80 Years On: Man Remembers Tough Trip Back from Korean Peninsula

   Fuefuki, Yamanashi Pref., Aug. 17 (Jiji Press)--Hajime Sakata, who was 8 years old just after the end of World War II 80 years ago, traveled more than 500 kilometers south across the Korean Peninsula for his return to Japan.
   Recalling his fierce war experience, 88-year-old Sakata, who now lives in the city of Fuefuki, Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo, says, "War robs people of their emotions."
   Sakata was born in 1937 in what is now Kilju in northeastern North Korea. He was living with his parents and two younger sisters.
   The area in which Japanese people were living was surrounded by barbed wire fences. The Sakata family was living a life without any inconveniences in the area, which had such facilities as a baseball stadium, a movie theater and a shrine.
   However, his father was conscripted by the former Imperial Japanese Navy in 1940, and U.S. air raids began in the late stage of the war, according to Sakata.

(2025/08/17-11:37)

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