Rebuilding the Hometown School
Mr. Kanyu Iha
Birth year：1928
Birth place：Yomitan Village
Military base in Zakimi Castle
In 1944, six Japanese anti-aircraft guns were installed atop Zakimi Castle. We did the work ourselves, including cutting down trees, and traveled from a school in Kadena to Zakimi Castle every day to work on it. This was the main work involved for encampment construction for us Agriculture and Forestry School students. We also built a stone wall on the coast of Toya in Yomitan to stop tanks landing from the sea. We were taught to dig holes behind, to trap the tanks and dug tank trenches. We were forced to make a runway for present-day Kadena Airfield, which was called Naka Airfield then.
After entering Agriculture and Forestry School, we had classes for a year. But as we entered our second year, the Yama Butai (24th Division) moved into the school building, so studying no longer mattered. We spent a year busily building encampments every day. One day it was Naka Airfield, the next, a tank pit in Yomitan, and after that, a naval trench.
In the Furugen settlement in Yomitan, medics from the mountain unit were stationed at a residence with a large tatami room. There were also 14 or 15 soldiers at the residence where I was. Before the Battle of Okinawa began, Yomitan villagers were told to evacuate to a village called Hijiin Kunigami.
At Hiji in Kunigami
When the Battle of Okinawa began, students from our school gathered together at school to cooperate with the Japanese military. However, since I had younger sisters, brothers and other family in Furugen, I talked it over with three classmates who were also from Furugen and evacuated to Yanbaru (northern Okinawa) with my family. The war situation deteriorated, and I wasn’t able to return to Yomitan. In Hiji, there were some rice rations at the beginning, but those provisions stopped, so we ate wild grasses. Rather than suffering from lack of food, we decided to go back to Yomitan, so we walked from mountain to mountain toward Nakagami. We got as far as Okawa in Kushi (present-day Nago City) with my family, but American soldiers started coming to Okawa every morning by jeep. It was said that young men would be shot dead immediately, so my friends and I left for the mountains separating from our families and leaving them in Okawa.
When the Battle of Okinawa began, we were told that if we didn’t cooperate with the Japanese army, we’d have a terrible experience after Japan won the war, so we decided to cooperate. Since the Udo unit was stationed in Motobu, we looked for them, hoping to join and stay with the unit during the battle. But we weren’t able to find the unit. As we were boiling sweet potatoes by a river in the mountains of Okawa, all three of us had guns thrust into our backs by American soldiers. We instinctively raised our hands and were pressed against the bank and taken prisoner. I later learned that this happened on July 4th. Most likely, we weren’t shot and were only held at gunpoint because we had been hiding until July. On that day, we were taken prisoner and placed in a camp in Henoko.
Taken prisoner and Henoko Camp
About 200 to 300 people were imprisoned there, including friends and seniors who had been caught earlier. The camp was just a field with tents set up and barbed wire fence stretching around the area. Only young people were imprisoned in Henoko. Those with military status were taken to the Yaka POW camp in Kin. Our first day was all interrogations. When I was asked if I was soldier, I said I was just a student. Then I was asked various questions, such as the name of my local mayor. When they realized I wasn’t a soldier, I was left in Henoko camp.
While at the camp we were forced to do various kinds of work. Much of the work involved expanding the road near the camp. There was a big hospital nearby in Kushi, but it was just tents with rows of US military field beds. Many people who had been wounded in Shimajiri were there. There must have been hundreds of people, from adults to children and both males and females, all covered in bandages. From time to time, prisoners were sent to clean the hospital. I went about three or four times. Burying the dead was referred to as the hole-digging team, and this was also done by prisoners near the hospital. We buried four to five people per hole. I was desensitized at the time, so I had trouble feeling sorry for them.
Graduation and heading to Yomitan
Most of those who had been students at Kadena Agricultural and Forestry School prior to the war went to Hokubu Agricultural High School in Nago following the war. I went there as well and graduated after a year. After graduating from high school, my family was living in Ooki in Yomitan, so I also began living there. I worked for about two years as a garden boy for a US military family in my hometown of Furugen. There were about 50 Quonset huts (US military barracks), and two families lived in each hut.
Working on base
It was an easy job planting flowers and making a simple garden around the Quonsets or cleaning around them, but I worked as a garden boy because there were no other jobs available at the time. We were a family of seven then, which included my mother, me as the oldest child, and two brothers and three sisters. Garden boys received little pay, and it wasn’t enough to support my family. I started working at the mess hall, or dining hall, of the US military unit on the west side of Yomitan Airfield. As part of the cooking team, I was given food there, and my family could eat the bread and fruits I received instead of cooking dinner. That made life a lot easier. I collected leftover food at the mess hall and sold it to pig farmers for money. However, I did not steal anything for so-called “war trophies.” I worked for this US military unit for about two years.
Becoming a teacher at my alma mater
My alma mater Furugen Elementary School was rebuilt and there were few teachers. Teachers were in short supply because they quit teaching for high-paying military work or they died in the war. There were particularly few male teachers. Even though the school was rebuilt, with no teachers, the principal was in a difficult situation. Since I had just graduated from high school, he kept trying to persuade me to work there, saying that teachers were qualified if they graduated high school and that I should come teach and take care of the children. Starting from January 1950, I started working there as a substitute teacher.
Post-war education
The school was a tent building erected in a field, and the playground was paved unevenly with stones. When we first started rebuilding the school, our work mainly involved creating a place of learning, doing things like leveling the ground and breaking stones. Class was only held in the morning, and after the kids went home, we worked on creating a place of learning. The tent classroom was unpleasantly hot, so I had the children and parents help cut grass to use for thatching. Faculty and staff created the roofing after the kids were sent home. Work on rebuilding the school continued daily. We cut down pine trees from the mountains the parents owned and made about 10 school buildings. We put two classes into each building, giving them a place to study.
At first, there were no notebooks, so I made makeshift notebooks from the paper I found in US military dumps. For pencils, we used what the US military gave us or threw away. We had no textbooks either, so teachers had to mimeograph textbooks for distribution. That was the first step in getting textbooks, but later on, real textbooks were given out to use for studying. That was about four or five years later. To create desks and chairs, planks were driven into beds and benches for two or three people were placed on each bed. We had to make both the tables and chairs, and afterwards, the village prepared desks that could seat two people.
Apart from working as carpenters, we substitute teachers also had to raise stones and level the ground with hoes and pickaxes, so “teacher”was just a title. Maybe that’s why they wanted young men who graduated high school. Still, the children back then were very cute and innocent. They came along with the faculty even for jobs they couldn’t do. The children and faculty came together and worked in harmony to create a learning environment.
A teacher training center was established in Koza High School, and after six months of training, I became a teacher. The hardest part was the weekend classes. For about half a year, I took classes at the University of the Ryukyus in Shuri on Saturday afternoons and all day Sunday, taking care of and teaching children. In addition, there were frequent workshops that awarded credits. Students would rush to these workshops after class and attend them for two to three hours.
A message for young people
Post-war, everyone worked together on the restoration, helping not only relatives but one another in hope of progress. I think residents were admirable directly after the war. I think that sense of helping one another back then is incomparable to what it is now. I want to tell the youth that this abundant peace now was created by the efforts of all of your elders. This is such a wonderful world now, so I hope that you will continue your studies, and create a world that is even better than it is now.
Thereafter, Mr. Kanyu Iha served 40 years in education, and since retirement, contributed to the community as a civil rights commissioner. He received the Minister of Justice Commendation in 1998, and Order of the Rising Sun Award in 2012.
Military base in Zakimi Castle
In 1944, six Japanese anti-aircraft guns were installed atop Zakimi Castle. We did the work ourselves, including cutting down trees, and traveled from a school in Kadena to Zakimi Castle every day to work on it. This was the main work involved for encampment construction for us Agriculture and Forestry School students. We also built a stone wall on the coast of Toya in Yomitan to stop tanks landing from the sea. We were taught to dig holes behind, to trap the tanks and dug tank trenches. We were forced to make a runway for present-day Kadena Airfield, which was called Naka Airfield then.
After entering Agriculture and Forestry School, we had classes for a year. But as we entered our second year, the Yama Butai (24th Division) moved into the school building, so studying no longer mattered. We spent a year busily building encampments every day. One day it was Naka Airfield, the next, a tank pit in Yomitan, and after that, a naval trench.
In the Furugen settlement in Yomitan, medics from the mountain unit were stationed at a residence with a large tatami room. There were also 14 or 15 soldiers at the residence where I was. Before the Battle of Okinawa began, Yomitan villagers were told to evacuate to a village called Hijiin Kunigami.
At Hiji in Kunigami
When the Battle of Okinawa began, students from our school gathered together at school to cooperate with the Japanese military. However, since I had younger sisters, brothers and other family in Furugen, I talked it over with three classmates who were also from Furugen and evacuated to Yanbaru (northern Okinawa) with my family. The war situation deteriorated, and I wasn’t able to return to Yomitan. In Hiji, there were some rice rations at the beginning, but those provisions stopped, so we ate wild grasses. Rather than suffering from lack of food, we decided to go back to Yomitan, so we walked from mountain to mountain toward Nakagami. We got as far as Okawa in Kushi (present-day Nago City) with my family, but American soldiers started coming to Okawa every morning by jeep. It was said that young men would be shot dead immediately, so my friends and I left for the mountains separating from our families and leaving them in Okawa.
When the Battle of Okinawa began, we were told that if we didn’t cooperate with the Japanese army, we’d have a terrible experience after Japan won the war, so we decided to cooperate. Since the Udo unit was stationed in Motobu, we looked for them, hoping to join and stay with the unit during the battle. But we weren’t able to find the unit. As we were boiling sweet potatoes by a river in the mountains of Okawa, all three of us had guns thrust into our backs by American soldiers. We instinctively raised our hands and were pressed against the bank and taken prisoner. I later learned that this happened on July 4th. Most likely, we weren’t shot and were only held at gunpoint because we had been hiding until July. On that day, we were taken prisoner and placed in a camp in Henoko.
Taken prisoner and Henoko Camp
About 200 to 300 people were imprisoned there, including friends and seniors who had been caught earlier. The camp was just a field with tents set up and barbed wire fence stretching around the area. Only young people were imprisoned in Henoko. Those with military status were taken to the Yaka POW camp in Kin. Our first day was all interrogations. When I was asked if I was soldier, I said I was just a student. Then I was asked various questions, such as the name of my local mayor. When they realized I wasn’t a soldier, I was left in Henoko camp.
While at the camp we were forced to do various kinds of work. Much of the work involved expanding the road near the camp. There was a big hospital nearby in Kushi, but it was just tents with rows of US military field beds. Many people who had been wounded in Shimajiri were there. There must have been hundreds of people, from adults to children and both males and females, all covered in bandages. From time to time, prisoners were sent to clean the hospital. I went about three or four times. Burying the dead was referred to as the hole-digging team, and this was also done by prisoners near the hospital. We buried four to five people per hole. I was desensitized at the time, so I had trouble feeling sorry for them.
Graduation and heading to Yomitan
Most of those who had been students at Kadena Agricultural and Forestry School prior to the war went to Hokubu Agricultural High School in Nago following the war. I went there as well and graduated after a year. After graduating from high school, my family was living in Ooki in Yomitan, so I also began living there. I worked for about two years as a garden boy for a US military family in my hometown of Furugen. There were about 50 Quonset huts (US military barracks), and two families lived in each hut.
Working on base
It was an easy job planting flowers and making a simple garden around the Quonsets or cleaning around them, but I worked as a garden boy because there were no other jobs available at the time. We were a family of seven then, which included my mother, me as the oldest child, and two brothers and three sisters. Garden boys received little pay, and it wasn’t enough to support my family. I started working at the mess hall, or dining hall, of the US military unit on the west side of Yomitan Airfield. As part of the cooking team, I was given food there, and my family could eat the bread and fruits I received instead of cooking dinner. That made life a lot easier. I collected leftover food at the mess hall and sold it to pig farmers for money. However, I did not steal anything for so-called “war trophies.” I worked for this US military unit for about two years.
Becoming a teacher at my alma mater
My alma mater Furugen Elementary School was rebuilt and there were few teachers. Teachers were in short supply because they quit teaching for high-paying military work or they died in the war. There were particularly few male teachers. Even though the school was rebuilt, with no teachers, the principal was in a difficult situation. Since I had just graduated from high school, he kept trying to persuade me to work there, saying that teachers were qualified if they graduated high school and that I should come teach and take care of the children. Starting from January 1950, I started working there as a substitute teacher.
Post-war education
The school was a tent building erected in a field, and the playground was paved unevenly with stones. When we first started rebuilding the school, our work mainly involved creating a place of learning, doing things like leveling the ground and breaking stones. Class was only held in the morning, and after the kids went home, we worked on creating a place of learning. The tent classroom was unpleasantly hot, so I had the children and parents help cut grass to use for thatching. Faculty and staff created the roofing after the kids were sent home. Work on rebuilding the school continued daily. We cut down pine trees from the mountains the parents owned and made about 10 school buildings. We put two classes into each building, giving them a place to study.
At first, there were no notebooks, so I made makeshift notebooks from the paper I found in US military dumps. For pencils, we used what the US military gave us or threw away. We had no textbooks either, so teachers had to mimeograph textbooks for distribution. That was the first step in getting textbooks, but later on, real textbooks were given out to use for studying. That was about four or five years later. To create desks and chairs, planks were driven into beds and benches for two or three people were placed on each bed. We had to make both the tables and chairs, and afterwards, the village prepared desks that could seat two people.
Apart from working as carpenters, we substitute teachers also had to raise stones and level the ground with hoes and pickaxes, so “teacher”was just a title. Maybe that’s why they wanted young men who graduated high school. Still, the children back then were very cute and innocent. They came along with the faculty even for jobs they couldn’t do. The children and faculty came together and worked in harmony to create a learning environment.
A teacher training center was established in Koza High School, and after six months of training, I became a teacher. The hardest part was the weekend classes. For about half a year, I took classes at the University of the Ryukyus in Shuri on Saturday afternoons and all day Sunday, taking care of and teaching children. In addition, there were frequent workshops that awarded credits. Students would rush to these workshops after class and attend them for two to three hours.
A message for young people
Post-war, everyone worked together on the restoration, helping not only relatives but one another in hope of progress. I think residents were admirable directly after the war. I think that sense of helping one another back then is incomparable to what it is now. I want to tell the youth that this abundant peace now was created by the efforts of all of your elders. This is such a wonderful world now, so I hope that you will continue your studies, and create a world that is even better than it is now.
Thereafter, Mr. Kanyu Iha served 40 years in education, and since retirement, contributed to the community as a civil rights commissioner. He received the Minister of Justice Commendation in 1998, and Order of the Rising Sun Award in 2012.