I had the chance to dine at the home of an elderly Japanese Catholic last night, a scion of the Tokyo Meiji elite now in her eighties. As we talked about current events and history, I queried her about her life story and heard a surprisingly honest account of life in wartime Japan.

She always had an interest in foreign languages and began studying English at age eight at Tokyo’s Gakushuin, an institution founded in the late 19th century for the education of Japan’s aristocratic class. Her teacher was an English woman married to a Japanese man who stayed in Tokyo through the end of the war.

The war with America began when she was thirteen. Some schools shut down their English language programs, but Gakushuin, despite its conservative reputation, continued its English, French, and German classes. She thus continued her studies.

She took a keen interest in Catholicism after hearing a German priest’s sermon and attended services and Church bible study classes for four years before deciding to convert. Her father was opposed, fearing she would never be able to marry—so she was baptized in secret at age sixteen. After being introduced to her future husband at age nineteen (through an Omiai), the two traded letters for many months in which she revealed her religious beliefs, completely winning him over. The two had a solitary Catholic wedding before the official Shinto ceremony.

She was nineteen and he was twenty-five when they married in March 1945, immediately before the second fire-bombing of Tokyo (they remained in Tokyo through the bombing). Despite the initial opposition of her family, she ultimately converted many relatives, including her father and mother, after the war ended.

I took notes through the conversation, and here is one of the more memorable lines. Translated:

I never thought the Emperor was God, even as a child. What nonsense! And I always thought we would lose the war. There were some who thought we would win no matter what. They thought that Kamikaze would somehow save them, that no matter how desperate the situation became that destiny would not allow them to lose [see Wikipedia for the 13th century origins of the word]. When I traveled to America decades later, I was amazed at the industry and power of the country—I still can’t believe that so many of Japan’s leaders, many of whom traveled to America and who knew how strong it was, thought they could fight a war with a country that powerful.

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