[Keio Nursing 100th Anniversary Interview] Nursing Shinzo Koizumi During the War

Both of us entered in April 1942. Because of the wartime situation, the period of study was shortened, so we graduated in December 1944 and immediately began working at Keio Hospital.

It was war right from the start. When we first went to the tiered lecture hall after entering, the sirens went off. That was the first air raid on Tokyo (the Doolittle Raid on April 18, 1942).

As the air raids on Tokyo intensified in 1945, following the Great Tokyo Air Raid on March 10, clinical departments and inpatients gradually moved from the wooden Main Building to the reinforced concrete Annex. So, during the air raids, I was helping out at the surgical outpatient clinic which had moved to the Annex.

Before it burned down, I was in Ward 'Ro' of the Main Building. After the March 10 raid, 'ropes' were installed so that even at night, we could evacuate from the Main Building to the Annex through the underground passage if an air raid occurred.

Among the internal medicine patients I was in charge of, there was one person who couldn't move at all. But during the air raid, that patient actually stood up. I said, "Are you okay?" and carried them on my back alone, following the rope to escape to the Annex. By doing that, one less stretcher was needed, and another nurse could go somewhere else. On the stairs of the underground passage to the Annex, I told the accompanying wife, "There are this many steps, so please be careful not to miss your footing as you go down." It was pitch black; I was just acting on instinct. I was determined to get the patients to safety, no matter what.

The closest place to the underground passage leading to the Annex was Ward 'Ha,' and we had turned the first floor there into emergency ward beds. Above that, students were on air-raid duty. Nurses alone couldn't possibly have managed everything.

The surgical outpatient clinic had three examination tables, and with just one large candle per table, we were performing 'ampu' (amputations) on patients brought in with injuries from the air raid. If a knee was gouged out by an incendiary bomb, it couldn't be treated. So, we would tie a rubber band around the base of the thigh and perform the amputation without anesthesia.

Truly, there was never a time as tragic as that. At first, the leg amputations were below the knee. The doctor said, "Are you okay? It's heavy, don't tip over," and I replied, "It's below the knee, so I'll be fine alone." But when I tried to hold it, it was incredibly heavy and I dropped it. When I asked, "Are legs really this heavy?" the doctor told me, "From the neck up is even heavier."

I was told to "go around and check the hospital rooms," and when I went, incendiary bombs were coming into the rooms at an angle. It was a desperate situation; I wrapped them in futons and threw them out into the courtyard.

Since they were oil incendiary bombs, the oil would drip and burn. When the wind blew, the flames would flicker. I said, "Wow, it's beautiful," and I got scolded (laughs).

Anyway, it was incredible. Plane after plane, they all seemed to be aiming for Keio to drop their bombs. It was exactly what they mean by a 'hail of bullets'—or in this case, bombs.

When the fire died down, I was told, "Go and see what happened to the dormitory." When I sat down on the road, I saw a bright red ball of fire in the pitch-black, cloudy sky. I said, "Whoa, that's scary. What is that?" and someone said, "That's the sun." Amidst the smoke covering the sky, the sun was there, glowing bright red.

Since I had been moving around since the night, I had no sense of time. When I heard it was the sun, my legs gave out and I couldn't even stand.

The wards were already burned, and with the patients from Ward 'Ha' coming in, the beds in the Annex were full, so we carried the amputated patients to the nearby Yotsuya Sixth Elementary School. It was empty because the children had been evacuated to the countryside.

After that, whenever I finished with patients at the outpatient clinic, I'd be asked to "help out for a bit" and go to the school to help. Because it was hot, while we were treating burns, maggots would start breeding in the wounds.

We had the stationed soldiers cut drum cans for us, and we brought timber from demolished houses that hadn't burned down to boil and disinfect the gauze we used for treatment so we could reuse it many times.

The gauze would be covered in maggots. When we scooped them up and washed them, it was slimy with pus, so we washed that off cleanly. But we were energetic; we'd sing songs while the two of us stretched out the gauze, dried it, sent it for sterilization, and used it again. It was just like a field hospital.

Tears came to my eyes, and I couldn't find any words. But that year, we planted pumpkins and tomatoes in the ruins.

We were resilient, weren't we? (laughs)

I used to hate tomatoes, but there was nothing else to eat, right? So I'd pick the tomatoes that had turned red and eat them. The doctors helped us grow them, too.

Among the nurses, while carrying a patient on a stretcher, Kanoko Murata from the same class was hit by the shell of an incendiary bomb and suffered a fracture. Also, there was one student who slipped and scraped their leg, but that was all.

According to Fusae Nagaoka (27th class), a bullet passed between her arm and chest while she was carrying a patient on a stretcher, so it really was a miracle.

Director Chujiro Nishino praised us very highly the next day.

Teruko Maeda, who was also in the 27th class, said that while she was performing an amputation in the outpatient clinic, she heard Professor Nobukatsu Shimada shouting in the hallway, "Mr. Koizumi has been burned, so I'm going to pick him up by car now." I didn't hear that myself, though.

At that time, I was in charge of nursing in the Annex ward. Since they said the President had been burned and admitted, we cleared the room at the very end of the first floor of the South Annex and put him there.

Yes. The burns were terrible and the skin was raw; the professor treated him immediately, and I assisted with that.

At that time, there was no medicine to speak of. So we applied Mercurochrome, and since there was some ointment, we spread it on gauze and applied it to his face, leaving only the eyes exposed. Then we bandaged it... We were really in trouble because we didn't even have enough bandages.

I heard that during the first treatment, when Mr. Koizumi said "It hurts," Dr. Minoru Takeuchi told him, "With an injury like this, it's only natural that it hurts," and after that, he never said "It hurts" again.

Yes, he was very patient and never said "It hurts" even during gauze changes.

Yes, he was a doctor with very skillful hands.

Dr. Kimura also performed the skin graft surgeries. I was in the hospital room for about a month and a half, and after that, I was transferred to the operating room. Even then, I went back and forth between the room and the operating room, and I assisted when Dr. Kimura performed Mr. Koizumi's final skin graft surgery.

At that time, skin was transplanted from the abdomen. We had already transplanted skin from the legs many times in small amounts, and there was none left to take.

Yes. Then, someone said the ward was so busy they had to do something about it, and a dedicated team was formed.

So, I joined the dedicated team around October, I think. It was a time when he had already improved quite a bit.

Two people. I was paired with Tami Takanashi (26th class), who was one year ahead of me. It was a two-shift system of day and night duty.

Besides Ms. Suda and Ms. Takanashi, there were Hama Kusakabe, Asako Inoue, Hanae Tomura (all 27th class), and Chie Mita (28th class) from the class below. I heard Ms. Mita was in charge from an early stage, right after his admission in May.

But until very recently, I didn't know who else was in charge besides Ms. Takanashi and Ms. Kusakabe. Keio nursing education never involved talking about which patient was handled by whom. Confidentiality was that thorough. That's why Mr. Koizumi's name never came up even at class reunions. I only found out about Ms. Suda after calling all my surviving classmates because of this interview, and I was surprised.

It was only for about two weeks. Because I fell ill... The infectious disease ward had burned down, right? So many suspected cases of typhus appeared, and since I had a fever, I was suspected and taken to Okubo Hospital.

So, I took over from you on the dedicated team. Although that was only for night duty; during the day, I worked in the ward.

When I told my classmate Hama Kusakabe, who was dedicated before me, "I'll be attending to Mr. Koizumi now," she said, "Good for you. He reads the newspaper himself now."

In the beginning, it seems the nurses used to read the newspaper to him. When you do that, there are many kanji characters you can't read, right? If you got stuck or misread something, he would say, "That's pronounced like this" (laughs).

So, when the newspaper arrived in the morning, they would look through it first, ask a doctor about difficult characters and add phonetic readings before reading it to Mr. Koizumi. By the time I joined, he had indeed recovered enough to read the newspaper by himself.

He became able to read the newspaper by himself, but we assisted with all his meals. He couldn't hold chopsticks or a bowl until just before his discharge.

At mealtime, we would help him sit up, turn him around so he was sitting cross-legged, place a futon behind him, and have him eat. He couldn't sit up on his own.

Ms. Kusakabe had told me, "Be careful not to show him a mirror, even if he asks." During a meal, as time passes, the miso soup gradually clears and your face is reflected in it. So, I would put my chopsticks at the very bottom and gently stir it once before offering it to him. After a few days, he said, "Ms. Kato, thank you for being so considerate. But you know, I already know what my face looks like, so you don't have to worry so much."

So he saw right through me (laughs). I said, "Sir, I am so sorry," but he said "Thank you for worrying about me" many times.

I mentioned earlier that confidentiality was thorough, but the reason I knew about Ms. Kusakabe was that she was a classmate from elementary school and we were very close. That's why she passed on detailed precautions, saying, "Since you'll be looking after Mr. Koizumi."

After the war, when I saw the news that he was serving as the tutor for the Crown Prince, I thought, "Oh, I'm so glad for him." I thought he had become able to go out in public. Because he had said, "I don't want to go outside anymore," since he knew his own face well.

In the beginning, it must have been a liquid diet, but by the time I was there, the rice was white rice.

I don't remember well, but there were side dishes too. It wasn't that we didn't have food either. However, it was things like daikon radish or sweet potatoes that had been soaked in water for a long time, which had no taste and were crunchy like daikon.

So, it was actually tastier to just eat daikon (laughs). That was served as our regular meal. Other than that, we ate things made from wheat bran flour like bread, but I think the patients were served proper rice.

Yes, I really never want to eat 'watery potatoes' again (laughs).

The bandages were gone. The treatment was just massage. On day duty, after the meal break in the afternoon, I would start a two-hour massage from his burned face to his hands. At that time, you couldn't find cold cream anywhere even if you wanted to buy it, but naturally, it was available for him.

Also, since he wasn't walking, I massaged his legs to build muscle. On night duty as well, a two-hour massage after the meal was my main job after I joined.

When I was stationed with him on night duty, I would say, "Excuse me, the ward is busy while you are resting, so may I go and help?" and he would say, "That's fine."

In exchange, I'd make sure he had the call bell and say, "Please call me immediately if anything happens," before leaving. He was a wonderful patient who never complained of pain or dissatisfaction.

Of course, his family members were visiting all the time, but people who had returned from the student mobilization often came by, saying they wanted to see the professor. In my time, a bench was placed in front of the professor's room for such people.

On busy days, two or three people would show up and say, "I want to see the professor. I want to apologize for not being able to protect the country." Since the professor's son had died in the war, I heard there were even some who said, "I am so sorry. We ended up coming back alive, but I will apologize to the professor and then take my own life."

I didn't hear stories quite that extreme myself, but when I told the professor, "They are requesting a meeting," he would say, "No, I will not see them. Please decline politely and ask them to leave." Even when I conveyed that, some would say, "No, I will wait until I am granted permission," and they would wait for a long time. Some even came every single day.

In my time as well, his family came almost every day. In particular, his second daughter (Ms. Tae Koizumi) was active and cheerful, and I even had her help me during bed baths (wiping the body) (laughs). She was very happy to help.

Not at all (laughs). He often showed me photos of his family. They were under his pillow. He showed me a photo of the five family members and told me that this was his son (Nobukichi Koizumi, who died in the war). It was a photo of him in military uniform. When I said, "Oh, he looks just like you, Professor," he said, "Is that so?"

Usually, he was always listening to the radio. In the evening, the English conversation program would start with "Come, come, everybody. How do you do? How are you?" The professor always listened to it and told me, "Ms. Kato, from now on it will be the era of English, so you should study it."

Normally he didn't talk much about various things, and since reading the newspaper was tiring, he would stop quickly. He would say he'd look at it again after some time, so I would turn the pages for him.

According to what I heard from Fusae Nagaoka, on August 15, the day the war ended, even though he was still unable to get out of bed, when he heard there would be a broadcast from the Emperor, he said, "No, I will get up," and had someone help him up. He sat upright on the bed and listened to the broadcast of the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War.

After I was hospitalized at Okubo Hospital for suspected typhus, I went to Tsukigase (a hot spring sanatorium) for recuperation from December 1945 to March of the following year. When I returned, I was told, "I've been asked to give you a message from Professor Koizumi to come to his home, so please go." The professor had been discharged in December and was recuperating at home. I went to the professor's house by streetcar through the burnt-out ruins.

I entered the entrance and went up the wide spiral staircase on the left to the second floor. The professor was waiting there and said, "Oh, I'm glad you've recovered." Then he signed his book "Travels in America" and gave it to me, saying, "Please read this." Afterward, we all had a meal together.

At that time, Ms. Takanashi was living and working at his home as an attending nurse. I suppose she had been accompanying him all along. He was already able to walk on his own.

I worked at a different hospital after that, so I didn't see him, but according to what I heard from Kitsuko Hiramatsu and Yoshiko Nozawa (both 28th class graduates), when Shinzo Koizumi later came to Keio Hospital as an outpatient, he always made a point to stop by and see Ms. Mita and Ms. Tomura.

He would wait in front of the reception, and timing it for when Ms. Mita came out to the hallway to call a patient, he would say "Hello" or something to that effect. It was a feeling of "I wonder if Ms. Mita is doing well," and at the same time, "I am doing well too, thanks to you." He didn't engage in unnecessary talk. He used a cane, and when he stopped, he always brought the cane to the center. His consideration was amazing; he was a professor who could see through us and be mindful of the things we were worried about.