80 Years On: Woman Who Escaped Death on Tinian Island Pleads for Peace

   Nakagusuku, Okinawa Pref., Aug. 15 (Jiji Press)--In 1944, at the height of the fighting on Tinian Island during World War II, schoolgirl Mitsuko Arakaki and her family resolved to die rather than be killed.
   At the last moment, fear drove her to flee--an impulse that ultimately saved her family.
   Having watched B-29 bombers take to the sky from Tinian, the same island from which the aircraft used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki departed, Arakaki, now 91, continues to emphasize the precious nature of peace.
   Arakaki, a resident of the village of Nakagusuku, Okinawa Prefecture, southern Japan, was born on Tinian in 1934. The island prospered on sugarcane, and her grandfather operated a large farm. Living with her grandparents, parents and a younger brother, she recalls, she "lived a life without any inconveniences."
   Part of the Mariana Islands about 2,500 kilometers south of Japan's main island, Tinian was then a Japanese mandate territory and a key base for the Imperial Japanese military. By the time the war reached the island, some 13,000 Japanese civilians were living there, many of them from Okinawa.

(2025/08/15-10:30)