Ten-year-old Kimiko Nishikawa feels the seriousness of the situation. Although she can barely understand Japanese, she knows the anguished plea of her father for them to love one another, love others and to never be lazy.
As her father heartrendingly performs what she thinks is a wine ceremony to bid each other goodbye, she looks at her siblings’ and parents’ faces with excruciating grief written all over them. Everyone is in tears. They all fear it will be their last time to sit at the table together as a family. “We were all crying,” she says.
It was indeed their last. Kimiko, who is now known as Sister Antonieta Ada, MMB tries but not without some difficulty to retrieve that memory of how the Nishikawa family bade each other goodbye before they headed to the jungles to hide during the invasion of Saipan in 1944.
Sister Antonieta now resides with the Mercedarian Sisters on Navy Hill at the MMB Maturana Convent.
Variety asked her birth date and without batting an eyelash, the retired nun and accountant easily replied, “4-24-34.”
It’s remarkable how the retired nun can still remember bits and pieces of her past despite the memory deficit that started creeping in after her last year of teaching at Mt. Carmel School in 2004-2005.
Born on April 24, 1934, Kimiko, as Sister Antonieta was known before the war, is the second youngest in a brood of six of a Japanese lawyer-businessman and a tapioca farm owner.
She says she was born “in the city of Garapan. That’s the only city and the rest are small [villages].”
With the help of Sister MaryAnn Hartmann, MMB she was able to recall memories that are slowly tethering into oblivion.
This reporter tried to take her back in time to conversations they had a few years ago when she shared that they lived in Kagman.
Sister MaryAnn helps by reminding her, “In the place where your father — your Japanese father — had a farm.”
Sister Tonie, as she is called by Sister MaryAnn, describes the way to her father’s farm. “It’s way uphill where there were lots of fruits…where many people go to work in the farm.”
She also recalls the abundance of sugarcane in Chacha in Kagman.
She tells Variety they were six children in the family — three girls and three boys. “I am before the last one. I am No. 5. The one after me is a boy.”
Variety further asked her the names of her parents and siblings.
Trying to clarify if she was being asked of her Japanese biological father’s name, for sure, she says, “Nishikawa is the last name. Sonetaro is my father’s name.”
It’s surprising, too, despite the memory deficit, how she was able to remember the names of every member of her Japanese family except for her mother whom she fondly called the generic “okasan” or Nihongo for mother.
Several years back, in conversations this reporter had with Sister Antonieta, she described her mother as hardworking and a little bit rotund, whose face looked a lot like hers.
Aside from taking care of the children, she says, her mother managed a tapioca farm where they made an ingredient for an alcoholic drink. After soaking grated tapioca overnight and drying it in the sun, she says the workers would pack and store them in a warehouse. She remembers these stacks would be loaded onto trucks and delivered to a Garapan store once or twice a week.
Her father, whom she earlier described as tall and slender, could be a lawyer, she says, as people would come to him for help to defend them. She says, although they seldom see their father at home, his coming home was met with excitement and anticipation. She says she had always longed for the “mochi” and candies her father would bring home.
She tells Variety she also stayed and lived with the family of Juan and Ana Ada in Garapan during the year she went to kindergarten. She says the Adas were friends of her father’s. Knowing full well Mr. Ada, the “alcalde,” her father, consented to the Adas taking her to live with them for a year since their household was then becoming an empty nest when their son left to get married.
In an earlier conversation with this reporter, she said she went to an all Japanese kindergarten school where she felt so different. “At school I am Japanese. After school, I became Chamorro.”
She had also mentioned years ago that she engaged in brawls with boys at school over them teasing her as “toming” — Japanese for Chamorro. She had quickly adapted to the Chamorro ways and she admitted she spoke better Chamorro than Nihongo.
Her transition from kindergarten to grade school was fraught with difficulty as she had to live again with her own family in Kagman.
In an interview with Variety last week, she says she managed to reach fifth or sixth grade and school was cut short during the war. When war came to Saipan, she says, they were already learning fractions and divisions.
“Fear is everywhere,” she says as the whole island braced for an impending American invasion.
At home, there was frantic preparation to evacuate to safe grounds.
Little did the innocent Kimiko know that her father had been mapping out their escape path long before the war arrived.
There was that one dinner, she remembers, that everyone appeared wallowing in inconsolable grief. There was fear of not being able to see each other again. After that brief ceremony over dinner, they all packed and got ready to rendezvous in Talofofo.
After dinner, she narrates, they received instructions from her “otoosan” (father) on what to bring.
Taiichi, her eldest brother, would carry a bag containing pertinent family documents and cash.
Her older sisters Michiko and Nagako, and brother Hiroji were instructed to bring provisions.
When everyone was ready, her father ordered them to split into two groups. Asked, “ Why?”, Sister Antonieta says her father told them that if they left together as one group and a “bakudang” (bomb) hit them, they would all perish.
Michiko, Hiroji and Nagako were the first ones to leave en route to Talofofo where they would all meet.
Mr. and Mrs. Nishikawa, Taiichi, Kimiko, and Noboru — the youngest child — soon followed.
But the rendezvous never happened. Kimiko’s older siblings never showed up.
With a heavy heart, they moved on to a cave packed with other Japanese. After spending the night, there was riveting fear like voices echoing in the cave. They knew the place was going to be bombed and they had to scamper to safety. A bomb did hit them and the young Kimiko was hurled outside the cave, luckily she survived.
For the young Kimiko, she found it remarkable how her father managed to find hiding places where it would be easy to get food and water. “I think my father had been planning this long before the war.”
To slake their thirst and stave off hunger, Mr. Nishikawa and Taiichi would fetch rainwater and get food at night and stealthily wade through a labyrinth of sugarcane fields.
But the rustling of the sugarcane cane leaves betrayed them and in their wake shots were fired from the thick bushes.
Mr. Nishikawa was hit.
When her brother returned to the cave, Sister Antonieta recalls not expecting to see with him her bloodied father, fighting for his life. Otoosan never lived to see the next day.
With her father gone, Kimiko remembers her mother making the boldest of decisions — to return home. She, her mother and brother thus found themselves returning to their home in the farm.
But they never reached home that night.
[to be continued]
QUICK FACTS
• Born in Garapan on April 24, 1934
• The fifth child of a Japanese businessman-lawyer and tapioca farm owner
• Adopted by Juan and Mrs. Ana Ada
• Her Japanese name is Kimiko Nishikawa.
• Her siblings were Michiko, Taiichi, Hiroji, Nagano, Noboru,
• In kindergarten, she engaged in brawls with Japanese classmates over them teasing her “Toming”
• During the invasion of Saipan in 1944, the Nishikawa family split into two groups but failed to rendezvous in Talofofo.
• War came to Saipan when Kimiko was studying fractions and division at school.
• Kimiko and Taiichi were the only survivors
