, jaws dropped. It appeared to be a great blow to them, and they had no idea what was going on. I waved a little at them, and then pressed my hands together. Pagan Island in the Distance… 127 The train proceeded ever eastward, ever eastward. Perhaps to avoid fire from carrierbased aircraft, there were many stops inside tunnels. There were many red alerts in the vicinity of “Odawara” and “Kôzu” for air raids by carrier-based craft… yet soon the burned-out ruins of Yokohama and Tokyo came into view, and we arrived at Ôtaki outside Chiba Prefecture. We were stationed at the Ôtaki elementary school until the end of the war when we were fortunately discharged from military service. Incidentally, “the last notebook” seems to have arrived at my parent’s house intact about two weeks later. “I intended to put it in the box for your ashes upon your death in action,” my father laughed. At the time, being called the “triumphant return in death,” the remains of those killed in action purportedly were returned home but inside the box for ashes was only a slip of paper that said, “Died Year/Month/Day in the South Pacific (or at an unspecific, undisclosed location).” Posted 14 June 2000 Okamoto’s response: I received a sequel to Mr. Ishida’s contribution.70 If the war had continued a little longer, Mr. Ishida would have gone to the Tokkô [Kamikaze Special Attack]… and we would not have had the chance to hear you talk about these stories. I received the note, “Kaigun no Rireki-sho [Naval Resume].” (This will open in a separate window: http://www.dd.iij4u.or.jp/~pagan/ishida.html). This is something that we rarely see, and I have linked it here as a valuable resource. Pagan Island in the Distance… 128 12. Notes 1 The phrase used here for the end of the war is shûsen no hi, or day the war ended. This is commemorated in Japan on August 15th. On this day in 1945 the Showa Emperor (Hirohito) announced the surrender of Japan. 2 Most likely the intermediate egret, Egretta intermedia 3 The islands came under Japanese Navy control from 1914 through 1919, but they did not become Japanese mandated territories until the League of Nations designated them as such in 1920. Although not always as a Mandate (Inintôchi), they remained under Japanese control until the U.S. invasions and acquisition of the region during the Pacific War. 4 See glossary entry on “Kanaka” for a breakdown of the two “tribes” (zoku, 族) cited in a colonial government-funded study who were living in the region at the time. 5 Nan’yô Kôhatsu is short for Nan’yô Kôhatsu Kabushiki Kaisha or NKK, the sugar company that led the most productive industry in the Northern Mariana Islands by the mid-1920s. 6 ôtaniwatari (Japanese), spleenwort, Asplenium nidus 7 horsehair crab, Erimacrus isenbeckii 8 coconut crabs, ayuyu (Chamorro), Birgus latro 9 ironwood, gagu (Chamorro), Casuarina equisetifolia 10 This might be an underestimation of the length; there are other accounts by contributors to this website citing lizards measuring one to two meters. The common name used for these lizards was sanjaku tokage—see note number 52 for more on this phrase. 11 Vague reference to either Pahong (Chamorro), Pandanales dubus (wide-leaf) or Kafu (Chamorro), Pandanus tectorius (a plant with fruit that is a food source). 12 I changed the name of the mayor indicated in the original text in order to reflect data provided by the CNMI Northern Islands Mayor’s office in February 2013. Also, I corrected the spelling of the name Santiago Castro in this translation because I know a man by that name who has been living in Pagan intermittently for years, and it is likely that he is the person referred to in this sentence. (The original text referred to a person named Sanchabu Tasukasutoro [サンチャブ・
タスカストロ]). 13 According to the leaflets themselves there was no date set for this meeting although a meeting to negotiate surrender was requested. See Appendix B for copies of the original leaflets. 14 Nisei refers to second generation Americans and Canadians born to first-generation (Issei) Japanese immigrants 15 Here the “Samurai spirit” refers to the American armed forces’ demonstration of mercy. 16 This is a reproduction of parts of the song, “Shûchô no musume” [The Chieftan’s Daughter] which was written by Ishida Ichimatsu and published in 1930 in Tokyo by Polydor Records. This translation draws upon Greg Dvorak’s translation from Chapter 3 of his dissertation (Dvorak 2007: 102-6). 17 Tamako is “Miss Pagan” (Tama-chan) referred to in the section “Anecdotes.” 18 The original says kokumin shôgakkô. The colonial Japanese school system was divided into schools for Japanese children (or children who were able to speak Japanese, including Japanese, Okinawans, and Koreans, and sometimes children of mixed families), and schools for islander (tômin) children, including indigenous Chamorros and Carolinians. The Japanese children went to school for longer periods of time than indigenous children, and school structures and programs changed over the course of Japan’s nearly thirty years of colonial rule. See Appendix C for more. Pagan Island in the Distance… 129 19 Nitidotellina nitidula; the Japanese common name sakuragai translates literally to “cherry blossom shell.” 20 Terminalia catappa 21 A cupboard-like case with double doors used for holding revered objects. 22 Most likely a Micronesian Honeyeater, Myzomela rubratra 23 Probably Ironwood, gagu (Chamorro), Casuarina equisetifolia 24 Either fofgu or alaihai (Chamorro) arabwal (Carolinian), or it could be false bindweed, Calystegia soldanella. 25 Lit. “Record 1,” a name commemorating the first child born in Japan post-repatriation. 26 ああ堂々の輸送船／さらば祖国よ栄あれ 遥かに拝む宮城の／ 空に誓いたこの決意 27 The Japanese Navy took control of the German territories in Micronesia north of the equator in 1914 after the start of the First World War in Europe, calling the area “Nan’yô Guntô” [South
Sea Islands]. The islands were turned over to Japanese government authority per a Mandate [Inintôchi] established by the League of Nations in 1920. 28 This text says Nanga (南賀) which means “company employee with the name Nanga.” However the original map being described reads “Nanbô sha’in (南貿社員),” or an employee of the Nan’yô Bôeki Kaisha (South Seas Trading Company), which Mr. Kameoka describes as being a part of the Nan’yô Suisan [South Seas Fisheries] corporation but which was a separate company under the Nan’yô Kôhatsu Kabushiki Gaisha (NKK), or the South Seas Development Corporation managed by Matsue Haruji. 29 Kaya 萱 (miscanthus), probably here referring to the reed commonly known as sword grass, tupon nette (Chamorro). 30 It is not clear what is meant here by Garapan-tai (ガラパンの帯) [Garapan belt]. It is possible that there might have been an area in the Mt. Pagan lava flow comprised of galena [ガラン] which is bluish, gray, or black mineral consisting of lead sulfite (the chief ore of lead). The term Garan-tai might have conceivably been used to refer to a portion of the lava flow that appeared metallic (as though it contained galena). Because the word Garapan referring to the town in Saipan was more common, it is possible that non-specialists came to refer to the Garan-tai part of the lava flow instead as the Garapan-tai. 31 Actually Unai Dikiki is on the east side of Pagan Island. 32 Actually the school and police substation were on the western side of Pagan Island, which is counter to Mr. Kameoka’s depiction that they were past the eastern point of the airport. 33 1 tsubo equals about 3.3 square meters 34 The school was located on the east side of the arterial road, not the west side. 35 A lily-like, tropical American plant with bright flowers and ornamental strap-like leaves (New Oxford American Dictionary). 36 Mr. Ôhashi’s website (Japanese only): 37 gagu (Chamorro), Casuarina equisetifolia 38 botdologas cha’ka (Chamorro and Carolinian), Portulaca oleracea 39 Cytisus scoparius 40 The date 16 June 1944 is probably incorrect. 12 June is the date of U.S. bombardment of Pagan remembered by others who contributed stories to this collection. The latter date coincides with the 11-14 June 1944 range when heavy aerial bombardment of the Northern Mariana Pagan Island in the Distance… 130 Islands that was conducted in advance of the 15 June amphibious invasion of Saipan. See also Appendix A, Results of Air Combat in the Marianas. 41 The tsubo and the meters measurements do not correspond, but this is the way the area was expressed in the original story as it was published in the Pagan Shubitai ki. It appears that Mr. Kameoka incorrectly quoted and abbreviated information from the war history description at the Center for Military History, National Institute of Defense Studies, that has been adopted by Shubitai ki, as follows: “The total area is eighty thousand tsubo, sloping down toward the coastline at approximately three degrees, and it had runways—six hundred meters on the eastwest axis and seven hundred thirty meters on the north-south axis” (Pagantô Shubitai ki, p. 24). 42 tan 反 43 See note 29. 44 Tsuki Hoshi 月星印 (Lit. “moon and stars seal”) 45 Nippon danji no honkai wo hakki shita (日本男児の本懐を発揮した) 46 Tobi ishi sakusen 飛び石作戦 (“Operation stepping stone”); this is the Japanese term for what is known in English as the WWII strategy of American Island Hopping. 47 Daihatsu Class 14m landing craft is here called Daihatsu for short, but the full name is “Ôgata Hatsudôki Tei” (大型発動機艇). 48 This statement is inaccurate. Anatahan is south of Pagan and north of Saipan. 49 Ann Jordan recalled former Saipan resident Les Gottwald and his son Kimo Gottwald: “[He] owned a huge catamaran (60 ft. long) that our friend Gary had brought to Saipan. Kimo did sunset cruises plus longer ones, like to Pagan, or Rota, etc…. Kimo Gottwald had a large catamaran and at that time did sail it up to Pagan…” [Email to Jessica Jordan, 12/26/2011]. 50 eirei 英霊 (honorable spirits) 51 zanryû nihonhei 残留日本兵 (residual Japanese solider). Hattori is referring here to anyone potentially still alive and hiding in the jungle at Pagan who would have arrived on the island as members the Imperial Japanese armed forces in the 1930s or 1940s. In 1972 a soldier by the name of Shôichi Yokoi was discovered in Guam, and this widely-publicized incident inspired organized efforts to search for anybody else who might still be alive and hiding in the jungles of the Mariana Islands. This is probably why this search of Pagan Island was organized. The Imperial forces included both Navy and Army personnel, and my use of the word “soldier” in the translation is necessarily limited. I chose the word “soldier” because it sounds colloquial and is perhaps widely understandable. Navy service people are called “sailors” not soldiers: to be comprehensive when describing the Japanese people who once lived on Pagan one would have to identify them as soldiers, sailors, and civilians. 52 The original length expressed in this sentence was three jaku 三尺, where one shaku equals 30.3cm or 0.995ft. The term “sanjaku tokage” [three-foot-lizard] is a compound noun. 53 Naichi 内地 is the term used to refer to mainland Japan from outside its borders, and during the time of empire this term referred to the main islands of Japan as opposed to its colonies and military acquisitions. 54 The Great War or the First World War was from 1914-1918. 55 Asian tiger mosquito, namu (Chamorro), Aedes albopictus 56 Nan’yô Shokusan KK 南洋殖産 KK (Lit. South Seas Promotion of Industry Corp) 57 The Marshall Islands and the rest of former German Micronesia came under Japanese Naval control (1914-1918) when the small German administrative presence left the islands to fight the Pagan Island in the Distance… 131 First World War in Europe. Then the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 ended the war and transferred sovereignty of German Micronesia to the League of Nations. The League awarded Class C Mandate status over these thousands of islands to Japan. Article 22 of the League Covenant stipulated that Japan was to treat the islands as a contiguous, integral part of empire: There are territories, such as South-West Africa and certain of the South Pacific Islands, which, owing to the sparseness of their population, or their small size, or their remoteness from the centres of civilisation, or their geographical contiguity to the territory of the Mandatory, and other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory, subject to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population. (Article 22, League Covenant: http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/leagueofnations.htm). Later in 1920, a League Security Council Resolution imposed restrictions on Japan for administering over the islands, including specifically these conditions: abstaining from fortifying the islands, the promotion of the well-being of islanders, guaranteeing freedom of religion and missionary activities, writing annual reports to the League Security Council, and being submitted to the League’s Court of Justice over disagreements about the restrictions (Myers and Peattie 1984: 244). 58 suribachi 擂鉢 (grooved grinding bowl) 59 Mr. Kameoka’s quote of Dr. Oda is not quite direct, and should be considered a paraphrasing. 60 Sanshu no jingi (三種の神器) are known as both the Three Sacred Treasures and the Imperial Regalia of Japan. In Japanese national mythology, as the grandson of the Sun Goddess descended to earth he received from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Ômikami three treasures including a mirror, a sword, and a jewel. They are said to represent the virtues of wisdom (mirror), valor (sword), and benevolence (jewel). The fact that papaya roots, sweet potatoes and snails are called Sacred Treasures here underscores their importance for survival of the Japanese people on this island. 61 The original area was 50 tsubo 坪, where 1 tsubo equals 3.3 square meters. 62 The original length was 10 tsubo 坪, where 1 tsubo equals 3.3 square meters. 63 The original length was 30 tsubo 坪, where 1 tsubo equals 3.3 square meters. 64 Here Mrs. Koguma is unsure and she suggests the following two names: the “gôyûkai” or the “sensô keikensha no kai” 戦争経験者の会 (war experience association). She is referring to what must be [郷友会] [lit. “Clubs for Friends Sharing the Same Hometowns”]. They usually were formed by demobilized troops in various locations after the war. The first two characters can be read “kyôyû” instead of “gôyû” and this may have been what was confusing for Mrs. Oguma . 65 “hito no isshôbun no, heiwa na jikan wo te ni ireta” 人の一生分の、平和な時間を手に入れ た. 66 Tokkô kuzure 特攻崩れ (Fallen Kamikaze attacker) This refers to members of the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps (Tokkôtai) who, after the war, engaged in anti-social attitudes as a consequence of having trained for but never completing a suicidal mission in the last ten months of the Fifteen-Year War because the war ended before they were called to fly. 67 Zen Pagantô Senyû-kai. 全パガン島戦友会 (All-Pagan Island Veterans Association). Pagantô Shubitai ki パガン島守備隊記 [Pagan Island Garrison Record]. Tokyo: Zen Pagantô Jimusho, 1987. Pagan Island in the Distance… 132 68 Mr. Ishida wrote both this story and the next story, and on the Japanese webpage they appear in reverse-chronological order. They have been switched here so as to indicate the sequence of events recalled rather than the dates they were posted to Mariko Okamoto’s website. 69 The person referred to in this memoir as “Aishin Kakura Fugi” 愛新覚羅溥儀 (1906-1967) is also known as “Pǔyí” 溥儀 or the emperor of Manchûkuo. He was the last emperor of China’s Qing Dynasty, and his name is pronounced Àixīnjuéluó Pǔyí in Chinese. Japanese authorities made him the emperor of the Japanese state of Manchûkuo on 1 March 1934. He reigned until after the war on 18 August 1945. Although the territory was envisioned as a self-governing state, Manchûkuo was controlled by Japan and this emperor was effectively powerless. Especially after 1937 when Japan invaded China, the territory’s subordinate status to Japan became clearer: Pǔyí was even “induced to worship at [Japanese] holy shrines…in 1940 Pǔyí underwent a ritual rebirth from the womb of Amaterasu, thus becoming the younger half brother of the Japanese emperor” (Duara 2003, 65-66). 70 See note number 68. Pagan Island in the Distance… 133 13. Appendices Appendix A Results of Air Combat in the Marianas (2 pages) Acronyms: AA 米襲 American Air Raid DM 撃墜 Downed DS 撃破 Damaged 1944 Marine & Navy F6F-3 VF Grumman Hellcat SB2C-IC VB Curtiss SB2C Helldiver TBF-IC VT Grumman Torpedo Bomber Total Aircraft Carrier AA DM DS AA DM DS AA DM DS AA DM DS Jun12 Cowpens 15 3 1 1 15 4 1 Essex 22 1 2 26 1 3 14 1 62 2 6 13 Essex 10 1 5 15 1 16 Langley 1 1 17 Essex 15 11 8 34 2 23 Yorktown 2 2 24 Hornet 1 1 25 Yorktown 1 1 28 Essex 2 8 10 Cowpens 12 9 21 Langley 12 1 9 21 1 Jul 5 Monterey 12 1 6 1 1 18 2 2 Subtotal 100 8 5 42 2 54 3 2 196 14 12 7th Air Force 1944 P-47 Republic Thunderbolt B-24 Consolidated B-25 North American Total Jul 8 12 12 11 16 16 1 16 14 14 18 12 12 22 11 2 11 2 25 12 12 Aug 2 16 1 16 1 5 16 16 7 16 16 10 24 24 12 10 10 14 12 12 16 16 5 16 5 17 16 16 18 16 1 16 1 20 16 16 21 15 15 22 31 1 3 3 34 1 3 Pagan Island in the Distance… 134 24 14 1 1 15 1 25 32 32 27 16 28 15 1 7 22 1 29 7 7 31 3 3 Sept 2-30 107 11 118 Oct 3~ 206 1 21 227 1 Nov-Dec 52 7 3 55 7 1944 sub total 701 3 21 56 22 779 3 21 1944 grand total 975 17 33 1945 Jan- 13 Mar 24 24 0 0 Pagan Island in the Distance… 135 Appendix B Flyers dropped by U.S. over Pagan Island Calling for Disarmament Meetings, 1945 (2 pages) Flyers dropped by the U.S. over Pagan in order to call for negotiations of disarmament have been posted on a free website called “Kore nâni?” [What’s this?], that was created by a resident of Kyotango city, Kyoto Prefecture. The flyers appear on a page entitled “Pagantô Nippongun Shubitai Shireikan ni tsugu” [To the Commander of the Pagan Island Garrison]: http://www.geocities.jp/kyo_oomiya/dpagan.html. Front Pagan Island in the Distance… 136 Back Pagan Island in the Distance… 137 Appendix C Chart of Changing Japanese School System Names and Organization Source: Nan’yôchô Showa jûyo nen ban Nan’yô Guntô Yôran (南洋庁 昭和十四年版 南洋群島 要覧) [South Seas Bureau 1939 Edition South Sea Islands Handbook] Year, Month For Islanders For non-Islanders 1915, Dec. 4-year course shôgakkô (小学校) [primary school] 1918, Sept. 3-year tômin gakkô (島民学校) course plus 2-year hoshû-ka (補習科) supplementary course Under Military Admin: Jinjô shôgakkô (尋常小学校) [ordinary primary school] (Saipan, Palau, Truk) 1922, Apr. Establishment of Nan’yôchô (南洋庁) [South Seas Bureau] Name change to kôgakkô (公学校) [public school] 6-year course Jinjô shôgakkô (尋常小学 校) [ordinary primary school] Plus 2-year course kôtô shôgakkô (高等小 学校) [higher primary school]; For kokugo wo jôyôsuru jidô (国語を常用す る児童) [school children whose language
in daily use is the national language] For kokugo wo jôyôsezaru mono (国語 を常用せざる者) [people whose
language in daily use is not the national
language] 1926 Dokô totei yôseijo (土工徒弟養成所) [Construction Apprentice Training
School] (Koror) 2-year course, plus 1- year further study course 1933 Jitsugyô gakkô 実業学校 [“Nan’yô
Saipan Industrial School”], 2-year course; For graduates of Kôtô shôgakkô 高等小学 校 [higher primary school] 1937 …changed to 3-year course 1939 Kôtô jogakkô 高等女学校 [girl’s high
school] 4-year course; For girls who graduated from jinjô shôgakkô (尋常小学 校) [ordinary primary school] As of 1939 26 Kôgakkô (公学校) [public school] of which 6 schools have hoshû-ka (補習 科) [supplementary courses] 12 Jinjô shôgakkô 尋常小学校[ordinary
primary school] 13 Jinjô shôgakkô + Kôtô shôgakkô 尋常 小学校 + 高等小学校 [ordinary primary
school + higher primary school]
Mahalo
SIGNATURE:
Clifford "RAY" Hackett www.rayis.me RESUME: www.rayis.me/resume
I founded www.adapt.org in 1980 it now has over 50 million members.
$500 of material=World’s fastest hydrofoil sailboat. http://sunrun.biz
Solar 