In 1944, at the height of the fighting on Tinian Island during World War II, schoolgirl Mitsuko Arakaki and her family resolved to die rather than be killed.
At the last moment, fear drove her to flee — an impulse that ultimately saved her family.
Having watched B-29 bombers take to the sky from Tinian, the same island from which the aircraft used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki departed, Arakaki, now 91, continues to emphasize the precious nature of peace.
Arakaki, a resident of the village of Nakagusuku, Okinawa Prefecture, was born on Tinian in 1934. The island prospered on sugarcane, and her grandfather operated a large farm. Living with her grandparents, parents and a younger brother, she recalls, she "lived a life without any inconveniences."
Tinian, part of the Mariana Islands about 2,500 kilometers south of Japan's main island, was then a Japanese mandate territory and a key base for the Imperial Japanese military. By the time the war reached the island, some 13,000 Japanese civilians were living there, many of them from Okinawa.
When U.S. air raids began in 1944, life on the island changed overnight. In June that year, Arakaki, then a fourth grader at the Marpo elementary school in the island's south, took shelter with her family in an air-raid bunker near their home.
After American forces landed in the north on July 24, the family fled again, this time to a mountain cave.
About 100 people crowded into the space. There, she saw a Japanese man, suspected of spying for the Americans, shot dead by a Japanese soldier.
"The scene still remains in my mind. It was scarier than the attacks by U.S. forces," she says, her voice trembling.
As the naval bombardment intensified, a shell fragment landed less than a meter in front of her while she was playing outside. Startled by its searing heat, she ran back into the cave.
As the attacks became even fiercer, Arakaki and her family left the cave. Along the road, they saw flies swarming over corpses. "Rather than being killed and swarmed by flies, let's throw ourselves into the sea," she recalls her grandmother saying. At her urging, the family headed for a cliff.
But when Arakaki looked down and saw many bodies floating in the sea below, fear overtook her. "I don't want to die," she cried, fleeing into the mountains. The entire family survived. Later, her grandmother thanked her, saying, "We were saved thanks to you. Thank you," Arakaki recalls.
Combat between Japanese and U.S. forces on the island ended on Aug. 3, 1944. More than 5,000 Japanese troops and an estimated 3,500 civilians were killed, among them people who leapt from the cliffs. Because of the scale of the losses, the territory is sometimes known as a "gyokusai no shima," or “island of honorable death."
Around October that year, Arakaki and her family were captured by U.S. forces and interned at Camp Churo in the island's central region.
At the camp, one story left a deep impression on her. A fisherman, an adept swimmer, survived alone after his family of six — his wife and four sons — threw themselves into the sea.
"It wasn't the enemy who killed my family. I killed my family myself," she remembers him saying through tears. The confession has stayed with her ever since.
In August 1945, U.S. B-29 bombers took off from an airfield in the island's north to carry out the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"From the internment camp, I watched the B-29s flying, but at the time I assumed they were headed to war," she says.
Only later did she learn that the planes she saw may have been carrying atomic bombs. Arakaki said the realization still fills her with sorrow. "If it hadn't been for the B-29s, Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been spared," she says.
More than 80 years after the battle on Tinian Island, Arakaki asks, "Why do humans wage war? I've wrestled with that question ever since, and I still don't have an answer."
Wars continue today, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "They may come from different countries, but they are human beings all the same. I sincerely hope the fighting ends soon," Arakaki says.
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