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- <text id=91TT2706>
- <title>
- Dec. 02, 1991: Remembrance:"O.K., Gruel is Good"
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Dec. 02, 1991 Pearl Harbor:Day of Infamy
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- PEARL HARBOR, Page 57
- REMEMBRANCE
- "O.K., Gruel Is Good"
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By MICHIKO MATSUURA
- </p>
- <p> [Then the wife of an imperial navy officer, she is now, at
- 79, president of Japan's League of Women Voters.]
- </p>
- <p> In January 1942 we moved to Kamakura, southwest of Tokyo.
- A teacher there asked my three-year-old son, "What will you do
- if the enemy attacks?" He replied, "I'll kick them." That's
- military education for you. They were teaching that a kamikaze
- [divine wind] would blow Japan to victory.
- </p>
- <p> I was always wondering if things were going the right way.
- I always tried to feed my husband rice, while the rest of us
- had rice gruel. Once the older boy complained, "Gruel again?"
- </p>
- <p> My two-year-old son responded, "We have to eat gruel or
- else we'll lose the war."
- </p>
- <p> "O.K., gruel is good."
- </p>
- <p> "Yes, it's like chocolate."
- </p>
- <p> "It's like kompeito [a hard sugar candy]."
- </p>
- <p> Neither knew what chocolate or kompeito tasted like.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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