Imagine being left in Japan on the verge of World War II, surviving your high school years while your native country fought with your father’s homeland, and witnessing the dropping of the first atomic bomb known to man just 70 miles across a bay.
That’s the experience Albert Takeshi Yamamoto, now 88, recollected with St. Paul Pioneer Press reporters last week as the world approaches the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and the eventual surrender of the Japanese, ending the world’s costliest war on Aug. 15, 1945.
Yammomoto grew up in Seattle, but was left with his grandfather in a fishing village after his father and sister traveled to Japan – to arrange the sister’s marriage. Yamamoto, then 14, was confused, but told the Pioneer Press, “What could I do?”
He would live through the confusing time – Japan was an empire, ruled by a man who desired a vast territory for his country. People were rationed, young men Yamamoto’s age were drafted into the military, and the country was torn apart by bombings in the years after Pearl Harbor.
Finally, just 70 miles from the village his grandfather called home, across the Inland Sea, the Enola Gay dropped the first of two atomic bombs. After the devastation, the war drew quickly to a close.
Check out the Otsego man’s amazing story on the Pioneer Press website.