ClickOkinawa.com - Oral Histories

Higa Takejiro
published Oct 12, 2018

An Oral History

Takejiro Higa's interview courtesy of the Center for Oral History.
Photographs courtesy of Takejiro Higa.
The Hawaii Nisei Project © 2006

Play
No more such thing as organized sports. The only play, probably play around in the taro patch. You know, with rice paddy area, run around, that's about it. No organized baseball, or basketball, or volleyball. That's only available in school. Poor district, you know, farm district.
Summer months. . .we used to swim around in the pond. And the pond is kind of shallow. So we kick around so much that a lot of times, became muddy. At the end of the day, you had a muddy moustache underneath, with the mud. And yet, we swim, and wash ourselves, and go out. Probably the dirty water was more dirty than before. That was one of the fun parts.
Winter months, of course, you don't go inside there, too cold. See, Okinawa, temperature-wise, almost like Hawaii but there's a tremendous difference between the summer and the winter. Winter is quite cold, summer is quite hot. Muggy. Not like Hawaii, no trade winds.
Work
Well, after I got to be about fourteen, I used to transport - you know Okinawa black sugar? During the sugar harvesting season, I used to transport that to Naha on a horse cart. And that's a hard job. So, because of that, I used to go to Naha about three or four times a week. . .Twenty kilometers [twelve miles].
My grandfather had a small patch of sugar cane. Just about everybody had a small patch of sugar cane. Because the main portion of the farm is always for subsistence purpose, yeah, potato and vegetables. Mostly potato. Potato takes about three to four months after planting, ready for harvest, see. And you cannot plant all one time either. You have to sort of - installment like. As you dig, and when it opens up, and get ready for new planting. And in the meantime, other parts have matured. So you cannot have too much sugar cane, either. Sugar cane was only cash for crop.
I think we had the two company we used to deal in Naha. But anyway, this company, warehouse, was near the Naha wharf. So from the prefecture road, ken doro, I used to transport, on the horse carriage. The black sugar, we'd pack 'em in. . .bamboo. And we used to pack in there, what, hyakusanjugo kin [135 Japanese kin]. I don't know how to convert it into pounds right now. [1 kin = 1.323 pounds] Anyway, hyakusanjugo kin, that tub. I used to pack ten of those on the horse-drawn buggy.
The sugar itself, the black sugar, is made in the village. Each village has a very crude sugar factory. Several. And from villages, we would collect the sugar tub and then I'd transport. I was only one of the other two to transport regularly to Naha. Not everybody transports. Only two - my uncle was only one of the two.
My uncle had one regular outside helper working for him. See, my uncle was a village head. I mean, unelected village head. I guess my uncle was pretty smart. Anyway, because of him, all the village people used to come to my uncle's house, all kinds of discussions. And my uncle, he was sort of liaison between village to yakuba [government office]. And because of that - I'm being a curious little rascal - I used to hear a lot of things. And those things taught me a lot of things to my knowledge.
[Can we ask what kinds of things you learned about?]
Well, a lot of things, you know. About family problems in village. Some kind of dispute you hear about. Or good things. All kinds. Hard to pinpoint, but all kinds of other - I wouldn't say rumor - just conversation. And some of the things I learned, I felt, was about safety purposes, too.

Sotetsu Plant
In ancient times, Okinawa used to have a famine quite often. So people survived on the wild plants and fruits. And many of them ate sotetsu. The Japanese [sago] fern, palm fern. That is edible, the trunk. But you have to know how to prepare properly. If you don't prepare properly, it changes to severe poison. So some people, not knowing the proper way to process, ate that and died. This period in Okinawa history is known as Sotetsu jigoku [Palm hell].
Sotetsu jigoku. And sotetsu - here are two kinds of sotetsu, male and female. Male is the one get almost a stick - something comes out every summer. Female bears fruits. Almost like - much bigger than macadamia. During the harvesting season, quite often you find snake inside. So my uncle used to say, "Before you harvest that, don't stick your hand inside. Be sure to stick your sickle and crisscross. Make sure there's no snake in there. If there is a snake, you cut 'em up before you put your hand inside." Those things, I learned from my uncle. And some people talking about it, eh. And that became, I think, useful. And another thing, Okinawa is known for poisonous snakes, see.
Haka
Unlike regular graves, Okinawan haka [grave] is dug in, or built. Because in the ancient days, Okinawa had no practice of cremation or burial. All in preserving the haka.
Haka is built in the shape of a woman's womb. Entrance is. . .enough space where two guys can carry the casket inside. And once inside, it's quite big. . .wide enough for even six-footers can walk around inside. And in the backside, there's usually, a two-shelf where you can store your remains.
Okinawa Haka
After the senkotsu, after you wash the bone, they put 'em in a ceramic container. In Okinawa, known as jishigami, see. It's a very beautiful ceramic container. So after senkotsu, after you wash the bone real carefully, you lay the bone from feet down, build up, and put the skull on the top. And they put 'em in the back of the haka. Preserve.
So during invasion [of Okinawa in World War II], first day of invasion, we landed on the beach and then we moved up to the hill, halfway up the hill. And we came to one haka. I don’t know for what reason, but the haka door was open. So one of the GIs from headquarters wanted to go in right away, see. I stop him first, I said, “Wait, lend me your flashlight.” So I look inside.
He said, “What are you doing?”
“Wait, wait, I explain to you later.”
The reason being that, I was told that hebi (snake) often sneak into the haka. Especially when you have a dead body inside, yeah. So I was told that Uncle used to teach me that kind of stuff. So I said, “Wait, wait.” So I look around, make sure there’s no snake. And then say, “Okay, go inside.”
Then later on, I found out from one expert. Snake doesn’t like the sulfur smell. So during the bombardment, all the snakes crawled into the hole someplace and you cannot find them. So, in spite of all the snakes in Okinawa, we never saw even one snake during the wartime. This, I found out later from one American GI who knows about this kind of stuff. He tells me, “Yeah. . . .” First, I used to tell him, see, to the GIs, “Be careful, Okinawa get plenty snakes. So be careful, especially dry places.” See, they never found one, see. And then I found out why. (Laughs) I learned a lot.
[So from your youth then, you learned a lot that helped you in later life . . .]
Yeah.
[. . . and during the war, then. And then going back, I know that you mentioned at age sixteen, you wanted to get out of Okinawa to avoid being sent to Manchuria, and you asked your sister to call you over. How did she manage doing that?]