1. My Background

My maiden name is Tabai.  Almost everyone I meet for the first time says that my family name, Tabai, sounds rare.  This happened because when the Meiji era started, the government required common people to have new family names.  The decree was issued in 1875.  At that time, my grandfather and his family lived in a village, Nakajima-mura, Kabe-minami (present Asakita-ku, Hiroshima) and were growing tobacco.  When thinking of their family name, they chose two kanji characters—taba 煙from the characters for “tobacco 煙草” and i 井for “well,” because they had a good family well. 

The village was very poor.  The land for planting was small, and its soil was poor, so only tobacco could grow there.  So, around 1902, my grandparents and some other villagers decided to leave their hometown behind for Hawaii as indentured emigrants.  My grandparents were newly married then.  They had my father, Yoshio, in Hawaii and didn’t return until he was old enough to enter elementary school in Japan.  With the money they had accumulated in Hawaii, they could build a house and settled down in Minami-machi (present Minami-machi, Hiroshima) instead of returning to Nakajima-mura.  Yoshio grew up in that house. 

My grandparents in Hawaii, 1901

He lived with his parents after his marrying Mitsu, my mother.  My grandmother had worked as a housemaid for an American family in Hawaii, so she was modern and fashionable for an old Japanese woman at that time, making pancakes or drinking coffee.

I was born in that house in November, 1929 as their first child.  I had three sisters. Teruko was two years younger than me, and the twins, Junko and Yoko, were eight years younger.  My father was a naval architect in the Ujina Shipyard, which built war ships for the army.  He later became manager of the shipyard.  My mother graduated from Yamanaka Girls’ Middle School.  After she married my father, she worked in the accounting section of the Army Clothing Depot, which was near their house and had a childcare facility attached.  The clothing depot was one of three army depots, which made and stored army uniforms, underwear and shoes for soldiers.  The other two army depots were the Army Provisions Depot, which stored and supplied food for soldiers and fodder for war horses, and the Army Ordnance Depot. 

Thanks to my father working for the shipyard, I had opportunities to see ship launching ceremonies.  Every ceremony was very lively, with the breaking of a big hanging ornamental ball in half and smashing open a ceremonial sake barrel.  When many soldiers left the port in flatbottom boats to board a warship waiting off the coast, children saw them off, waving small rising-sun flags and cheering, “Banzai! Banzai!”  Not only soldiers but also war horses and war dogs were taken on board.  Dogs were lifted together in a cage, and horses were lifted one at a time with a band around their bodies.  I heard them neigh sadly and thought they might know their fate that they were going to certain death.

Clothing Depot officers, 1930s

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