Determined to survive

I was in the fourth grade of Kakinohana National School in the summer of 1944, the year in which we were evacuated. I cringe just remembering those days. Our thinking was pre-determined to follow imperialistic and militaristic ideas and the pupils at our school aspired to grow up as soldiers to fight for our country.
I heard about the evacuation in class. The kids at school cheerfully talked about it, looking forward going to mainland Japan and maybe being able to see snow there.
　
My father was in Osaka and my mother had already passed away, so I was living with my grandmother and my elder brother. I don't remember it, but my schoolteacher came to my house to tell my brother about the evacuation. In those days, we watched movies or read comics that depicted fighting as soldiers as something to aspire to.
　
The temporary stay on the mainland of Japan would include winter, so students of our school were given brand new national uniforms. I boarded the Tsushima Maru wearing my new uniform, a brand new pair of shoes that my brother had bought for me and carrying a ragged old school bag.
　
The Tsushima Maru couldn’t berth beside the pier at Naha because of its great size, so it dropped anchor just off shore. We were transported to the ship by some fishing boats.
It looked like a three or four story-high building floating on the sea.
I was so excited when I stepped onto the deck. On board the ship, family groups and school pupil evacuees were separated into different areas. It was really humid inside, just like being in a steam bath. I remember that our cabin was filled with many shelf type bunks.
Everyone took out their lunch boxes from their bags and start eating dinner in the cabin. It makes me so sad to remember that now - that they would all probably have been filled with their mother’s home cooking, and that for most of them it would be their last meal.
After dinner, we were each given a life preserver and showed how to use it.

On our second night at sea, I was sleeping up on the deck with two friends to escape from the humidity below deck. All of a sudden, we were woken by a dull thud from the explosion of a torpedo hitting the ship. We heard somebody, maybe a member of the crew or even captain, shouting, “Get ready to jump!” Then we took up a position along the deck railing, and without waiting for any further instructions from the crew, jumped into the sea when one of the students who had been like a leader among us shouted for us to jump. As soon as we hit the water we swam away as far as possible from the ship. As we floated there we sang songs to encourage each other in the dark ocean. It is hard to describe how that singing sounded under the dark sky. I was optimistic about being rescued because the Tsushima Maru was part of a convoy that included warships so I thought that we would be rescued soon, but there was no rescue that night.
I was on a bamboo raft with three other people. Masahide, who was 18 years old and was from same place as me, Jiro, who was attending the advanced course at our school, and one of Jiro's classmates. We drifted on that raft for six days.
　
There was a typhoon approaching, so the sea was rough. On the second day, we saw some other survivors on a raft drifting near us, and we waved at each other to keep our spirits up. They drifted out of sight on the fourth day, and we saw nothing out there on the ocean after that. On our third day on the raft, I started to hallucinate.
I saw myself in the air drinking tap water. One of the others on the raft realized what was happening and when he saw me about to step off the raft to chase the illusion, he hit me on the face to wake me up.
That horrible experience left me frightened, but I was still as determined as ever to survive, clinging strongly to life. At no stage out there did I think that I would die.
Masahide told us that in order to survive we should drink our own urine, so we followed his lead in doing so. We also caught a leather fish and shared it.
　
The most frightening thing out there at sea was when we saw sharks approaching.
When we saw a group of sharks heading our way, Masahide picked up a stick we had and was ready to prod them with it if they looked as though they were coming in to try to bite us. Our bamboo raft was actually two rafts placed on top of each other. It was about two meters square, so was strong and big enough to sit mostly above the water with four people on it. Fortunately, those sharks didn't have a go at us. They may have been on their way to the area where the Tsushima Maru had gone down.
　
After that, our raft reached the cliffs of an island. We climbed up the cliff, but right in the middle of it we found a poisonous snake on our way, so we had to turn back to the shore.
When we got back down to the shore and were taking a rest, a fishing boat passed by near us so finally, on the sixth day of drifting at sea, we were rescued. This was on the coast of Amami Island.

After being rescued, I developed a high fever and went into in coma for a while. When I regained consciousness, I was still wearing my ragged clothes. I was given something to eat and was told not to tell anyone anything about the sinking of the Tsushima Maru. I was then sent back to Naha.
　
When I got back to Naha, I was taken to the police station and was again told to keep my mouth shut. I got back home from experiencing the war at sea, and then experience war on land.