War's end meant long pain for Japanese girl in China

Seventy-five years after the end of the Pacific War, an 88-year-old Japanese woman recalls avoiding death by suicide in Manchuria, before making a treacherous journey home to Japan, after the East Asian country surrendered.

The last day of the Pacific War was also supposed to be Fumie Sato's last.

After hearing Emperor Hirohito's Aug. 15, 1945, radio broadcast declaring Japan would soon be "enduring the unendurable" in defeat, her father, an Imperial Army officer in Manchuria, announced his family would die by suicide together because the Soviets would soon invade their neighborhood.

Somehow, when the 13-year-old Sato learned that she was to die, she remained calm, even as she watched her father help bury the neighboring family in their yard after they killed themselves.

But later, when her father returned from an Army meeting, he carried an order that his family must return to Japan alive.

For two years they waited for evacuation, living in constant fear of being attacked by the Russians now in Manchuria. Sato's father got sick and died and never made it home.

In 1948, they were finally allowed to evacuate. Her mother and other siblings went ahead.

Sato stayed with a younger sister, Tomiko, who was ill, and they were to take a later train meant for the sick and their caregivers.

But before they could leave, her sister died. Sato was told she couldn't get on the train alone, but she was saved because there happened to be a solo patient who agreed to travel with Sato.

"If that person wasn't there, I would have been an orphan and never would have returned to Japan," Sato said. "Fate was on my side. I was lucky."

She was reunited with the rest of her family at her uncle's home.

Sato came forward with her story because at 88, she wants her children to know the suffering she went through after the war.

"I'm already old, I could die any day. I thought it would be sad if my children didn't know anything about their mother's childhood memories," she said.