Shigeki-niisan was staring at the sky

Shigeki-niisan [brother Shigeki] was staring at the sky. Whether he was thinking about his flights or just staring at the sky I didn’t know. If he took things slowly; if he just took his time I thought that someday his wounds would heal.

The airplane factory my father had been working at had officially closed so he was looking for new work. He regretted the many young men who had lost their lives in the airplanes he had participated in creating. [scene showing father throwing airplane blueprints into a fire] Until his death, my father wouldn’t talk about airplanes again. All three of us felt the same way.

[Yoko (the narrator, who’s also a gradeschool teacher) looks down at textbook with many blacked out lines of text due to post-war censorship, at first with a kind of look of horror. then she looks up at her father standing next to the fire bin, sighs, and slowly begins to smile. she lets out a small laugh and another sigh.]

[Father looks over to Yoko] What is it?

[Yoko] Nothing. I was just thinking about our family.

scene from Ohisama week 13 episode 078

In this drama during the war the Japan was more like North Korea today than modern Japan. Schoolteachers were required to drill militarism into their students and indoctrinate them constantly and it was like the whole society was really brainwashed.

Immediately after the end of the war, teachers were instructed to make their students black out entire sections of indoctrination and jingoism in textbooks which was a shock to all those who had been so deeply brainwashed for so long.

I like the drama’s bare honesty in depicting the way they were shocked and really felt during and after the war. In one scene American soldiers come into their restaurant and offer them tins of food which they flatly reject from the “occupiers”.