Between Two Countries
Charcoal, oil on paper
15" x 15"
Charcoal, oil on paper
15" x 15"
Jack Motoo Dairiki was born in 1930 and grew up with his four siblings in his family’s hotel in Sacramento, California. In August 1941, he and his father traveled to Hiroshima, Japan, to visit his ailing grandfather. It was meant to be a one-month trip, but they became stranded when all ships to the U.S. were suspended as Japan prepared for war. A few months later, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred.
Jack began adjusting to life living with his grandparents and blending in with local Japanese boys. Like many children at the time, he was expected to contribute to the war effort. On the morning of August 6, 1945, at age 14, Jack was in the factory courtyard where his teacher was taking roll call. They noticed a B-29 bomber flying overhead.
He recalled that the bomb exploded suddenly. When he felt the hot flash, he instinctively fell to the ground, covering his eyes and ears just as he had been trained—four fingers over the eyes and thumbs in the ears. This method was meant to protect against the blast’s vacuum, which could cause one’s eardrums and eyeballs to rupture. The flash came, and immediately after, the bomb’s blast followed. He felt his body lift off the ground, as if it had floated in the air from the force. All the windows of the factory shattered, and a choking cloud of smoke and dust swallowed everything. Visibility dropped to zero. He heard footsteps running toward the bomb shelter built for factory workers about a thousand yards away, and he followed the sound blindly. When he reached the shelter, which was on higher ground, he turned to look back at the city—and saw the massive mushroom cloud rising into the sky.
Inside the shelter, he waited in silence for instructions. Eventually, drawn by curiosity, he approached the doorway and looked outside. That’s when he saw her: a young woman walking slowly, like a ghost. Her arms were stretched out in front of her. What looked at first like clothes draped from her limbs was not fabric—it was her skin, burned and peeling, hanging in strips. Her hair had been completely singed away. She walked forward silently, eyes locked straight ahead, as if staring past this world.
Jack returned home around 6 p.m. Miraculously, the house was still standing, and he was reunited with his family—except for his aunt. The next day, his father went to the city and found her with half of her body severely burned.
The war soon ended. Hiroshima had become a flattened city, still smoldering with the smell of burning bodies. Jack’s school resumed in early September, despite classrooms having no ceilings or windows. Students, without shoes, textbooks, or even pencils, attended lecture-only classes in snow-drifted rooms that remained unrepaired for over a year.
In 1948, Jack returned to the United States at age 17 and re-enrolled in high school. He was reunited with his siblings in Sacramento, after their release from internment. They had been held first at Tule Lake, then Rohwer, Arkansas, and lastly at Amache, CO incarceration camp.
Jack’s family lived a cruel irony. Caught in the crossfire of history, they suffered on both sides of the ocean. Their belonging was questioned in both homelands.
At 95, Jack lives near San Francisco’s Japantown with his wife Jun, and they still enjoy playing tennis together—a peaceful rhythm after a life shaped by war.
