Story from one of the early organizers of
HIROSHIMA TO HOPE LANTERN FESTIVAL
Each August 6th on Greenlake in Seattle
I'm being asked to read this story at the yearly Lantern floating event. Mary was a distant relative of my mother's family from Hiroshima. It seems that many of the bomb survivors were even stronger because of their exposure?
Mary Fujita celebrated her 100th birthday in 2008. She was energetic, fixing lunches and doing hair for all of us to the end. In 1991, she told me this story about surviving the Hiroshima bomb.
“In 1940, my husband injured his knee and the three of us, including my son Gene, went back to Hiroshima, Japan, to live. We were caught in Japan during WWII. I was living in my uncle’s house, closer to town, so Gene could go to high school. On that fateful day, my husband came on one of his rare visits to town on his motor scooter with vegetables.
I was scared with all the bombing and he offered me a ride to the dentist. I finished my appointment by 8am, near Minen-machi. One bus passed by and I was angry at the inconsiderate driver, but later I saw that bus with everyone on it burned with pain on their faces and dead babies in their arms. It’s a miracle that I’m alive!
The day was warm so I chose to stand by the open door behind the driver instead of taking a seat. The next thing I remember is being outside the bus on the ground. I remember a flash of light and assume I was thrown out through the open door. If the door had been closed, I would have been a ‘porcupine’ with broken glass. When the dust cleared, I could see the whole city. The only buildings remaining were the strong steel framed ones. I kept pinching myself because it got dark and like I was somewhere else. There was no big noise. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I saw people with frizzy hair and dark faces from the blast. Then, I saw the bridge so I knew I was still in Hiroshima I thought, ‘Oh no, those horses are dead! This is inconceivable!’ Then I really started to get scared.
I couldn’t think of what to do except to run home. I tried to help, but everything was burning. I saw this one old injured lady and tried to help her up and her skin pulled off her arm like a peeled potato. I couldn’t do anything. It took almost two hours to get home and when I got there, I was covered by black rain.
It turned out, my son was safe on the south end of the city at school. Later that week, I went to the part of the city where my husband had gone and found his scooter among the rubble. There were ashes of one tall corpse. My husband was tall. A little farther away I found some teeth that looked perfect but no body. I hope he didn’t suffer long.”
Mary was an active member and promoter of the Survivors of Hiroshima. There was a time when survivors wanted to remain anonymous and would not take advantage of any medical help. If identified, they were afraid their children would be discriminated. I have a first cousin in Kyoto who never told her husband she was in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing because of possible hereditary affects of radiation.
![Chiyo "ONIONS" Marooka Nakan...]()
Chiyo "ONIONS" Marooka Nakanishi
During 1942 - 1945 Incarceration
Today, I spent the afternoon playing Shanghai Rummy with 97-yr-old Auntie Chiyo “Onions” Nakanishi. Chiyo and her daughter, Ellen, downsized to the Villagio Apartment complex on Yarrow Bay in Kirkland, Washington, after Uncle Hiro passed in 2020. Chiyo does all the score keeping and wins her share of the games. Between deals, I had a chance to find out more about how she got the name “Onions”.
Chiyo explained, “My birthday is in May and I turned 16 in camp so it must have been April 1942 that we were taken on buses from where I lived on King street, next to the Nichiren Church to Puyallup. We were in Area C.”
“Were you scared,” I asked?
“There were a bunch of us, so I wasn’t scared, but wondered because the bus windows were all covered.”
“What did you take in your bag? What were you wearing,” I asked.
“We didn’t have much anyway, so I don’t remember. Oh, as I think about it, we had a Toy Fox Terrier name “Junie”. When we sang, she would sing too. We had to call the Vet and he came to take her away as we were about to leave. That was so sad, I couldn’t worry about what I was taking.
We didn’t wear jeans those days. Wooden clogs were the shoes in style so, I wore that with my skirt and sweater. It turned out that camp grounds were all dusty and muddy so those shoes really came in handy.”
Chiyo went on to explain about her nickname,”I was on my way back home, walking along the road from the Recreation Building. I knew a lot of the guys on the back of the truck as they passed me, driving vegetables to the mess hall. Poison Kato and his brother were some of them. Bako Kinoshita threw one of the onions at me and I caught it. When I threw it back it went through someone’s open barrack window. The next day they started giving me a bad time about that and started calling me “Onions”. The more I protested, the more the name stuck.”
Nothing like good name calling to make the forced imprisonment bearable. Here’s a bunch of nick names we brainstormed: Tomatoe, Tinky, Gunner, Buster, Beansy, Slug, Lover, Shorty, Gas House, White Christmas. When they meet today, they still use those names.
Yes, Auntie Onions won big time today!! I won the last hand, but I was hundred's of points behind.
![The Aroma of Tacoma]()
The Aroma of Tacoma
Last week, my granddaughter and I went to Uwajimaya Asian Market to choose a hostess gift for her to bring to the Yucatan. She was embarking on a High School abroad experience in Merida, Mexico, for four weeks.
She had Applets and Colette’s from Washington State and decided as a fifth generation of Japanese heritage teenager, to also bring something Japanese. She chose the popular with kids Pocky Sticks (flavored dough on a stick) and Arare (rice crackers coated with soy sauce). I was surprised that Arare was considered, “so very Japanese”.
Later, in a discussion with my daughter, she explained that although the girls loved Arare, she was hesitant to put Arare into their school lunch boxes and warned the girls, “You are going to have stinky breath, so be aware.”
That also reminds me, when Sam and I built our new house on Mercer Island 50 years ago, one of our discussions was to not cook any mackerel fish in our new house because, “We don’t want to have that stinky Japanese smell when we have guests.” One of our first guests was Sam’s Medical Dental Building office neighbor, Dr. Wiesel. I think we even considered not cooking too many things with soy sauce the week before he was coming to dinner.
When I was growing up, I heard a lot of conversations between my parents and with grandpa, when we lived in the farming area in Idaho, about the, “stinky, white people’s houses.” I still remember my best friend Shirley Talkington’s dairy farmer’s house, when I stayed over night. The odor was strong, but it was more important to me to be friends.
Before we moved to Mercer Island we lived on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Our neighbors across the street were Shelly and Paul Pierce. The musical group called the Pierymplezaks was formed in their basement. They became famous in the 1960s for a song about digging for clams called: GOOEY DUCK SONG. They also sang the song about THE AROMA OF TACOMA. Tacoma was the first residence of the Japanese Consul General before 1900 when the office was moved to Seattle. My Dad and his family lived near Tacoma. Early immigrants had a lot of jokes, among themselves, about the odor in Tacoma and joked about other ethnicities and their odor when they felt discriminated.
Doing research, I am finding, the Japanese are considered some of the most diligent in daily baths and having homes that are easily aired out and in communication with nature. As those of us with Japanese heritage continue to integrate and we are about to host guests, I hear a lot of, “It’s really low class to have a smelly house. Air out the house!!”
![Teenage Antics - During WWII ...]()
Teenage Antics - During WWII Incarceration of Japanese
One of the Seattle elder social events in the community of those of us with Japanese Heritage in 2023 is the Nisei Vet’s first Friday of every month Luncheon organized by Keith Yamaguchi and his wife Mary Ann. It restarted this year with a new volunteer retired cook and the dozen or more volunteers after Covid.
I agreed to attend and meet 97-year-old Auntie Onions. Lisa picked her up with a couple other 90+-year-olds, Hidy and Marti, living across Lake Washington in the Greater Seattle east side. They kept waiting for Knuckles and she finally came.Then they continued their conversation about going to Broadway High School over 80 years ago and where they grew up in Seattle’s International District. Onions exclaimed, “We used to get together all the time, but now, this is the only way I get to see all my friends?”
When Junko and Mary joined our table, the girls started joking, “How are the OTees doing?
“Tell me about the OTees,” I implored.
Lisa added, “My dad was also one of the OTees. They all got jackets alike. I have a picture.
Junko started to explain, “Well, I was 14-years-old when we got taken to ‘camp’. We were some of the first ones, rounded up in Seattle and taken to the Puyallup Fair Grounds and Area D. As other families arrived, our parents told us boys to help them carry things. We made it a game to scout out the cute girls and would holler ‘Haba Haba’. Some of us kids got jobs to help like passing out things for meals and such. We whispered ‘Haba Haba” when a cute girl was coming around.
So, I smile at Onions sitting across the table, “I know you were one of those cute girls. You were 15 when you were incarcerated, right?” I interjected. Tell us again how you got the name ‘Onions’.“
Typical of Nisei girls, Auntie put her head down, flaped her hand at me and demurely declined. Especially with all her friends around, it wouldn’t have been proper to talk about herself. I convinced her later it was important to share her stories for the sake of the grandchildren.
Going on with Junko’s story. With close living quarters, community toilets, community showers, body parts and excrement exposure, figuring out who could come up with the most outrageous put down and name calling was the daily challenge, especially for the guys.
Junko continued, “When we got to Minidoka in Idaho, a bunch of us were part of block five and created the OTees. we considered ‘Stinkys’, ‘Poopys’ and other Japanese language descriptions. But thinking we needed to be a little more sophisticated and decent, we chose the name ‘Odorless Turds’."
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