In August of the same year [1944, after his grandmother’s death in February], in that time of destitution near the close of the Pacific war when everything was rationed, the efforts of village leaders brought electricity to Nibutani. My family was delighted when a single bare bulb was hung from the ceiling and lit up.

In February, though I was not yet twenty, I had been called up for a physical, since the military had started to move up the draft age. The examiner made a speech to exhort us: "Japan now needs new weapons. There is no weapon superior to you, bursting into enemy ranks, carrying bombshells in your hands. Are you up to the challenge of serving as the ultimate new weapon? Let me see a show of hands."

"I am!" We raised our hands simultaneously, pledging to become new weapons.

I passed the physical in the B class, becoming a member of the reserves, so I was not called up right away. That spring, however, the newspaper was filled with reports of large-scale air raids by B-29s and the defeat of Japanese forces on various islands. In late May I was drafted as a civilian in the volunteer corps. I joined Kabura Regiment 15306, led by Second Lieutenant Shimura Tar?. It was stationed at the air base at Hatchodaira, on elevated land north of Muroran. I was employed as a worker at the base.

Barefoot or wearing straw sandals or, at best, rubber-soled toe socks with straw strings, we pushed dirt-laden trolleys on rails. Between assignments about thirty of us recruits went to the wharf at Wanishi on other jobs. On the way, we passed twenty to thirty Chinese prisoners-of-war at work. They pointed at our feet and, breaking out in smiles, chattered away with gusto. They were probably telling one another that judging from our footwear, Japan's strength must be waning. Soon afterwards, Japan was defeated.

On July 14,1945, just one month before the war ended, Muroran was assaulted by U.S. warships and machine-gun attacks from planes flying off an aircraft carrier. That day we were in the barracks in Inoue Park in Wanishi. From 8 A.M. on, great blasts resounded under the overcast sky. We had no idea what the noises were, but a sergeant by the name of Kasamatsu told us we were being bombarded from warships.

We took cover in semi-individual hideouts called octopus holes. We had been told to use one hole per person, but since we had in fact dug holes wide enough for two people, I clambered into one of them with my friend Nitani Sojiro, knowing that his company would be preferable to dying alone. We sat immobile in the hole, facing each other and covering ourselves with folded blankets. Boom! With a terrible noise, the dirt walls crumbled onto our laps.

Noncommissioned officers and soldiers apparently were leaving their holes now and then to watch the direction of the bullets, for we heard loud voices telling us that although we were out of the line of fire, we should not leave our holes. If I remember correctly, enemy fire from the warships lasted until noon.

The sweeping attack from the Grumann aircraft the next day occurred during work and was so sudden that we had no time to run into the octopus holes. They roared-vroom! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! My legs turning to rubber, I was unable to run. Covering my head with a garden shovel, I clung to the roots of a cypress tree.

Since my friend Sojiro was sleeping off a cold in the barracks, I ran there after the planes had flown off. Hoisting him onto my shoulders, I hauled him to an octopus hole. Not a shot was fired by the Japanese army in response to the intermittent aircraft assaults. When I furtively peered out of our hole between shellings, I saw the Grumann aircraft attacking a Japanese cruiser, or maybe it was a destroyer. The Japanese boat counterattacked, but to no avail. The cruiser caught fire and, engulfed in smoke, disappeared from sight as we watched from Inoue Park.

Then came August 15. As usual, we were pushing trolleys. Just after midday a noncommissioned officer who had gone to hear a radio broadcast at the edge of the Hatchodaira air base came back and, announcing the end of the workday, ordered us to return to the barracks. We milled about our quarters, wondering what was going on, until we were told to line up outside. Standing before the Zoo of us civilian employees of the military, our commander, Second Lieutenant Shimura, announced that Japan had lost the war. "How much more gratifying if the emperor had told us to fight to the last soldier," he told us in tears.

My only thought then was that although Japan could not have lost, maybe, just maybe, I would be able to go home alive. It was "just maybe" because the lieutenant's words alone were not enough to convince me.

The defeat was certain, however, and from the next day we no longer pushed trolleys but began putting the camp in order. One of our orders then was to burn all diaries. Such war records could apparently be used against us should the U.S. military occupy the area.

The diaries I had kept from 1941 to August 14,1945, were confiscated and burned before my eyes. In them I had recorded my continuous struggle as a forestry worker, surveyor, and charcoal burner, followed by my experiences in the war. This was a greater shock to me than our defeat. For one year after that, until May 5, 1946, 1 did not resume my journal. As I write what could be termed a record of a half-life, my profound regret over the loss of those diaries intensifies.

On August 24 I returned to Nibutani with a blanket and the military uniform I had been given to wear at work. The defeat left many traces on our Ainu villages. Villagers had died in the war, some fathers never returning and the whereabouts of some husbands remaining unknown. The hardships were great for those who were left.

If I stayed on in the village, I would have nothing to eat; besides, there was no sense in sitting idle there. So I decided to go out to the lumber station and worked for two months with the Kohata team of Marutake Lumber, along the Chiroro River in Chisaka, Hidaka.

In Nibutani we grew millet in our own fields as a staple, but the wartime institution of the rice ration throughout Japan introduced us to the idea of rice as a staple, and we began to depend upon it more and more. Even for someone who had money, though, rice and clothing were hard to come by.

In May 1946 Kaizawa Masayoshi, a salesman in Nibutani, invited me to join him on a trip to Hakodate to stock up on goods for his business. Since I needed to feed my young brothers, I was willing to do any kind of work and took him up on his invitation. When we arrived, we discovered we could purchase quantities of clothing with the vouchers that had been worthless in Nibutani, where there was nothing to buy. Among the many things villagers back home were sure to be delighted with were kimonos for children and open-necked shirts for adults.

My first visit to Hakodate was as Kaizawa's assistant, but from the second time on, I went as my own boss. Gathering up the ration cards in the village, I stocked up on whatever items the villagers wanted. They were pleased, and I made money, so we mutually benefited. Because of the long war, there were general shortages, so everything, not just clothing, sold well. Even straw raincoats and bamboo-weave sieves sold.

My sales route was no longer just along the Saru River but gradually expanded along the Monbetsu River. Although the parameters of my business widened, I didn't carry more supplies or make much more profit. Thanks to this job, however, I was able to trade things for rice, so my family had fewer worries about food.

As I walked my territory, I worked out a plan to build a new house. When I returned to Nibutani from charcoal making in 1944, my first thought was how wonderful it would be to have a nice house. Since I could hardly earn enough in door-to-door sales, I came up with an idea to acquire the lumber: I asked Yamamichi Matsuo, who made charcoal at Taikeshi Creek, on the east bank of the Saru River across from Nibutani, to let me help him at a rate of one-fifth of a cord of logs per workday. Busily making coal and collecting lumber in off-hours from my sales route, I was able to obtain about 2 cords of logs.

My plan was to start building in the autumn of 1947, but it snowed on November 12, and nearly 30 centimeters had accumulated by November 18, so I didn't get the logs up soon enough and had to give up the plan for that year. In the new year we started building around the time the snow melted, and the house was completed on May 8. The roof was of tiered thatch, but the house had a foundation. It was tiny--approximately 45 square meters--but incomparably superior to the one we had lived in until then.

The weather was fair that day, and about fifty villagers came out to help. To celebrate we served a 36-liter keg of unrefined home brew and about nine liters of refined sake I had bought on ration. After the party, when the household was peacefully asleep, I stole out of bed to the brand new house and pressed my face to the pillars. It was a house with a foundation such as I had dreamed of since my underprivileged childhood.

Although it was nominally completed, I couldn't get glass windows that easily, so of the twelve I needed, I installed only the six available, covering the remaining openings with boards. I also collected the tatami mats and other furnishings bit by bit as I continued selling my wares. It took about three more years to gather everything for the house.

In order to earn enough for furniture, I also worked at the forest cultivation that had left me with such bad memories just out of primary school. My main job, there, however, was not planting trees or weeding around saplings but providing food for the foresters.

Around 9 P.M. on July 3, 1947, three food gatherers--Kaizawa Maetar?, Kaizawa Tomeichi, and I--walked past the Nioi Primary School shouldering black-market rice when a suspicious policeman accosted us. We begged him to overlook the incident, pleading that the rice was for the forestry kitchen, we three were also foresters, and without the rice we would be unable to plant trees.

The officer questioned us closely and seemed to realize we were not lying. Saying, "Well, if that's so, wait in front of the police station; I'll be there later," he went off.

The three of us reluctantly made our way to the station with the rice still on our backs and waited outside in the dark for about two hours. The policeman finally returned and "released" us, saying with a troubled expression, "The Ainu are just so honest. Don't tell anyone I found you. Now go home quickly!" On the road back we conjectured that once he had discovered the black-market rice he couldn't let it go, and ordering us to appear at the station was his way of telling us to go home. (That officer probably rose to prominence and is retired, leading a leisurely life. Even now, when I see the woods of todo pines we planted to the right and above the Baratai Creek, I recall the black-market rice incident.)

From about this time, I started working in earnest as a logger. I went out to the work site without a day of rest, and though it was not as if I were tops in production, I was third or fourth in quantity of wood cut. Because I kept away from liquor and cigarettes and worked hard, I gained the trust of my co-workers and came to the attention of the foremen. Perhaps I was desperate to become one of the foremen I had idolized in my primary school days.

Then about 1949 or 1950 I formed a small subcontracting group and called it the Kayano team. Although I had just a few men under me, I was often chosen as representative when there were negotiations between subcontractors and foremen to improve working conditions such as workload, meals, and baths.

Having become a foreman, however small the team I headed, I decided that it seemed about time to settle down and find a bride. Since my two older brothers had died of tuberculosis, though, my family was rumored to be ridden with lung disease, my father was notorious as a heavy drinker, and there were eight people in all to live with (Father, Mother, my elder sister, myself, Sueichi, Tomeji, Miyako, and Terukazu). No matter how you looked at it, these were not favorable conditions for attracting a wife. Still, I mulled over who might be willing.

I set my sights on the younger sister of Asano, the woman who had married into the family next door. Nitani Reiko lived in the Kankan area, a recently cultivated neighborhood near Nibutani. The sixth of eight children of Nibutani's Nitani Zennosuke and Hana, she was born on tiny Okushiri Island off southern Hokkaido on August 27, 1931. Like many other Ainu from Nibutani, her father happened to be working there at the time as a surveyor's assistant.

Her mother died of illness when Reiko was ten. From then on she was looked after by her eldest brother, Kosuke, and his wife, and by her third sister, Asano, and her husband. She entered Nibutani Primary School in April 1938, so it seems we attended the same school for just one year.

Reiko, like me, had a large family and she lost her mother young, so her suffering was no less than mine. After the war, when there was a food shortage and reclamation projects were carried out here and there, the Kankan area near Nibutani, which belonged to Biratori village, was opened up. Reiko's oldest brother, Kosuke, joined the reclamation project, and Reiko and her two younger brothers went with him and his wife. Their lives were one hardship after another, with nothing to eat, nothing to wear, and always doing without, but Reiko was the epitome of health, working the fields and walking the gravel roads barefoot.

Since she herself expressed willingness to join my family as my wife, I asked Kaizawa Matsuichi to act as go-between and speak to the Nitani family. Her relatives, however, would not commit and kept stalling until spring, then autumn. Conditions certainly were not favorable, as I have said, and as I had no money, having just built the house and bought furniture, I decided to save up and wait until the time was right.

We finally completed the arrangements in January 1951; I handed them an engagement gift of 10,000 yen (two payments of 5,000 yen each). Our marriage ceremony took place on March 8 the same year. I was twenty-five and Reiko was nineteen. We had the wedding at our house, inviting about fifty people to help us celebrate.

The congratulatory words of the primary school principal, Hosaka Hitoshi, fit well with my feelings at the time: "There are no complete human beings. Shigeru and Reiko are both incomplete. Please work to complement each other's shortcomings and create a wonderful home."

Our greatest luxury for the ceremony was the wedding photograph. It cost 350 yen and took me a year to pay off.

With marriage as a catalyst, I started seriously considering the idea of becoming a logging foreman. I stayed home for about five days after the wedding but then left behind my bride, Reiko, and went to work deep in the mountains along the upper stream of the Niikappu River with the twenty-ninth team of the Miyawaki lumberyard. I did not return for two months, until mid-May, when farming began.

I think it must have been quite difficult for Reiko until then. At home, where she had become the ninth member, she had to look after my youngest brother and care for the crops. Furthermore, I, her husband, was around only for brief intervals at the time of spring plowing and autumn harvest, otherwise working hard as a logging foreman.

In the spring of 1952, I received money from the foreman of the Matsui team, which was subcontracting for the Asahikawa National Pulp Factory, to take as many loggers as I could collect with me to Soun Gorge in the upper stream of the Ishikari River. Matsui was from Iwachishi in Biratori, and he probably trusted me with this important matter because I was from nearby Nibutani.

Because I could not gather enough men in Nibutani alone, I asked former coworkers from Atsuga and Shizunai and succeeded in convincing over fifty loggers to go to Soun Gorge. When we arrived, we found ourselves beyond the gorge at Mayoisawa, where even surveyors were said to have lost their way. At the time, cars could go only slightly beyond ?bako on Soun Gorge, and from there we had to walk. In addition, we had to carry such tools as saws and axes, our sleeping gear, and provisions such as rice. It would not have been so bad if we had needed only the usual logging tools, but we took along implements for splitting trees for pulp, so our packs were quite heavy--we were carrying about 6o kilos each. It would have been fine had we divided the load for two trips, but we couldn't bear the thought of going back and forth on the long, tortuous mountain trail, so instead we moaned and groaned as we hiked the 12 or 13 kilometers.

Making a stop midway where an ancient work station stood, we finally arrived at our destination and, putting up tents, started constructing another station. Building this was yet another strenuous task. The interior reaches of S?un Gorge were a complete wilderness, untouched by axes, and there was such an abundance of pines ideal for pulp that sunlight barely touched the earth. There was no difficulty in clearing away enough trees to make the lodge, but the ground around the space was damp from lack of light and infested by mosquitoes and gnats, for which the location was a prime breeding ground.

It was the first time I had ever been attacked by such a huge swarm of mosquitoes. We wore starched sheer cotton on our straw hats to protect our faces, and arm covers over the cuffs of our gloves to close off our sleeve openings. Still, they managed to crawl in from somewhere, and the stings on our necks, hands, and feet itched unbearably. When we removed our gloves to scratch, the mosquitoes swarmed onto our hands, covering them until they were black. We felt stifled.

When we took off the veils to eat lunch, they would attack our faces so we couldn't enjoy the food we had so eagerly awaited. And at night the mosquitoes would come into our tents. We tried plucking grass or pulling out the cotton from our futons and setting it afire to scorch them, but the effort was wasted; it had little effect. There were several nights when we didn't sleep a wink. Once some sunlight found its way to the ground where trees had been cleared for the lodge, the mosquitoes' invasion abated some-what. But in the beginning things were so bad that we feared we would be unable to last the workday.

Despite suffering various adversities, we finally constructed a work station that would house and feed about 100 people. The materials for the lodge were all prepared on site; specialists in various activities sawed the boards, split the chopped wood, and so on.

Among the workers were those from other small teams of five or ten. Once the nearly 100 loggers joined together at the station, a hall chief had to be chosen. The hall chief was the mediator between the laborers and the foremen. He reported the needs and complaints of workers and saw that they were properly addressed; he also passed on orders to the workers and ensured that they were carried out. The choice usually was the boss of the team with the largest number working at the lodge or someone who excelled at his job and was well liked.

On that occasion, the Kayano team, with its fifty members, far outnumbered others, so I was chosen as hall chief. When it was announced, "We propose Kayano as hall chief," and I was introduced to everyone, it took all I had to mumble in a shaking voice, "I hope to be of service." At the time I was twenty-six, rather young to do justice to the title. To be head of 100 hot-blooded, rough men was a heavy responsibility. Even so, it made me feel kind of good when older men greeted me with "Good morning, Chief" at the start of the day and "Welcome back, Chief" in the evening.

Shortly after we began the real work, one man from another team who liked to brag about his prowess as a fighter started badmouthing me. "What's with that young Ainu upstart of a hall chief?" A team member of mine who overheard the comment dragged the man outside and began to pound him mercilessly. I hate violence, so I stopped my man. This is not a pleasant topic, but the eruption of violence at the lodge was hardly infrequent.

The next morning I went with my man to Foreman Matsui and apologized. Seeing the other man with his entire face wrapped up in bandages and only his eyes peering out, I felt truly awful. After that incident, it became known throughout the camp that although the foreman of the Kayano team would not fight, he had a tough underling. People started listening to me, and I was thus able to carry out my duties as hall chief without further trouble. Kaizawa Tsunetaro gave me immeasurable help during this time.

It was absolutely draining to act as mediator in fights between loggers or deal with those who got wounded on the job, but I put my all into it, thinking it was good preparation for becoming a contractor. There actually were quite a few fights, and a number of times I found myself bundling a seriously injured worker onto a two-man rope basket for hauling dirt and carrying him over 16 kilometers of mountain trail to where a car could meet us. By surviving such experiences, I matured into a full-fledged hall chief.

If I remember correctly, it was when I returned from mountain work in the fall of 1953 that the tukipasuy (ceremonial wine-offering chopstick) my father had treasured above all else was not in sight. The tukipasuy is a revered object, believed to ensure that our supplications are heard by the gods if, prior to prayer, it is soaked in wine. That such an important utensil was missing. . .

I had already noticed that whenever I came home from several months of work, one folk utensil after another used by the fireside seemed to have disappeared. And now it was the tukipasuy my father valued so highly.

Even today I remember its shape, color, and design. It was somewhat broader than most, and the end held in the right hand was broken off, leaving only two of the three designs carved across if. It I were to see it again, I would most certainly recognize it immediately.

In those days I despised scholars of Ainu culture from the bottom of my heart. They used to visit my father for his extensive knowledge of the Ainu. I often railed at them and, accusing them of behavior as rude as that of waking a sleeping child, ordered them never to return. Professor K. of Hokkaido University was one whom I snarled at many times. Those who sought out my father therefore learned to confirm with the neighbors that his son Shigeru was away before they came over.

There were a number of reasons I hated them. Each time they came to Nibutani, they left with folk utensils. They dug up our sacred tombs and carried away ancestral bones. Under the pretext of research, they took blood from villagers and, in order to examine how hairy we were, rolled up our sleeves, then lowered our collars to check out backs, and so on.

My mother once staggered home after I don’t know how much blood had been taken. I felt that no one should go if that was how we were treated, but the village leaders rounded up people with this argument and that. And the Ainu were also compensated a certain amount.

There was also portrait photography. People not only were photographed from the front, the side, and an assortment of angles but induced to wear large number plates such as criminals wear in mug shots. Among the photographs of my mother is one in which a number plate hangs from her neck. After having her blood taken, her back checked, and being photographed while wearing this label, how much money did she receive, I wonder? My mother’s pained expression in the photo always stings me to the quick.

Seeing such self-centered conduct by shamo [derogatory Ainu word for deceivers from the outside, usually referring to Japanese] scholars, I asked myself whether matters should be left as they were: Our land, Ainu Mosir, had been invaded, our language stripped, our ancestral remains robbed, the blood of living Ainu taken, and even our few remaining utensils carried away. At this rate, what would happen to the Ainu people? What would happen to Ainu culture? From that moment on, I vowed to take them back. Once I promised myself this, I believe my personality changed.

Five or six years before I came to this awareness, in my early twenties, I had tried to discard everything Ainu and even forget that I was Ainu. On February 13, 1948, a bear-sending ceremony was held in Biratori with my father performing the role of the master of ceremonies (see Note below). Standing aloof as my father happily dressed up and set out, I thought, “bear-sending indeed in this modern age. Some people certainly have time on their hands!” I then headed for a nearby mountain to cut firewood, though there was no pressing need for it. Thinking back, I am terribly remorseful that I did not go see my father’s gala performance on this once-in-a-lifetime occasion.

Note: a solemn ceremony in which a bear cub raised in captivity for two or three years was briefly freed and then killed to release the spirit of the god of the mountain and send him back to his world with dancing and offerings. The bear’s meat was then served at a communal feast.

Once I became actively conscious of my Ainu roots, I decided to start a collection of Ainu folk utensils, purchasing them myself to prevent them from being taken away for close to nothing. I first looked around our home, but there was nothing even resembling an Ainu folk piece. My father had sold conspicuous items to residents of Shiraoi—an Ainu village in southwest Hokkaido—in the winter of 1933 or so, and nothing else could be expected to remain in our house, frequented as it was by shamo scholars. Still, there were my father’s clothes and several wine cups, of not particularly high quality, called isepotuki.

Of the items the museum requested [for an Ainu Display area in the National Ethnological Museum in Osaka], my wife made the majority of objects traditionally made by women. Since the time eighteen years ago when she labored over a straw mat woven with an Ainu design to be displayed at Waseda University, she had created all the women's articles not only for the Nibutani Museum but also for the Hokkaido University Museum, the Otaru Museum, the Tomakomai Collection, and numerous tourist sites in the prefecture.

For me to proclaim her merits may be immodest, but once my wife starts a project, she works with great care until it is finished, never creating anything halfheartedly. I am not certain whether this determination is a characteristic she was born with or if it developed over the years as the forbearing wife who shared my poverty. Although she never mentions it, I think she must be proud of being able to create articles that will be transmitted to future generations.

In 1978 I received the Hokkaido Cultural Promotion Award. The night I heard of the honor, I opened a bottle of beer and raised my glass to meet my wife's. I started to tell her, "Half of this award is yours--congratulations," but the rest of the words would not come. Since our marriage in 1951, my wife has withstood many hardships, not only looking after a poor family of eight nominally headed by a drunkard father-in-law but also tilling the fields. The husband she should have been able to depend upon left for work five days after the wedding and returned only at the busiest plowing and harvesting times in spring and autumn. On top of that, he wandered around purchasing Ainu craft items with part of the money he brought home. Our lifestyle has recently become more comfortable, but it truly used to be a daily battle with poverty.

Since I was aware of my wife's sacrifices, I tried to avoid any marital disagreements. And because as a child I hated watching my parents fight, I vowed for my three children that I would never argue with my wife. It is now close to thirty years since our wedding, but we haven't had a single fight worth recalling. I can hardly bring myself to whisper this, but it is thanks to my wife that I have been able to pursue my interests to this extent.

Kayano, Shigeru. Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994; 83-100; 150-151.