By Dr. Daiseku Ikeda

My family had been forced to evacuate our home,

to stay with relatives in Nishi Magome.

However, this refuge, this house set amid peaceful fields,

took a direct hit from an incendiary bomb.

With all our worldly possessions inside,

it was instantly engulfed in flame.

With our relatives’ consent,

my father constructed a tiny hut on the same lot,

with a small sheet of scorched tin for a roof.

We had no mosquito netting, so now, instead of bombs,

we faced the assault of squadrons of mosquitoes.

On that day of August 15, my father, face flushed with emotion,

murmured to himself, “My sons will now return.

My eldest, Kiichi,

my second, Masuo, my third, Kaizo, and my fourth, Kiyonobu,

are coming home.

One from Burma three from China—

they’re coming home.”

He uttered these words, breath catching painfully

in his chest, as one awakening

from a dream.

My diminutive mother prepared dinner,

excited as a young girl: “How bright it is!

Now we can keep the lights on!

How lovely and bright!”

That summer, my father was fifty-seven,

my mother forty-nine, and I was seventeen.

August 15 was the day, the moment we emerged from a deep and hellish gloom,

regaining as a family some happiness and cheer.

Although some of my siblings wept at Japan’s defeat, deep inside everyone was relieved:

How good, they thought, how good that the war is over at last.

Eventually the sad news came— my eldest brother was dead,

killed in action in Burma.

While many were discharged and returned quickly to their homes,

one year passed, and then another, before each of my three surviving brothers

managed to return home quietly alive.