Site Ed: The following interview illustrates the harrowing experience of an Okinawan family during the last battle of the Pacific War. No one in the family survived except Isa Junko and one sister. The interview further describes the daily struggle to survive in early postwar Okinawa and islander relations with U.S. occupiers.

* * *

* * *

My father was an elementary school teacher before the war. He wasn't drafted into the army since he held a special position at the school: He was in charge of guarding the imperial portrait. In those days, each school in Okinawa had its own photograph of the Emperor and Empress and one person responsible for safeguarding it.

My father kept that portrait locked in a beautifully decorated box. When we students gathered together for school assembly, he opened the box and placed the black-and-white photograph in front of us. As a sign of respect toward the Emperor, we weren't permitted to look directly at the photo. Everyone did from time to time, but we weren't supposed to.

I'll never forget standing with the rest of the students at assembly and listening to the principal speak. Every time we heard the name Tennō Heika [His Majesty the Emperor] we stood up even straighter, pressing our arms tightly against our sides and staring straight ahead. She demonstrated the pose. Most Okinawans these days have mixed feelings about the imperial system, but back then we didn't question it. We were taught to believe in the system and respect it.

That belief led us to war. Before the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, they were fighting battles all over Asia, and winning. We never dreamed Japan would lose in the end. All through the early 1940s, we heard nothing but reports about the success of our soldiers in places like the Philippines, Sumatra, and Singapore. That's why the teachers at school used to encourage us students to study so hard. "In the future you're going to be the leaders throughout East Asia!" they insisted. And so I studied, believing that one day we Japanese would occupy countries all over Asia.

I didn't understand much about the war until it reached Okinawa. That was on March 23, 1945, when U.S. planes bombed the main island. I was 14 years old at the time. I remember the morning well because it was the same day that the names of the students who were accepted into the girls' high school in Okinawa were announced in the paper. I'll never forget seeing my name there in black and white! I was really excited, but worried at the same time because I suspected the war was going to prevent me from enrolling in that school. And it did.

One week after the aerial bombing, U.S. troops landed on Okinawa. My family and I were living right here in Kitanakagusuku Village. When we heard the Americans had landed on the Sunabe coast in Chatan Town, not too far from where we were living, my father decided we should head south toward Shuri where the Japanese troops were headquartered. He thought it'd be safer there. So all eight of us — my mother and father, my grandmother, my younger sister, three younger brothers, and I — hurried for the forest behind our house that night. Shortly afterward, the bombs started falling on our village. When we looked behind us, the whole place was in flames. We fled. I remember we couldn't take too many personal possessions with us. All I had were the clothes on my back. I was wearing monpe [women's work pants that are gathered tightly at the ankles], a long-sleeved blouse, and a kind of pro¬tective hat made from cotton. And my pockets were stuffed with dried potatoes and sugar cubes for making imokuzu. Do you know what imokuzu is? It's a starchy substance made from grated potatoes. We dry the potatoes until they turn into flakes of starch, and then dissolve the starch in water. Then we add some black [unrefined] sugar to the mixture. There were times during the war when we had to survive on imokuzu for weeks.

While my family was heading for safety in the southern part of the island, we kept passing people moving north. Sometimes we wondered if we were doing the right thing by traveling in the opposite direction as everyone else, but we never turned around; we kept going south. At one point along the way we met up with two old people who had been to Naha, the capital, peddling goods. We spoke with them for a while, and they told us about a cave located in a place called Sueyoshi near Shuri. "You should hide there," they recommended. So that's where we headed. When we finally arrived at the cave at six o'clock the next morning, there were already about twenty or thirty people huddled inside. We didn't mind, though; we were just so glad to sit down and rest for the first time since our departure. We'd been walking since seven o'clock [the night before]. I think we covered about 12 kilometers in total.

Life inside the cave was a living hell. It was cold, and the place smelled of urine and feces. You see, everyone had to relieve themselves inside the cave during the daytime. We couldn't go outside because bombs were exploding all around us. By the time night fell, though, it was safe to crawl out. That's when we used to search for food. We heard from the others in the cave about a rice storehouse nearby that the Japanese military had prepared. Japanese soldiers were headquartered in Shuri, so it wasn't too unusual to find a big stockpile of food there. There was a river near the cave, too, where we could draw water. We were lucky to be able to get fresh water. A friend of mine who was sheltered at another cave near Itoman told me that she used to sneak out during the night to get water from a certain stream until she discovered that the stream was filled with blood from dead bodies lying nearby. Of course she didn't realize this at the time since it was dark when she crept out to get a drink.

Day after day we heard stories from the Japanese troops about how bravely they were fighting, and how they were planning to cut through to the enemy lines. From these same troops we also heard that women who'd been captured in the central areas of the island were being raped by American soldiers and that these Americans were killing children by ripping them apart at the crotch. She pulled her fists away from each other in demonstration. Of course these were just tall tales meant to scare us and convince us not to let ourselves be captured by the enemy. But I was still afraid to be caught. My father used to warn me about the Americans. "If they catch you, they'll do with you as they please," he used to tell me.

Not long after we fled our village, my parents heard through the grapevine that the eldest son of my grandmother's brother was on the island. He used to live with us when he was sent to Okinawa years ago from Peru to receive a Japanese education. He'd been drafted into the Japanese Air Force while he was still in school and was in charge of fixing aviation equipment. Unfortunately, all of the Japanese aircraft at Kadena were destroyed in that bombing on March 23, 1945, so he was sent south with the Imperial Army. We decided to go and look for him. We heard that the Army was in a place called Yoza near Itoman. Before we left, my father packed a pot, a kettle, and any food that we had into two buckets. Then he hung these buckets on opposite ends of a wooden stick and hoisted it onto his shoulders. My mother and grand¬mother each carried a small amount of baggage on their heads while I toted my 5-year-old brother on my back. My 11-year-old sister carried the baby on hers. My baby brother was only 10 months old at the time. We walked aimlessly that night along a bunch of roads we'd never been on before. Each time we asked someone for directions, we got a different answer. We never ended up finding my cousin in the end. I know we were close, but we never managed to meet up. That was a shame.

The next place where we decided to stop and rest was a town called Arakaki in the southern part of the island. The fighting was really heavy there. We stayed in an abandoned house with about fifty other people since there weren't any caves in the area. I remember waking up every morning to the roar of American aircraft. One day the sound of the engines competed with the wails of a baby who'd just been born nearby. The mother had to deliver the baby by herself. It might seem strange that no one helped her, but at the time we were only concerned about saving ourselves. She looked toward the ground, embarrassed. We never heard a sound from the mother, so we assumed she died in childbirth. I guess the baby died as well.

We would've died, too, had my father not suggested we get out of that area as quickly as possible. While we were standing outside discussing where to go next, an enemy plane screamed through the sky, dropping black bombs. One of them hit the house we'd been staying in with all those other people. Completely demolished it. We could hear people crying out from the rubble for help, but gradually the voices disappeared. That's when we knew they were dead.

It seemed like no matter where we traveled in those days there were always showers of bullets around us. Sometimes we sought shelter from those bullets in empty houses or under trees, where we had to jostle with people around us for a place to stand. Most of the time we had no idea how many days had passed, or how many weeks it had been since we first fled our village. All we were concerned about was whether or not we'd be alive the next day. We just kept hurrying from place to place every time we heard that U.S. soldiers were approaching. We were usually able to cover only 2 kilometers of distance with every move.

I remember walking along the roads one night and seeing Japanese soldiers moving from south to north, and north to south. Seemed like no one - not even the military - knew what they were doing or where they were going. It was on this very road where we saw some of the worst sights during our trek south. Things like a baby clinging to the breast of its dead mother. Or a small group of children hovering around their dead mother crying out, "Anma, Anma!" ["mother" in Okinawan dialect]. We even saw a Japanese soldier who was missing both his legs, but who inched forward on his arms, dragging his torso along. "Yoisho, yoisho," he heaved each time he moved forward. Then one night, an enemy flare lit up the area where we were walking, and I glanced over to find an arm hanging from a tree branch. Just below that was a decapitated body. There were body parts everywhere! In fact, there was hardly anywhere to put our feet since the road was piled high with mountains of corpses. Plus, since we were right in the middle of rainy season, the road looked like a swamp. It took us forever to slosh through those muddy puddles. After a while I became numb to the sights; I never got sick or cried when I saw such hideous scenes. And despite witnessing all of this, I still believed wholeheartedly that Japan would win the war.

My family reached a place called Itoman next. When we arrived there, my mother and the children rested in the shade while my father and grandmother went out looking for a cave. As soon as they left, a black bomb fell from the sky above us. I remember watching it descend. When it exploded, the fragments flew everywhere. My family was screaming out from the flames. I'd been hit, too, and got burns on my head and hands. But I was still able to run and seek help for the others.

I sprinted toward the mountains where I eventually ran into a few Japanese soldiers. It looked like they'd been fleeing from the bombs, too. I explained to them that my family had been hit, and I didn't know if they were alive or dead. One of the soldiers told me he'd just seen a man in the river and that maybe it was my father. The river? I thought. So, I begged the soldier to take me to that spot, and he did. I found my father there. He was burned badly and was in a daze. He said he'd been calling out our names in the midst of the flames, but couldn't locate any of us. When the fire had completely surrounded him, he jumped into the water to save himself.

We all managed to locate one another once the fires died down and the smoke cleared. My mother was really shook up after this incident and wanted to evacuate the area as soon as possible. Unfortunately my two brothers had been hit hard by shrapnel, just like my father, and weren't able to walk. My father decided the rest of us should go on without the three of them. "We'll all meet again," he managed to murmur. But my grandmother insisted on staying with my father and the boys. She didn't have the heart to leave the wounded behind unattended. Finally my grandmother convinced my mother to go on ahead with my sister, my baby brother, and me, and to leave her behind. So the four of us set out from the cave. It was the first time my family was forced to separate from one another.

I don't even know if I felt sad at the time. I mean, I was 14 years old, just a child. I didn't know what was happening. I was so worried about getting caught or dying that I don't think I had time to cry. We all simply obeyed what my father said and went our separate ways. We never saw each other again.

My mother, my sister, my baby brother, and I left the others and walked until nine o'clock that evening. That's when we stopped to rest at an abandoned house in Nashiro near the southern tip of the island. I remember we didn't say a word to one another as we walked along. Sometimes my mother would say something like, "Watch out!" or "Be quiet," but we never had a conversation or anything. In fact, I thought I'd forget how to talk because I never had a chance to do so at the time.

Things didn't get easier for us in Nashiro. The very next morning I got hit in the ankle by a shrapnel fragment from a gun that had fired on the house. Up until that point I'd been really strong, but suddenly I began to deteriorate physically. That night I told my mother to take the kids and go on without me. She wouldn't do it, though. She urged me to try to walk on the ankle, reminding me that up until now I had had such a will to live. "How can you give up now? Come on, let's go!" she encouraged me. So I grabbed a stick to use as a cane and hobbled along behind them. We walked through the darkness, each painful step keeping me awake.

At six o'clock in the morning we arrived in Kyanmisaki where we found a makeshift cave on the premises of a burned down house. At last the four of us could sit down! In the evening after the bombing stopped, my mother went outside to wash the baby's diapers. Then she fetched some water in the kettle and mixed the potato starch with sugar before dissolving it in the water. Because of our insufficient diet, my mother's natural supply of milk had dried up and the baby, too, had to eat imokuzu just like the rest of us. The poor thing was so skinny you could count all his bones. And he was so weak he didn't even have the energy to cry.

Two or three days later, my mother went out again to wash some diapers. Seconds after she stepped outside we heard a blast. She'd been hit by flying fragments from a bomb and had fallen to the ground! For some reason I was paralyzed; I couldn't jump up and run, toward her. I just screamed for her "Okāsan!" I cried out. But she didn't answer. I thought she was dead.

You can imagine how shocked I was, then, when she stumbled through the front door minutes later! When I looked at her, I could see that she was wounded in three places on her head and shoulders. Blood was pouring out from all over her. I ran to get some water. I remember the grass and trees all around me were still burning from the blast. I hurried down the small white path leading to a well near the ocean, and when I arrived at the coastline, all I could see were black enemy boats in the sea. About fifteen hundred big black ships surrounded the area. There was no space between them; it looked like one huge black mass. Fortunately no one shot at me while I was drawing water from the well. The Americans must've had binoculars and could see that I was a civilian, not a soldier. Even though I wasn't really in any danger, it was the first time I truly felt like I was going to die. How could we possibly escape from here? I wondered.

When I returned to the house with the water, three Japanese soldiers approached me. They'd been hiding in the water tank next to the house. They said they were moving on and suggested that my mother, my sister, the baby, and I hide in the tank. Had we surrendered? I wondered. I remember think¬ing it was really nice of them to let us hide in the water tank. It seemed like a safer place than our previous shelter. I know a lot of Okinawans had problems with the Japanese soldiers during the war, but I was always treated pretty well by them. I'd heard stories of civilians being forced out of caves by the Japanese military and of people who had to give up their food to the soldiers, who claimed they needed it to keep their strength up. Fortunately, though, the Japanese soldiers I had contact with during the war were kind.

My mother's physical condition gradually got worse. Her wounds were already infected, and there were maggots crawling around in them. It looked like she was in a lot of pain. I wanted to do something to help her, but I couldn't even walk on that ankle of mine. So the four of us just remained where we were. We were pretty helpless.

The next morning was unusually quiet. I remember my mother didn't have the same look of pain on her face as before. She was just sitting there in the water tank talking to herself. She never snapped out of that state. Then, at about eight o'clock that morning, she told my sister and me that it was time for all of us to take a nap together. We did as she said and lay down side by side.

A few hours later I woke up to discover that my mother's body was already cold. I shook my sister awake and said simply, "Okāsan wa shinda no yo." [Mom died]. She started crying. Strangely, I didn't shed a tear. I got some water, mixed it with potato starch and sugar, and then the three of us — my sister, my baby brother, and I — drank it. I wrapped my mother in a blanket, and we stayed like that next to her dead body for two days.

When I spotted a man from the village outside digging a hole to put the dead bodies of his family members in, I approached him and begged him to let me put my mother's body in the same grave. He wouldn't do it. So there I stood next to her corpse, and, for the first time, I started to cry. I looked toward her body and said, "I'm sorry." This caused my sister to start crying as well. The baby didn't make a sound.

That evening three American soldiers brandishing weapons arrived and forced us out of our hiding place. "Dete koi!" [Get out of there!] they called out in Japanese. They pointed their guns right at us, straight toward our chests! I couldn't believe how big these guys were. All I remember thinking was, "Oh, my goodness, this is the enemy!" Can you imagine how I felt being lifted up by one of them and taken away in a truck? I couldn't speak or understand English, so I had to tell them with hand gestures that I couldn't walk. They nodded and prepared two bamboo baskets, one for carrying me, and the other for my baby brother. My sister was able to walk. I remember the American soldiers tried to offer us some chocolate and water, but I wouldn't let my sister take any. I thought for sure that anything given to us by the Americans must have poison in it. When I refused, the soldiers ate some of the chocolate just to show me it was OK. When I saw they didn't get sick and die from it, I figured it was safe for us to eat the chocolate, too.

The Americans transported me to a field hospital up north in Kushi near Nago City to fix my ankle. Then they took my sister and baby brother to an orphanage. While I was in the hospital, the pain in my right ankle where the fragment had been lodged gradually disappeared, thanks to the treatment I was getting. I was lucky. The whole time I was recovering at the field hospital, though, I couldn't stop thinking about my sister and baby brother. Where exactly had the Americans taken them? Were they alive? Then one day I had my first visitor. It was my aunt. She heard that I'd been taken to this hospital and came to see when I'd be released. When she came back a few weeks later to take me home with her, she confirmed that my sister and baby brother had been sent to an orphanage. Apparently my grandmother's younger brother from Gushikawa City had gone there looking for them, and he didn't even recognize my sister when he saw her because all of her hair had been cut off! She looked like a boy, he said. You see, during the war we couldn't wash, so naturally our hair collected lice. I hadn't had a bath in a full four months!

Well, even though my great uncle didn't recognize my sister, she recognized him. She assured the nurses that he was her relative, and they permitted her to go home with him. My sister and I never lived together again. Seems strange that natural siblings were separated, but we had to live with whomever had the room to take us in. As for my baby brother, my sister told me he'd been placed in a separate room in the orphanage. On her second day there, she went to the room where the babies were kept to check on him, but he was gone. To this day we don't know what happened to him. I wonder sometimes if he's alive or dead. Did someone adopt him? Did he die of mal¬nutrition? I don't know. But I'd like to believe that he lived.

Isa-san sipped her root beer silently for several moments. Then she continued our discussion, this time focusing on her life in the immediate postwar years.

Conditions here on Okinawa after the war weren't much better than during wartime. We had some food, though, thanks to the distribution of goods by the American military. I remember the GIs handing out rations like canned corned beef and Spam. We Okinawans weren't used to food like that, but we ate it without complaint. We were hungry.

After the war, I lived with my uncle and some relatives in Kitanakagusuku, the village where I was raised. Then I started going back to school again in Gushikawa City. Education was free since it was sponsored by the Americans. I remember living in a tent at school with the other students for about two and a half years. Then, just six months before graduation, we had to start paying tuition at this school. That's when I dropped out. My uncle told me he couldn't afford to pay for my schooling anymore. After all, he had sons he needed to take care of. So I had to look for a job. That's when I started working for the Americans.

My job wasn't one of the glamorous ones. I wanted to work at the PX [post exchange], or in one of the shops or clubs on base, but those jobs were already snatched up by the really pretty girls. I used to watch them heading out to work wearing lipstick and all sorts of makeup. I didn't get one of those positions on base, so I had to settle for a job as a maid. I was 18 years old at the time.

The family I worked for lived on base housing in Awase [a region of central Okinawa]. I think the father was with the U.S. Army. It was really hard being a live-in maid at their house. I did everything there: started the coffee at six in the morning, sorted the laundry, washed the dishes. I never ate with the family, though; I took my meals in the kitchen by myself. There was always enough food as I remember since the family could get American goods at the commissary on base. I guess the toughest thing about living with that family was communicating with them. See, I couldn't speak En¬glish very well at the time. I mean, I had studied it at school a little bit, but I could hardly understand a word the family was saying. The parents used to have to point to things when explaining what they wanted me to do. And the mother watched everything! I was so nervous about making a mistake in front of her.

There were two children in that family named Janet and Greg. They were little at the time, maybe 3 or 4 years old. I didn't look after them since the mother was usually home to take care of them. I don't remember too much else about that family. Oh, I think they may have given me some clothing since I didn't have any. They saw me sewing things for myself in the house. We were able to get old military clothing, so I used to cut that apart and make blouses.

I stayed at that job for a total of four months before another position as a maid opened up at a distant relative's house. The head of the house was a doc¬tor. I had to go there to help him out because he couldn't find anyone else to do the job. See, most Okinawans at the time preferred to work on base because the jobs there in the stores and at the dubs were easy. Plus, the salaries were pretty high compared with other sorts of work in town.

I hated that second maid job. The doctor had two daughters who were dose to my age and who didn't seem to have a care in the world. One was an elementary school teacher, and the other was a high school student. And there I was working as their maid! I did that job for about three years. When the younger of the two daughters got accepted to a trade school in Tokyo to study fashion, I cried. I remember going out back to the field behind the house and staring up at the moon and screaming at it. "Why did I live? Why did I have to grow up under these conditions?" All I wanted in my life was to go to school, and if my parents had lived I would've been able to do that, just like these two.

When I eventually left that job, I started working as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant on Kadena Air Base. I was 22 years old then. The restaurant was pretty nice, and the tips weren't bad. I remember the base provided transportation for all the Okinawan girls who worked there since none of us had cars, and it was too far to walk. An American GI used to drive around to the villages in a big truck picking up the girls for work. Then he took us home again each night.

Since I was working on a U.S. base, the thought of marrying an American man crossed my mind from time to time. But, of course, I never married a GI. My relatives would've been opposed to that, and I didn't want to be cut off from the only family I had. So I ended up marrying an Okinawan man whom a friend of my aunt's introduced me to. I guess it was like omiai [arranged marriage].

My husband and I didn't stay together very long after we were married. Just about a year and a half. That's because I took off! She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand. See, my husband's mother wasn't a very nice person. A bit on the cold side. And she and my husband didn't get along very well. There was always so much tension in the house. I tried to tolerate it, but it was just too much for me after a while. Finally, I packed up my things in a furoshiki [a special scarf for wrapping goods] and went to the house of some relatives who ran a restaurant. I lived with them for about a year, earning my keep as a waitress in their restaurant. My husband tried to come and see me a few times, but my male relatives wouldn't let him in.

Then, in 1958, I received my father's pension money from the Japanese government. I used that to attend beauty school in Tokyo. Okinawa was under U.S. occupation at the time, so I needed a passport to get to the mainland. We could get passports fairly easily for school-related purposes. I moved to Tokyo with two of my friends where we found an apartment and started studying.

Those three years in Tokyo were the best! My friends and I were always cooking together and going out on the town. We lived in the capital around the time Michiko [the current Empress] married the Crown Prince [the current Emperor]. I wasn't too caught up in the lives of the royals, but the fact that Michiko was a commoner was something unprecedented, so almost everybody in Japan showed some interest in their wedding.

I stayed in Tokyo until I was 30, then returned to Okinawa to work in my friend's mother's beauty shop in Naha. It wasn't long before my husband came looking for me there. He must've heard from someone that I was working in the city. We hadn't seen each other in years! Anyhow, he told me his mother had died and he had money in case I wanted to start a beauty shop of my own. I had been dreaming about having my own shop for a while.

So that's what we did. I ran the shop in Naha until I got pregnant and had to quit work to have the baby. I didn't have any relatives in the area who could help me with child care, so I had to do it myself. That's when my husband and I decided to move back to Kitanakagusuku, the village where we were from. There was also another reason for going back: my husband had to take care of the ihai [mortuary tablets] on which his ancestors' names were written. This responsibility traditionally belongs to males in Okinawa. So we went home because of these obligations.

I guess I spent the rest of my life as a housewife. I had two children — two boys — and I raised them at home. My husband worked on an oil tanker, so he was gone a lot on trips to Arabia. He's at home quite a bit now, though. He doesn't do anything these days. Nothing but jog and take care of our garden. He likes to take walks, too. Often he asks me to go with him, but I can't walk very far because this ankle injury still bothers me. My war wound. And if I stand for a long time on it, it hurts. In the winter, too, it can be painful.

So, you've read my memoir of the war? Writing an excerpt for that book was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life. Back in 1983, the Fujin Rengokai [Okinawa Women's Association] decided to gather together the stories of women war survivors and compile them into a book. That's when they asked me to write about my personal experience during wartime. To be honest, I didn't want to write about it, but I felt like I had to because I was asked. It had been years since I'd thought about the war. And I never told anyone about my experience in great detail like I was requested to do now.

I was a wreck! It took me two weeks to write everything down. It's difficult to look back on your life thirty years later and write about what you experienced. It requires a lot of thought. I remember writing a little then breaking into tears. I couldn't continue. Yet I knew I had to. So I picked up my pen again. Every time I set it down, I felt like I should be writing. So I just kept writing and crying until I finally finished it.

After that, lots of people started to ask me to speak at high schools in an effort to educate students about the war. So I've been to mainland Japan dozens of times with groups from around here giving talks about the war. And lots of groups have come here, too. You see, students in our country don't learn much about the war, especially the Battle of Okinawa, in history class. Everything about Japan's militarism is just glossed over. But I feel a special duty to teach them all about the war since one of its most ferocious battles was fought right here on the island. Sometimes the visitors from the mainland request a tour of all of the places where my family and I sought shelter during the war. It's a lot for me mentally and physically to do those tours since I have to relive all of my experiences. But it's worth it if the students learn something. I want them to understand that war isn't the way to solve problems. Look at the past. Look at what I had to go through. Do you want this to happen to others in the future? These are the types of things I want young people to think about.

After I tell the students about my experience, I usually hold a question-and-answer session. Someone asked me once why women let their husbands, fathers, and brothers go off to war in those days. "Couldn't you stop them?" the student asked me. What people these days don't understand is the intolerance of the Japanese government at the time. If we had refused to let our men go, or if the men themselves had declined service in the imperial forces, we risked being shot. But kids these days don't understand things like that. It's hard to comprehend war when you haven't lived through it.

Nowadays when I look at all the military bases on the island, it seems like we Okinawans support war. Whenever American planes left here in the past for places like Vietnam or the Persian Gulf, we Okinawans felt like we were a part of those missions because the planes took off from our island. I remember the skies here were clogged with military helicopters and airplanes during the i96os. It was always so noisy! When I heard the roar of the planes I couldn't help but think about my own wartime experience. I just knew that others were undergoing a similar situation in another country, and that made me feel terrible.

It's funny, but I feel like my way of thinking is a bit inconsistent. I mean, I'm against the existence of the military bases here, but I have to admit there were some advantages to having the U.S. presence on the island. After all, we women got the right to vote under the American Occupation. That was a good thing. I think a lot of Okinawans feel the same way I do. It's hard to be 100 percent for or against anything here. Maybe that's difficult for outsiders to understand, but that's the reality in Okinawa.

You know, these days I never think about dying. I only think about living and doing as much as I can. Maybe that's because I was faced with death so much during those wartime years. I'm not sure. All I know is that I want to enjoy the rest of my life. I'm 67 years old and really independent! I'm not afraid to go anywhere. My sons laugh at me. They say that as long as I have my legs and my lips I can survive anywhere. She tilted her head back and laughed easily. You know what I'd like to do if I could do anything? I'd take a trip around the world! I've already been to England, Paris, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. Switzerland is my favorite. It's beautiful there. I guess I'd like to see Canada and Australia next. She eyed her mug of root beer on the table and leaned toward the straw. Yes, she reconfirmed as she took a long sip of the sweet, brown liquid, that's what I would do if I could do anything.

Keyso, Ruth Ann. Women of Okinawa: Nine Voice from a Garrison Island. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000; 3-16.