Age at the time: Masakatsu four years old, Chiyo seventeen years old.

Nine family members perished We boarded the Tsushima Maru with my family There were 11 members in our family, my two parents and nine of us children. I was four years old and my sister Chiyo was then seventeen years old. My family made a living by selling the milk from our cow in Makishi, Naha. The family had decided in advance to evacuate, but we had to wait for the cow to be sold, so if we could have sold it sooner, and evacuated on an earlier ship, that might have changed our fate. (Masakatsu) 　 On 21 August 1943, leaving a grandmother and an aunt in our house, I and the other ten members of my family walked to Naha Port to board the Tsushima Maru. 　 There were nine brothers and sisters living there in our house in Okinawa. I was the oldest sister there. Each of the brothers and sisters had about two years gap in age. The oldest brother was living in Kagoshima, attending Kagoshima University. Our youngest brother hadn't even turned one year old yet, so my mother held him in her arms during the evacuation, and our father held Masakatsu's hand all the way to the port. He's the second youngest brother in our family. I don't remember the details of what happened on that day, because I was busy taking care of my younger brothers and sisters. All the way to the port, I was holding their hands with another brother on my back, so I was relieved when we finally got aboard the Tsushima Maru. Then we went down to the cargo hold of the ship. There were many small rooms partitioned off with boards and the ceilings there were very low. So, we left our mother and the little baby there in the small room and went up to the deck. Masakatsu was still a little boy, but he was with us on the deck holding his father's hand. We stayed there up on the deck for the first night and the second night. 　 Chiyo Takara There were many people up on the deck trying to avoid the humid conditions down in the cabin area. On the deck, I remember that my father told me to hold onto some rolls of cash and keep them in my pocket or somewhere in my clothes. It was the money from the sale of the milk cow and had it rolled up in his clothes. I wasn’t keen to keep such a lot of money on me and told my father “I don't want to have it, I’d lose it. I will be with you all the time anyway.” He also told me on the deck, “In the case of an emergency, we’ll push those rafts down into the sea and hold on tight” pointing at the rafts near us. We weren’t worried and instead talked about what we’d do the next day in Kagoshima, looking forward so much to the new experiences we’d have there. 　 I was half asleep when I heard a loud “bang” but I had no idea what had happened. The next thing that I remember was that I was pushing a raft with my dad. It was on the third explosion after the torpedo hit that the ship start listing. I could hear water pouring into the ship. We fell to the sea as the ship was sinking. I desperately searched for something to hold on to in the water. I remember that there was a sailor holding on to a raft rear me. He saw me holding onto a pickle barrel or something like that and called out to me to grab hold of the raft that he was on. It was a square raft made with some thin boards and it was empty in the middle, and each board was about 30 centimeters wide. A sailor called drowning people to hold that raft, he told them to put their bodies up over the board. There were many people holding onto, or on, our raft, but by sunrise we lost many of them as they floated away. They just disappeared one by one in the dark ocean. 　 After a while the ocean became rough because a typhoon was approaching, so we had to hold on really tightly to the raft. We encouraged each other saying, “Don't go asleep! You’ll die if you go asleep here!” We saw nothing on the sea around us, no sign of any other raft or survivors around us. Takara: The next day, we saw an airplane in the sky, but they didn’t see us. We also saw several fishing boats but they were too far away to hear us shouting. Eventually we were rescued by a fishing boat from Kagoshima. It was on the 23rd, in the evening of the second day after the ship went down. We were given some rice balls to eat right straightaway and we fell asleep after that. The next day, the 24th, there were many people waiting for us at Yamakawa Port in Kagoshima. Those who had heard the rumors about the ship being sunk had come to see the survivors. 　 I was wearing clothes that had been torn to shreds and the skin on my face skin had peeled off because of sunburn and the seawater. I must have looked terrible, but I heard someone calling my name. “Chiyo! Chiyo!” It was my older brother. He had been looking for me and other family members and had some used clothes in his bag. “Are you alone?” he asked me. I told him, “We were together on the ship. Have you found any of the others?” He told me that he hadn't found anybody yet, so I said to him to go to the pier to look for them. (Chiyo) Masakatsu Takara: My memories of the Tsushima Maru are very fragmentary. I was only four years old at the time. I remember that there were many people talking on the deck when I went on board the ship, and that the cabin had a low ceiling that I could walk through easily but adults had to crouch to get through. I was rescued the day after my sister. I do remember drifting alone on the ocean. I was holding onto something and each time the waves came seawater went up my nose, which painful. Until I realized that I was by myself, I actually thought that I must be drifting there with my father. I suppose that this explains how a four year-old boy could survive drifting at sea for such a long time. My sister agreed with me about this, but I don't remember anything about it. I was rescued by a fishing boat after drifting out there on the ocean, and then my brother in Kagoshima found me at the pier. He called our sister who was in the hospital. When I met her at the pier, I was surprised at how her face looked and told her “Look at your face!” I remember that she said, “Look at yours!” We had a good laugh at each other. Our faces looked terrible, sort of like peeled potatoes. I felt so happy that we had been able to survive and be there laughing at each other. Until then, I wasn't even aware of the wound that I had on my back. Part of a bone was visible in the wound, so I must have been bitten by some kind of fish when I was drifting on the raft. My brother then took me to the university hospital. In the end, there were only two survivors from the total of 11 members of my family who went on the Tsushima Maru - me and my sister Chiyo. 　 We joined up with our relatives who had already been evacuated from Okinawa to Kagoshima. My sister Chiyo worked really hard to earn our oldest brother's tuition fees and he graduated from Kagoshima University thanks to her assistance. My sister's life was a struggle after the tragedy. After the war, we all came back to Okinawa. (Masakatsu)

Older sister Chiyo explained why she agreed to do this interview. “It was difficult for me to talk about the Tsushima Maru tragedy. It reminded me of each of the faces of those we lost, and I feel so sorry for my young brother when I think of how he felt losing his family at the age of four. My younger brother Masakatsu is now the Chairman of the Tsushima Maru Museum Association and works to keep records of the tragedy” She seemed to be relieved to have been able to describe the horrible experiences that she had kept bottled up for such a long time.