“We knew in advance that an air raid was coming” said Hisako Aihara, a 90-year-old woman from Izumi Ward in Sendai, as she recalled the 1945 U.S. air raids on the city.
“Under a zelkova tree, people checked to see if their neighbors were safe,” she said, recounting how she evacuated from her home and spent the night in a shelter and saw the scorched ruins of the city the next morning.
With vivid memories still etched in her mind, Aihara said she “wanted to leave behind a record” of what she and her family experienced 80 years ago toward the end of the World War II.
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