How fortunate I was to be introduced to Mrs. Shizuko Wakao, when I was looking for Japanese survivors of the war in Manila and Luzon. Mr. Lou Gopal was going to make a documentary film on the survivors of Santo Tomas Civilian Camp, and contacted me through our mutual friend Ms. Kinue Tokudome, a journalist in LA. Since I translated My Hitch in Hell: the Bataan Death March by Dr. Lester Tenney in 2003 with three other friends of mine, I've been a member of POW Research Network Japan. It consists of around 40 members from all over Japan, who have been active in various ways to research and record the facts of the Japanese Pacific War in relation with the Allied POWs captured in Asia and were forced to work in Japan. Through the internet exchange of our group, I was eventually introduced to Mrs. Wakao through Mr. Toshio Kondo, the representative of Shoko-kai, an organization the purpose of which is to keep a precise record of the war in the Philippines and promote friendship between the Philippines and Japan.

Mrs. Wakao is beautiful and strong in her mature age nearly sixty years after the war. Her husband, a prominent judge of the Japanese Supreme Court, passed away in 1997 and she lives in their pleasant family home in Yokohama surrounded with families and friends. Recently her first great-grand-son was born. I met her before the summer of 2004, and have since been enjoying her lively and warm-hearted company. She has clear memories of experiences and people, as a lady who was actively committed to her life, work, friends and family, always with her sensitive but energetic personality.

After she came back to Hiroshima to the relatives of the Ushiroda family, she sometimes stayed with an aunt's. However, she couldn't follow the wish of the relatives to marry one of the young members of the family. Therefore, she announced she was going to live independently and went not too far away to Iwakuni, where the Kashiwamuras were. Sachiko Kashiwamura and her mother, who were grateful for Shizuko as she delivered the leftovers from the kitchen every day to the Mother who was suffering from malnutrition in the Women's Camp Hospital. They recommended her to be the female staff chef at the British Officer's Mess of the Iwakuni Airfield. She worked there till she found her brother and he decided to open his own clock shop in Tokyo. She moved on to Tokyo, and stayed with a friend's family, helping their small business. Sometime later, she was recommended to work for the Supreme Court as a secretary at the public relations section. It was still the days of American occupation, and they had a lot to do with GHQ. Dr. Hajime Wakao, a judge, was her boss and eventually they got married when Shizuko was 27 years old. It was his second and her first marriage, and Shizuko brought up the two boys who were in primary school then. Then a daughter was born. Dr. Wakao helped her when she investigated on the remains of her sister Haruko and others, who had been buried in the War Cemetery in Manila, with identification. They fought against the Ministry of Welfare, about the insincere treatment of the war dead, and won the apology from them in 1985. She wrote this memoir in 1996, with prayer for all the victims in the war in the mountains of the Philippines.

She says,' I experienced war as a high school student in the beginning of it. I know through my experience what a silly thing to do war is; friendly force or enemy, winner or loser, every one loses the dearest, irreplaceable families and friends in the destruction of the war. The result of war is a huge number of victims, nightmarish ruins, and cruel poverty. I would like the young students and their parents know this, so that they will live in the world in peace with no war anymore.' I agree with her whole-heartedly, and with admiration and respect for this person of love and justice, I have translated her memoir with her permission.

I express my deepest thanks to Mr. Lou Gopal, who gave me the chance to meet Mrs. Wakao. Having read this memoir, he so kindly offered his professional computer skills to make it into a website. With my deepest thanks to him and others who made it possible, I would like as many people as possible to read her story and join our wish for friendship and peace.

November 15, 2004 Yukako Ibuki