"After all," my cousin Taro said with the irritating drawl of southern Japan, "You people overseas didn't experience the honor of the bombshells raining on you." I turned to him sharply, but checked myself from speaking up. I knew Taro, who was almost as old as my father, would not even look at me. He would ignore me completely, sending me the silent message that he was talking to my father, not to me, and that he was not interested in what was on my mind anyway. I was only a woman. Worse yet, a young and opinionated woman who always looked straight into his eyes, instead of casting her eyes modestly, like a "real" Japanese woman—in his mind—should. It took only a few days for me to realize how unfit I was in my father's old home. For one thing, I did not wear a kimono-like top and baggy pants tied at the ankle, which had been a sort of national uniform for women during the war and continued to be their way of dressing for a long time afterward. Also, I talked and smiled freely, a strange habit.

"Yes, I know," my father agreed with Taro, "It must have been terrible for you. There isn't much of Oita left, is there? This is terrible. Lucky that you still have your farm."

We had walked through the ruins of Oita, or what was left of the main street of the city, when we had first arrived here. As with most cities in Japan, Oita had been bombed severely. The evidences of war were still plainly visible, even after a year and half. Debris had been cleared, leaving the blackened skeletons of many buildings standing naked. Hovels, or huts, had been built in their places. Streetcars had been restored, but the reconstruction was taking time. This was due to a lack of material, obviously.

"Lucky were the repatriates. Manchuria was too far for all the B-29s." Taro nodded to himself, smug in the idea that the Japanese in Japan had suffered more from the war than had the overseas Japanese. Sure, I said to myself bitterly, we were having a picnic while you fought the war. Taro always referred to us as "repatriates," as if we were of another race, not "real" Japanese. I had first heard this term, hihi-age-sha (the repatriates), at the Sasebo Port when we had arrived in Japan. The man who welcomed us had said, "Welcome home, my fellow repatriates." He had not said "welcome home, my fellow Japanese." When we had arrived at Taro's place, my father's old home, a few days earlier, the first comment that Taro had made was about our backpacks, which my sister-in-law Hisako had made out of our obi, the heavy sash tied over a kimono, made of closely woven silk brocade with intricate designs. Hisako had used them because they were as sturdy as canvas, and because the Russian soldiers in Dairen had bought kimonos from us but not obi, and obi were useless to us without kimonos. Taro had caressed the silk with his thick farmer's fingers, and had declared, "What luxury! You repatriates had it all, didn't you?" The fact that we had abandoned all our worldly possessions and had escaped to Japan with only what we could carry in those "luxurious" backpacks was totally ignored and forgotten.

"But, Father, after the war, for almost two years, we had to survive among the enemies without any protection," I ventured.

"It was a long two years, wasn't it?" Father nodded to me with a resigned smile. It had been thirty-eight years since he had left his home in Oita, Japan, his birthplace. He was the youngest of six brothers. His oldest brother and his wife, who had raised him, had died in his absence, and their oldest son, Taro, was now the head of the family. Taro vaguely remembered my father, but the rest of us were total strangers to him, as well as to his family, just as they were to us. We could have gone to any other place in Japan, but Father had wanted to come home. He had wanted to bring us back home, to his home. But was this really a homecoming?

"You know, B-29s did fly over Dairen and the vicinity once or twice," Father said to Taro, "but I think it was only for the purpose of reconnaissance. No, they didn't drop any bombs on us."

It was true that we had not experienced "the horror of the bombshells raining on us." Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek had agreed to preserve the valuable Manchurian railroad network, which was six-thousand miles long, along with the facilities of the numerous factories and mines. In fact, the Russians had dismantled the technically advanced key machinery of the Japanese factories in Manchuria, and had shipped them home. Most of all, however, both Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek were after the naval base of Port Arthur and the neighboring commercial port of Dairen, at the south end of Manchurian subcontinent. We had thus never experienced the air raids, as Taro pointed out, but was war all about air raids? I thought of the thousands of farmers and their families at the Manchurian-Siberian border, running for their lives on foot, a few steps ahead of the Russian tanks, some even leaving their small children in the hands of merciful Manchurian friends; and I thought of the hundreds of homeless refugees dying on the streets of hunger and of desperation. A war is not all about air raids, is it? But what was the point of arguing about it?

"Yes, it was a long two years," I mumbled. Taro shrugged it off and looked away. People in Japan had no idea, and seemed to have no interest in knowing, what had happened in Manchuria. The communication between Japan and Manchuria had been completely cut off for the two years following the war. The Japanese in Japan had no inkling of our horror stories, no more than we knew about their horror stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We did not stay very long at Taro's large house in the country. We soon moved to the city of Oita, or more precisely, to a slum of what was left of Oita. A run-down apartment that had electricity but no running water became our new home. There was a well in front of the apartment, which we shared with other families in the building. Still, we were happy, very happy, because Mother was happy. It had been years since we had heard Mother laugh like she used to—like a girl. In this humble abode in the slum of Oita, we relaxed, laughed, and talked about everything cheerfully. We decided that the well water tasted better than the city water. We marveled at the mild weather of southern Japan. Green mountains and fields in February! And we laughed about my youngest sister Toshiko's innocent exclamation—"Look! There's a great big chicken coop!"—pointing at a straw thatched farmers house from the train window on our way to Oita from Sasebo Port. We laughed about how great the plain white rice tasted after almost a year of eating kaolian (sorghum) and paomee (millet). We laughed and celebrated our safe return "home" in our own way.

We found out that my second-oldest brother, Kay, who had been in Southeast Asia with the Japanese army, had come back alive. My third older brother, Takashi, who had been attending college in Tokyo, also had survived the bombing of Tokyo, and was about to finish college. Kay and Takashi had come to Fathers birthplace in Oita soon after the war, hoping to find some information about us in Manchuria. Ever since we had learned to read and write, all of us children had been taught to memorize the address of Father's birthplace in case of an emergency—a precautionary measure of the colonial pioneers. They had been able to find out nothing about us in Manchuria, but Kay and Takashi had found each other there. They were gone by the time we came back to Japan; Takashi back to Tokyo, and Kay to Ashiya in the northern prefecture of Kyushu. Everybody in the family had survived. No one had even been hurt. What more could we want? We were one of the luckiest families in Japan, to have the whole family survive the war unharmed. We were grateful.

Once we were settled in our apartment, the next thing was for each of us to find work, except my younger sisters, who had to be transferred to a high school in Oita. One day, I responded to an ad for a job that I saw in a local newspaper, and was hired. My employer was supposedly a publishing company. I was not sure what was expected of me, but my position seemed to be that of a receptionist. In a small front room, I sat behind a desk, facing the entrance, reading the morning papers that my employer had handed me. There was nothing else to do. I was alone in the room. I was to call my employer, who had disappeared into the back room, should anyone come in. I was getting bored when I noticed a tall figure walking back and forth in front of our office, suspiciously peeking in. I got up, ready to call my employer if needed, then realized that it was my brother Kay.

"Kay-neesan (older brother)!" In a flash, I flew outside and into his arms. We cried, laughed, teased, and thanked God all at the same time. Kay had been my best playmate when we were young, although he was six years my senior. At one time, Kay and I had organized a theatrical group among the neighborhood children, the two of us being the main part of the group. Kay was a born comedian and an artist, a perfect master of ceremonies as well as the artist who produced the backdrops; Takashi, who was taking Kenbu (the Japanese sword-dance) lessons for health reasons, performed the gallant warrior dances and recited the Chinese warrior poems that went with Kenbu; Michiko, my younger sister, was a natural singer and a talented piano player who could also perform expertly in the dramas, assisted by my youngest sister, Toshiko, our little cousins, and the neighborhood children. I choreographed simple movements to children's songs for my little troupe to perform; made up the dramas, mostly out of Japanese folktales; and directed my little actors and actresses. When we were ready to perform for the "public," we would send out invitations to our relatives and neighborhood friends, who would come, obligingly, and enjoy the refreshments that Mother would serve…

Kuramoto, Kazuko. Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist. East Lansing: Michigan State U Press, 1999; 117-121.