At Tokyo Station after War in 1945
Year after year, those who experienced WWII are gone in Japan, too.
But there are still some old people who experienced the war against the U.S. as children. One author wrote about his memory.
He was born and raised in a residential district in Tokyo. He was in a lower grade of an elementary school, about 8 years old. He observed Tokyo being under air raids by US bombers. And in the early summer of 1945, finally his house caught fire due to bombs dropped by US bombers. Then, his family evacuated Tokyo. They traveled west by train, as railway systems were somewhat operated despite fierce air raids, though the train was so crowded. They settled in a town in mountains west of Nagoya, though Nagoya was also severely devastated by air raids.
At the time, there were many children and families who evacuated Tokyo, Nagoya, and other large cities to avoid American air raids. Some of them had a hard time living in local areas where they were sometimes mere strangers. But the evacuation home for the boy and his family was a house of their relatives.
And, the war ended on August 15, 1945. Months later, his family decided to go back to Tokyo. They got on a train in a kind of post-war mess and arrived at the Tokyo station, taking long hours in the train so crowded with ex-soldiers of the Imperial military. There they had to take a transfer. The family was walking a corridor of the Tokyo Station. Then the boy saw a tall American soldier walking toward the family. The soldier was munching an apple. The boy watched intently the American soldier, though not because he wanted the apple. He thought that the soldier was gnawing it like a monkey.
Then, the American soldier smiled and handed the apple half eaten to the boy, and he passed away. The boy was standing in the middle of the corridor, watching the apple he got. Then his father told the boy to throw it away. The boy discarded the apple.
The boy later graduated from the University of Tokyo to be a teacher of German in some universities, and then eventually became an author.
Year after year, authors in Japan who experienced WWII are dying out. And nobody remembers that a boy was given a half-eaten apple by an American soldier in a corridor of Tokyo Station in autumn of 1945.
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Mat 1:15 And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob;
Mat 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.