# | eng | jpn |
---|
1 | At 81, a Japanese Woman Tweets to Remember the Terror of War | 81歳のツイート:子供のころ空襲があった まっちゃこと両親と弟。 |
2 | Macchako, her parents and her brother in Kobe in 1939. | 1939年頃、神戸市にて。 |
3 | Used with permission. | 許可を得て使用。 |
4 | As Japan has recently armed itself with legislation allowing the country to go to war after 70 years of official pacifism, some Japanese are reflecting on the bitter experiences of the Second World War. | 現在は武力放棄をうたう憲法をもち、70年の間戦争していない日本だが、平和主義政策の土台には先の戦争への苦い反省がある。 第二次世界大戦に日本は積極的に関与し、中国から東南アジアに侵攻の手を広げ、米英連合軍と戦った。 |
5 | Japan actively participated in the Second World War, invading China and widening the conflict to fighting allied American and British forces across Southeast Asia. | 開戦時、アジアの小国が世界に挑むことを、当時の日本人は熱狂的に支持し、和平を探る声は圧殺された。 |
6 | After Japan's main cities were destroyed in a sea of fire, and atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese emperor announced the end of the war in a radio address on August 15, 1945. | 反戦論を唱える者は治安維持法により逮捕・拷問を受け、「非国民」と排斥された。 |
7 | According to the Japanese government, more than 80 percent of Japanese people were born after the Second World War. | 天皇のために死ぬことが至高のこととされ、敗戦色が濃くなっても、「一億玉砕(国民全滅を美化した表現)」のスローガンのもと破滅に突き進んだ。 |
8 | Not even considering people who fought on the frontlines or experienced the destruction of war, there are very few Japanese alive today who have childhood memories of the conflict. | やがて主要な都市が空襲を受けて焼け野原になり、広島・長崎に原爆が落とされるに至り、1945年8月15日、ラジオ放送にて昭和天皇が国民に終戦を伝えた。 |
9 | Those few who still have recollections of the war feel there is a need to express their experiences and share them publicly. | 人々は政府やメディアに踊らされるまま戦争を賛美していたことを恥じ、戦争はもうこりごり、子孫にも二度と味あわせまいと決心した。 |
10 | My mother, who goes by the Twitter handle “@まっちゃこ” (Macchako), has been sharing her experience of the war on the social network. | 日本は戦後7年間米軍の統治下にあり、その間に新しい憲法が制定された。 |
11 | On the 70th anniversary of the end of combat, my mother published a series of short tweets. | 戦争放棄・戦力の不所持をうたったこの憲法を、人々は、世界に先駆けて平和国家を作るのだという誇りと喜びを持って受け入れた。 |
12 | August 15, 1945, was a hot day! | 70年を経て、平和のありがたみを肌で感じてきた世代の人たちは少数派になった。 |
13 | This tweet alone received more re-tweets than some photos she had published of a recent trip (most of her Twitter contacts are younger people who share similar interests in travel and Japanese entertainment personalities). | 総務省によると、戦後生まれの日本人は8割を超えているとのことだ。 出征した世代はおろか、戦火に怯えた子ども時代の記憶を持つ世代も年々その割合を減らし、戦争の記憶が風化するのではないかと危機感を募らせる人は多い。 |
14 | On August 15, 1945, I was a fifth-grade elementary school student. | 日本は8月15日を終戦記念日と定めており、政府主導で全国戦没者追悼式が毎年行われる。 |
15 | I was playing a game outside with the other kids in the neighborhood. | また、この日が迫るとTVや新聞は戦争を振り返る特集を組む。 |
16 | Everything changed in an instant. | この夏は、安倍政権が推し進めた安保法案への不安の声が高まり、特に多くの特集が扱われた。 |
17 | Four years earlier the war started (on December 8, 1941) while I was still in first grade. | 当時を覚えている世代は、自分たちが語らねばと、戦争体験を公表している。 |
18 | Fujita-sensei, our homeroom teacher, had informed us of this news in the strictest possible way. | 私の母、ハンドルネーム「まっちゃこ」もその一人だ。 |
19 | We weren't surprised because Japan had already been at war before. | 終戦記念日の前日、彼女は短いツイートを投稿した。 |
20 | During the 1930s, Japan employed a variety of schemes to invade China, gradually increasing the scope of the conflict there. | 昭和20年8月15日、あの日も暑かった! |
21 | As the public's appetite for fighting increased, in 1940 Japan entered into an “Axis” alliance with Germany and Italy. | - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 14 |
22 | The event was celebrated by giving young Japanese children flags of the three Axis powers: | これに、日頃の旅行の写真より多いRTがついた。 |
23 | When I was in kindergarten we were made to sing a song with the lyrics, “Japan and Germany and Italy will always be great friends.” | まっちゃこには、趣味のお笑い観賞や旅行で知り合った若い友人が多く、ツイッターは彼らとの交流に利用している。 |
24 | As an elementary school student I returned to kindergarten to help make flags of the three Axis powers. | 彼女は戦争当時の体験を、友人たちに語ってみようと思った。 |
25 | Of course, the Japanese flag was the easiest to make. | 70年前の8月15日、私は小学校5年でした。 |
26 | At the time Japan had not yet joined the war. | 近所の子達と輪になってカゴメカゴメをしていました。 |
27 | And all three Axis countries would be defeated in the war. | あの瞬間から世の中がコロッと変わりました。 |
28 | And we were allied with Hitler's Germany! | 4年前の12月8日(小1)日本が戦争を始めました。 |
29 | I shudder now just thinking about it. | 教室で担任の藤田先生が厳かに話されました。 |
30 | At the start of the war, Japan presented itself as helping the small countries of Asia stand up to the rest of the world. | 以前から戦争してたから大した衝撃はなかった。 - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
31 | Japanese people at the time enthusiastically supported Japan's war effort. | 1930年代、日本は謀略を用いて中国に攻め込み、戦線を拡大していた。 |
32 | Opposition to the war at home was brutally crushed. | 国民に好戦気分が盛り上がり、1940年の日独伊軍事同盟締結の際は、幼い子供まで旗行列で祝った。 |
33 | Anyone in Japan who publicly opposed the war was jailed and tortured according to Japan's wartime Public Security Peace Preservation Laws (治安維持法) and would be publicly ostracized. | 幼稚園の時 “日本とドイツとイタリアは、いつも仲良し~~”という歌を歌わされた。 |
34 | Macchako was born in Kobe, in Hyogo Prefecture, and she experienced the massive bombing of the city on June 5, 1945. | 卒園してから幼稚園へ遊びに行って(行列用の)三国の国旗作りを手伝う。 |
35 | Studio Ghibli's animated film “Grave of the Fireflies” depicts the bombing of Kobe and other cities by Allied forces towards the end of the war in 1945. | 日の丸はダントツに作り易かった。 |
36 | Her parents ran a confectionery shop in Kobe's Higashi Nada Ward. | 当時はまだ日本は参戦してなかった。 |
37 | Including Macchako and her two siblings, there were five people in the family. | 三国とも戦争に負ける。 |
38 | Because Macchako's father lived with a chronic illness he was not sent to the front. | ヒトラーの時代のドイツ! |
39 | Wartime food rationing made it difficult to continue with the family business. | 今ゾッとしてます。 |
40 | By the time Macchako was in the fourth grade in 1944 and the end of the war was drawing near, air raid sirens would often end the school day early. | - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
41 | The next year, in 1945, shortly after Macchako had turned 11 years old, her father became the caretaker to a wealthy family's home. | まっちゃこは兵庫県神戸市に生まれ育ち、神戸大空襲を体験している。 |
42 | The entire family moved in together, and one early morning a week later Kobe experienced a massive air raid: | 第二次大戦末期、連合軍が日本の市街地に向け盛んに空爆を行なったうちのひとつで、ジブリ映画『火垂るの墓』でも描かれている。 |
43 | On June 5, 1945, when I was in fifth grade, our family went to an air raid shelter after the sirens sounded. | まっちゃこの両親は神戸市東灘区で代々続く和菓子屋を営んでおり、彼女の下に弟妹がいる5人家族であった。 |
44 | Oh no! Our house would be burned down! | 父は持病のため出征を免れたが、食糧が配給制になると商売は苦しくなった。 |
45 | “Don't worry, your father and I will put out the fire. | 小学4年生(1944年)の終り頃から、たびたび敵機襲来の警戒警報のサイレンが鳴り、下校させられるようになった。 |
46 | You children go to where it's safe-Shonin Hill Temple [outside of the urban area],” said my mother. | 翌年、彼女が11歳になって間もなく、父は富豪の留守邸の管理を頼まれ、一家で住み込んだ。 |
47 | With my 4-year-old sister slung on my back I could not walk one step. | 大空襲があったのは、その一週間後の早朝だった。 |
48 | So my 6-year-old brother and my sister pulled me up to the temple. | 昭和20年(小5)6月5日朝、空襲警報で家族が防空壕へ。 |
49 | All we could see was a sea of fire. | わあ! |
50 | Small balls of fire bounced on the ground like flaming coins. | 家が焼けてるぅ!「 |
51 | Although the children took shelter in a graveyard halfway to the temple, they were still hunted by machine gun fire and could not get to the temple itself. | お母さん達は消火するから、あんた達3人で上人山へ逃げなさい」って言われても! 4歳の妹を背負えど1歩も進めず。 |
52 | The road to the Shonin Hill Temple was famous for luxurious mansions of wealthy merchants. | 1年生の弟と妹の手を引いて山へと向うが、一面火の海! |
53 | In the distance we could hear the thud of exploding bombs. | 小さい火の玉が半円形にピョンピョン。 |
54 | We took shelter in a ditch, and I made by brother and sister plug their ears with their thumbs, cover their eyes with their fingers and lie face down. | - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
55 | They listened to what I said. When we looked up we saw, 30 meters away, people who had taken shelter in a graveyard. | 上人山は2~3kmほど山の手にあるお寺だが、機銃掃射に追われ、そこに行きつくことはできなかった。 |
56 | Copying them, we took shelter in the graveyard too. | 上人山への道は天下の豪邸通り。 |
57 | A mansion to the left of us burst into flames. | 遠くでドーンドーンと時限爆弾。 |
58 | In the back part of the air raid shelter there was a statue of a Bodhisattva. | 溝を見つけて入り、弟妹に耳に親指、目に4本の指で覆わせ、伏せをさせる。 |
59 | About 20 people had crowded into the shelter, and there was a girl even younger than me holding a baby. | なんと従順な弟妹たち。 |
60 | A crazed woman started chanting a prayer in a terrified shriek. | 目を上げると30m. |
61 | Suddenly the woman called out to me, “How come you're not helping care for the baby here?” | 先のお墓へ逃げる人達。 |
62 | I replied weakly, “Because they aren't from our family.” | 真似してお墓の防空壕に逃げ込む。 |
63 | Once the bombing had stopped, the children were able to reunite with their mother, who had come looking for them. | その左側で財閥野村邸(洋館)が壮大に燃えている。 |
64 | Once the bombing appeared to have stopped and we went outside, staff from the temple gave everyone one piece of tempura in the main hall. | - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
65 | While I received a piece of battered lotus root, I gave it without thinking to the younger girl. | 防空壕は広くて奥に仏像があった。 |
66 | After that I always had the bad habit of pretending to be cooler than I really was, lol. | 20人位が逃げこんできていた。 |
67 | My mother, who had thought we had escaped further into the hills, finally found us at the graveyard, and cried as she met us. | 私より年下の女の子が赤ん坊抱いていた。 |
68 | A sooty rain fell down on us, turning our faces pitch black. | 狂気なおばさんが「ナマンダブナマンダブ」と絶叫していた。 |
69 | They returned to the city to find the house they were living in, as well as the family store, burned to the ground. | 突然我に返ったおばさんが「あんた年上やのに、なんで赤ん坊抱かへんねん!」 |
70 | Once the enemy planes had gone, we returned to our flattened home where small flames still guttered and burned. | と叫ぶ。「 |
71 | Our father had returned to carry what he could from the house, but all he could salvage were two photo albums and a cask of rice. | うちの子と違います」と小さい声で返す。 - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
72 | He waited a long time before trying to open it, but once he did the cask emitted a cloud of ash. | 空襲が収まってから、探しに来た母と落ち合うことができた。 |
73 | I burst out crying because I felt pity for my father. | 空襲が収まったらしく外へ出ると、お堂でお寺の人が皆に天ぷらを一つずつ振舞ってくれた。 |
74 | Or was I crying because I myself had nothing to eat? | 私は蓮根の天ぷらだったが、思わず年下の女の子に上げてします。 |
75 | Macchako's Twitter friends said her tweets made them cry. However, her subsequent recollections exposed even more trauma. | その頃から“エエカッコシー”の悪しき習性がww 上人山へ逃げたと思い込んだ母が北の方から泣きながらやって来た。 |
76 | The day after the air raid Macchako's parents went to check on a neighbor. | 黒い雨浴びて顔マックロ。 |
77 | They could find no trace of this person, who was so close she may as well have been a member of the family. | - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
78 | She was a woman without any other family who had lived in a space at the family confectionery and had looked after Macchako and her brother and sister. | 留守を任されていた豪邸も、和菓子屋だった一家の元の家も全焼だった。 |
79 | There were witnesses who said she had left the air raid shelter during the middle of the raid. | 敵機も去ってペッシャンコになった家に帰れば まだブスブス小さな火が。 |
80 | “Could it be?” my father asked himself as he dug around in the burnt out ruins of our confectionery shop with a hoe… | 父が焼けてる家に戻って持出したのが、アルバム2冊と一斗缶のお米。 |
81 | “Could it be here?” | かなり時間が経って、一斗缶の蓋を開けたらブオーッと勢いよく燃え出した。 |
82 | A bone appeared. | 父が可哀想で可哀想で泣いた。 |
83 | Her body was a burnt brick of olive brown. | イヤ、あれはご飯が食べられない自分に泣いた? |
84 | I was 11 years old and this was the first time I had ever seen a corpse that looked like this. | - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
85 | While it was not normal at that time to express one's thoughts openly, the victims of the bombing were also victims of Japan's Imperial regime. While my parents had been entrusted with her care, she had no family or relatives. | ツイートを読んだ友人たちから「涙が出た」との反応をもらったまっちゃこは、後日談として、さらにトラウマになった出来事もツイートしている。 --空襲の翌日、両親が隣人たちと安否を確認し合い、家族同然の知人が見つからないことに気づく。 |
86 | Every day she had subsisted on a ration of just 330 grams of rice, and grumbled when the ration was reduced to 300 grams. | 和菓子屋の職場に居候していた身寄りのない女性で、子供たちの世話をしてくれた人だった。 |
87 | She had done a good job while looking after my brother and sister. | 空襲の最中に防空壕から出て行った、と証言があり、ひょっとして? |
88 | She had also used a newspaper clipping of the emperor mounted on a horse as a chamber pot for my younger sister. | と、父が(同じく全焼した)職場の焼け跡を、この辺? |
89 | “If they catch me doing this I'll be arrested for lese majeste,” she had said. | と見当つけて鍬で掘ると、骨が出てきた。 |
90 | At the time photos of the emperor were venerated as religious objects. | お腹の周りが焼け切れずに焦げ茶の塊になっていた。 |
91 | During the war, dying for the emperor was considered to be the supreme service one could provide to their country. | 5年生の私は生まれてはじめて、こんな形で死体をみたのです。( |
92 | Even as it was obvious that Japan was losing, the destruction continued under the slogan “100 million shattered jewels” (一億玉砕, ichioku gyokusai; Japan's population at the time was about 100 million people). | 続く) - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
93 | After being manipulated by a wartime government and a media that glorified the conflict, many Japanese resolved to never allow their children to experience war for a second time. | 大っぴらには口に出せない時代だったが、犠牲者は体制への不満を抱えていた。 親戚に頼まれ両親が彼女を預る事になるが彼女は天涯孤独だった。 |
94 | During the seven-year-long American-led occupation, Japan's postwar constitution renouncing war was enacted. | いつも1日2合3勺のお米の配給が少いと嘆いた。 その内2合1勺になり嘆きは倍増。 |
95 | Many Japanese people were proud and pleased their country had developed a global reputation as a pacifist country. | 彼女は弟妹の面倒をよく見てくれ、天皇陛下の乗馬姿が載った新聞をおまるの底に敷いて妹をおしっこさせながら「見つかったら不敬罪で引っ張られる」 |
96 | But in August 2015, efforts by the Abe government to pass a legislative framework that would allow Japan to go to war again dominated the country's media coverage of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. | - まっちゃこ (@dosuee6356) 2015, 8月 15 |
97 | After Macchako's family lost their house in that very conflict, they stayed with relatives for several days. | (2合3勺は330g、2合1勺は300g。 |
98 | After that, they moved to an acquaintance's house in the mountains of the rural and remote Shimane Prefecture, where they lived as evacuees until the end of the war. | 小児用便器に不要な古新聞を敷くこと自体は珍しいことではないが、天皇の写真は当時神聖視されていた) 家を失った一家は親戚の部屋に数日身を寄せた。 |
99 | While the family experienced some hardship being cut off from the rest of the world in rural Shimane, what was different from their experiences as evacuees compared to the children in “Grave of the Fireflies” was that they did not starve. | その後親戚でもない知人の実家を頼って島根県の山奥へ疎開し、そこで終戦を迎えた。 閉鎖的な風土の慣れない土地で避難民として暮らす苦労はあったが、『火垂るの墓』の主人公と違って両親が無事だったため、餓死せずにすんだ。 |
100 | Macchako avoided that fate by a razor's edge, and lived the next 70 years singing the praises of a peaceful Japan. | 紙一重で切り抜け、まっちゃこはその後70年の平和な日本を謳歌することができた。 |
101 | In fact, I grew up listening to my mother's stories of the air raid. | 実は、私は母の空襲の話を、子供のころから飽きるほど聞かされている。「 |
102 | “Even if I get old and senile and can't recognize your face, I'll keep telling the story of the air raids,” she says. | もし将来ボケてあんたらのことがわからんようになっても、空襲の話は何べんも繰り返すやろな。 |
103 | “Be prepared. | 覚悟しとき」と彼女は言う。「 |
104 | The winds of change are upon us, and the world back then is not so very far away from us now. | 時代の空気があのころに近付いている。 |
105 | We must never let war happen again.” | 戦争は絶対にあきません」 |