[About the Book]

Is war something that belongs to a distant past?
Or is it a “memory of everyday life” that quietly shattered someone’s ordinary world?

This memoir recounts the reality of the mass evacuation of schoolchildren during the final years of the Pacific War, as experienced by a boy who attended a school in Japan at the time. Drawing on the author’s memories, along with surviving letters, newspaper articles, and official records, the book reconstructs the life those children lived.

The terror of air raids. Endless hunger. The anxiety of being separated from one’s parents. Letters censored-and the feelings that could never be written.

Even so, the children struggled to live on.
At times they became absorbed in games of dodgeball, or went to see a movie-small moments of joy amid hardship.
This book portrays, just as it was, a wartime life in which fear and ordinary daily moments existed side by side.

This is a testimony that records war not merely as an “event,” but as part of a child’s everyday life.

Recommended for readers who:

・Want to understand the Second World War from the perspective of civilians and children

・Are interested in war memoirs, recollections, and firsthand testimonies

・Wish to understand Japan’s wartime experience from angles other than atomic bombs or military history

・Want to know how war affected everyday life

If any of these resonate with you, we invite you to open this book and begin reading.

［Author’s Biography］
Taniguchi Tsukasa

Born in 1932, Kita Ward, Nagoya City
1956 - Graduated from the Faculty of Economics, Nagoya University; entered employment at a financial institution
1985 - Retired
Author of Furusato Shimoiida: Walking the Former Riverbed Roads (Sakae Kōsha, 1992)
Furusato Shimoiida: Records of Various Matters on Her Highness Princess Kazunomiya’s Journey Down (Editing & Production Center, Project Division, Asahi Shimbun Nagoya Headquarters, 2004)