The Great Tokyo Air Raid
A deep hole in the middle of the backyard greenhouse served as the family’s bomb shelter. Daddy and Mother had dug it themselves, so it wasn’t very large, but every time the air-raid siren sounded, the whole family huddled inside the shelter and held their breaths. Air raids in Tokyo suddenly escalated around the time Daddy left for duty. Each day, B-29s pummeled a different area of the city with bombs.
On that particular night, the siren sounded and Totto and her family scrambled into the shelter as they always did. The hour was late, likely past midnight. Hiding in the shelter had become a nightly occurrence and everyone was sleep-derived. All Totto and her family could think about was the siren that would lift the alert.
But that night, something felt different.
Outside, it was extraordinarily bright. Peering through the cracks in the shelter, Totto saw the sky drenched in red. She had seen it burn red from the fires ignited by incendiary bombs numerous times before, but that night it had a terrifying glow.
It was so bright, in fact, that Totto darted out of the shelter and into the house to retrieve her school bag, from which she took out a book and opened it in the middle of the yard. She could read every word. For it to be this well-lit in the middle of the night could only mean one thing: There must be a massive conflagration in the next neighborhood over. Totto called to Mother in the shelter, “Mother, it’s so bright out here that I can read my book. I think Ookayama is on fire!”
Mother climbed outside and gave the burning sky a long look. “It’s all right,” she stated confidently. “Nighttime fires appear closer than they really are. We’ll be fine.”
Totto didn’t know where Mother had learned this, but hearing it did calm her nerves a little.
They spent the night cold and hungry, without sleeping a wink. The next morning, a man from the neighborhood association came to their house and found them completely exhausted.
“We need one man per household,” he said. “Please bring a shovel.”
“My husband has been called up. There are no men in this house.”
“May we just borrow a shovel then?”
“Of course. What’s happening?”
“Much of downtown burned to the ground in the air raid last night. It sounds like there were many casualties, so we’re going to help with the bodies.”
March 10th, 1945. Some three hundred B-29s rained incendiary bombs on the eastern Fukagawa and Hojo areas of Tokyo, killing nearly one hundred thousand people in a single nightmarish night.
The Great Tokyo Air Raid.
That was what had caused the glowing red sky, which still remains etched in Totto’s mind. Even today, it takes about an hour by train to travel from Totto’s then-home in Kitasenzoku to the affected downtown areas. The fire was a great distance away, yet Totto’s own backyard was lit brightly enough for her to read as though in broad daylight. One can only imagine how absolutely hellish the attack must have been.
After the war, documents revealed that the United States had decided dropping incendiary bombs on Japanese houses, which were made of wood and paper, and burning them to the ground would be more effective than blasting buildings with explosives. The B-29s staged their attack over the city in groups, unleashing firebombs that were meant to burst into multiple flaming pieces so as to maximize the spread of the blaze.
Mother decided then and there that it was too dangerous for the family to remain in Tokyo any longer.
“We’re moving to the countryside as soon as possible. Let’s see if Mr. Numahata, who sent us the apples and vegetables, can help.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The family began to prepare for their evacuation. They first had to comb through their personal belongings and whittle them down, since they could only carry so much.
Totto had two prized possessions. The first was a large teddy bear that Daddy had brought back from Manchuria, where he had performed in a concert tour commemorating the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire. During that trip, Daddy was asked to play for Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, who would later become emperor of Manchukuo. Totto named the bear Kuma-chan (kuma means bear in Japanese).
Her second treasured item was the black-and-white stuffed bear Totto’s uncle had bought for her in America when she was younger. She always put the bear in her backpack and huddled with it in the shelter during air raids, and she was adamant about taking it with her to the countryside. Mother said that Kuma-chan was too big and needed to be left behind, but the black-and-white bear Totto could bring.
Mother pared down her belongings to a few family photos as well as pictures, programs, and other mementos of Daddy’s past concerts. Once the items were ready to be packed up, she took a pair of scissors and started cutting away at the Gobelin fabric that covered the living room sofa in a lovely rococo pattern. This she used in place of a traditional furoshiki wrapping cloth to bundle up their belongings for transport. Filled with all their most precious items, the bulging Gobelin-fabric bundle ballooned to resemble Santa Claus’s bag.
“Wait for me here, all right? I’ll be back before too long.”
Totto sat Kuma-chan in Daddy’s chair and, with her family, left the Kitasenzoku house behind.