Surviving the Battle of Okinawa: Memories of a Schoolgirl

Abstract

Below are translated excerpts from Yoshiko Sakumoto Crandell's autobiography, Tumai Monogatari: Showa no Tamigusa (Tomari Story: My Life in the Showa Era), published by Shimpo Shuppan in 2002. The translation is by Mieko Maeshiro. Born in 1931, the 6th year of Showa, the author was raised in Okinawa's famous port town of Tomari, a section of Naha City, the prefectural capital. Her father worked as a ship-builder and her mother made Panama hats, a major export from Okinawa at the time. 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. It concludes with her internment in a refugee camp during the battle's chaotic aftermath. In the early months of the 27-year-long 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 1969 she married an American in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Okinawa. They live today in Newport News, Virginia.