Of the sanshin (three string banjo-like instrument) resonated in the stillness of the evening. That, like humans, Mother Nature also possessed yin and yang.Īt dusk after dinner, lights were lit in family dwellings. Typhoons pounded the island regularly with the raging ocean beating the shore and splashing the wharf in a cloud of spray. But winter made the blue ocean gray and brought a stiff, cold wind. Those shiny silvery ripples under the bright sun dazzled my eyes. The rippling waves made me want to play in the water like the fish. When I was little, I often saw the bright sun setting on the horizon, a scene beautiful beyond description. I was born on March 3rd in Shōwa 6 (1931) in Tomari, a section of Naha City, the capital of Okinawa, an island surrounded by coral reefs. Other accounts available in English of women’s experiences during and just after the battle are A Princess Lily of the Ryukyus by Jo Nobuko Martin (Shin-Nippon Kyōiku Tosho, Tokyo, 1984) on her service with other high school girls as a battlefield nurse and interviews translated in Steve Rabson, The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within (University of Hawaii Press, 2012), pp. They live today in Newport News, Virginia. In 1969 she married an American in the U.S. military occupation of Okinawa (1945-72), the author worked briefly for the American forces in food service and laundry, and later for the Ryukyu Life Insurance Company. In the early months of the 27-year-long U.S. It concludes with her internment in a refugee camp during the battle’s chaotic aftermath. The portion of her autobiography presented here describes her harrowing experiences during the Battle of Okinawa, in which she was wounded by shellfire and narrowly avoided rape by an American soldier. Her father worked as a ship-builder and her mother made Panama hats, a major export from Okinawa at the time. Born in 1931, the 6th year of Shōwa, the author was raised in Okinawa’s famous port town of Tomari, a section of Naha City, the prefectural capital. Below are translated excerpts from Yoshiko Sakumoto Crandell’s autobiography, Tumai Monogatari: Shō wa no Tamigusa (Tomari Story: My Life in the Showa Era), published by Shimpō Shuppan in 2002.
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