Japanese Lifestyle during WW2 : A Museum Found!

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His mother lost her husband prior to her only son enlisted.
After his death, his bride left his mother as no child.
His mother suffered poverty to pass away in 1953.
Yukio Seki might have been happy not knowing.....
 
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My father enlisted in 1937 and was at Hickam on 12/7/1941. He lost a couple friends almost immediately. I did not know this until 12/7/1956 when our Teacher read this interview for our History Lesson leaving out the man's name.

Then she surprised us all by stating "THAT YOUNG AIRMAN'S SON IS IN OUR CLASS TODAY AND IT IS YOU GREGG!"

That night at supper I was a little nervous however I asked him if it was true. He was as surprised as I had been in class that morning. That night was the first he spoke of the Attack and it was 15 years later. From then on he shared more and more over the years.

I was engaged to be married and I told my father my BEST MAN'S WIFE is Japanese and was a child in Japan during the bombing and war. I asked him would it be a problem for him if I introduced them to each other?

My father said, The war has been over for a long time and we need to put those things behind us and get on with our lives. My father and Kay became good friends and Pop taught us a lesson that I will always remember. We all have things to forgive and we have things we pray people will forgive about us as well.
 
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Thanks Gregg for your so sincere and precious message. I have read it three times to understand well together with the clippings. I must tell you first that I feel deep regret and sorry for your father's two friends death by the Japanese attack in the Hickam airfield. What a horrible experience for your father it would have been!

However, I must also admit that your father's testimony, like the Japanese planes flew so low as to be pilots witnessed or air attack was carried out against the airfields first, interests me very much. To write this, I have tried to check our older pilots' testimonies.

Yes, the airfield was attacked first by Zeros and, in a moment later or almost simultaneously, attack against the ships followed.
Even a torpedo bomber strafed the airfield to reduce flyable US aircraft on her way to Pearl Harbor.

This has been a good chance for me to understand your history better.
Please tell my best wishes to your family.
Thank you very much for your posting, Gregg.
 
very grateful to you Shinpachi, for thinking to share this here; it is a good thing you have done.
Can you help me though - the museum's interpretive text, in translation, refers to fifteen
years of war before 1945?
thanks again, steven
 
Thank you very much, steven, for checking my thread and launching a good question.

In my impression, the museum could have wanted to use the more popular words "Greater East Asia War" than the "Fifteen-year War" to comprehend the series of wars Japan had committed from 1931 of Manchurian Incident to 1945 of Pacific War as the latter is not only an academic term but not necessarily familiar with the people.

Problem for the museum would have been the former is still preferred by the nationalists.
I believe that they avoided to be misunderstood.

By the way, the words "Pacific War" came from the western world in the postwar and does not indicate the "Greater East Asia War" totally but, when people say "Pacific War" today, there is a tacit consent that both are synonym though the museum could not use it either when it is not correct in historical meaning.
 
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Good point, Shinpachi-san. Growing up, my history classes covering that time period covered WWII from the American perspective. There wasn't a whole lot of context around what led up to Pearl Harbor. It wasn't until later that I understood the events in Asia prior to Pearl Harbor. There appears to be a greater focus on the European Theater than others, at least in my experience, in history texts. But for most people, trying to figure out where the battles were being fought was hard to comprehend with the vast miles between battles. Prior to 1942, I doubt many Americans would have been able to find Guadalcanal on the map.

Museums and discussions like these can help to better understand the time, and the context. You have given many of us a glimpse into things that we would never have seen or known.
 
When I grew up in the 50's, my father and most of my uncles had fought in the Pacific, so I was pretty familiar with the Marine and Naval point of view early on. Then from the 7th grade on most of my teachers were male who had got their teaching degrees thru the GI bill, and were WW2 veterans.
By the time i'd graduated high school i'd heard a lot of war stories, but all from the American point of view.

But during my service in the USAF and Army, and getting stationed in both Japan and Germany, among other places. I always been interested in hearing the other side's viewpoints.
 
Thank you very much, Eric, tyrodtom, honorable Mods and all other members, for your kindest courtesy and generosity to have allowed me to introudce the museum.
This has been a good chance for me to understand better what was going on during the war too.

In my point of view as a Japanese, if I may comment a little bit more, the handbill looked strange to me imagining how my parents would have felt to read it at the time.
They did not believe American humanism at all, so it would have been more effective if the context had taken military ordering style like "Surrender or you will be all killed immediately! We have no mercy!"

However, I make sure the great success of occupation policy by the allies after the war was you showed your great humanisim to the Japanese people unsparingly. It was a rain of mercy after the drought.

Thank you very much.
 
My parents and their generation would have taken the handbill more seriously to surrender if that should have been writen like this.

"To the Japanese People and Leaders

Stop the battles immediately.
You have fought enough. Your bravery will be honored and handed down to posterity.
But you must know that you have no chances of victory anymore now.

We have no mercy for those who resist. Bear it in your mind well that they will be buried away to the last one."
 
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