Photo/Illutration Shizuko Nishio at the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage in Tokyo in February (Ryota Goto)

Shizuko Nishio started shaking and sank to her knees as she watched TV news footage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

That was two years ago.

One scene, of a Ukrainian girl weeping in an underground shelter, evoked the sense of terror that Nishio felt as a small child during the Great Tokyo Air Raid of 1945.

Even today, 79 years later, Nishio is not over it.

“How come? I am over there,” Nishio, who lives in Tokyo, said she thought about the footage of the girl.

Nishio, 85, spent decades trying to erase mental images of her experience as a 6-year-old, but the footage from Ukraine brought home the fact her efforts had been in vain.

The 300 or so B-29 bombers deployed for the Great Tokyo Air Raid dropped 330,000 incendiary bombs over downtown Tokyo on March 10, a few months before Japan’s surrender in World War II. The attack claimed the lives of an estimated 100,000 civilians.

THE GIRL THAT WAS　

Nishio went to sleep the previous night brimming with excitement that she would awake March 10 as a 6-year-old.

Her joy was short-lived. She was rudely awakened by an early morning air raid warning and took shelter with her mother in an underground room at a nearby engineering school.

Fumes and smoke entered the room from around the door, making her feel she was suffocating. Pretty soon, she felt groggy.

Nishio heard a pounding on the door. The women outside were pleading to be let in.

Although almost passed out from a lack of clean air, Nishio thought someone should open the door.

But those inside, including her mother, just remained silent.

“Open the door!” “Let us in!” The terrified people on the other side of the door were now shouting.

But their voices gradually faded, and then there was silence.

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Shizuko Nishio at the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage in Tokyo in February (Ryota Goto)

The survivors found charred bodies piled in front of the door the following morning.

MOTHERHOOD

After the war, Nishio studied public health at college and joined the National Institute of Health, what is now the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Nishio believed she would be able to let go of her horrific wartime memories if she threw herself into the job.

But she became deeply insecure after she gave birth to her daughter.

“Will she be alive tomorrow,” she wondered.

Nishio suffered from the same anxiety when her second daughter was born three years later.

“I thought I went out of my mind due to the war,” she said. “I couldn’t confide my worries to anyone.”

Tormented by vivid memories of what unfolded in the underground shelter, Nishio wanted nothing to do with anything associated with war and air raids.

She was surprised when she later learned about clinical cases of post-traumatic stress disorder because the avoidance symptoms of PTSD were strikingly like her own experiences of trying to bury the past.

SCARS NOT HEALED　

The decades passed, and it was only after Nishio retired that she gradually was able to recount her wartime experiences.

By then, Nishio assumed her emotional scars had healed and that her trauma over the air raid was a thing of the past.

Then the footage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought home the awful truth that those beliefs were only illusionary.

Yoshiaki Tanaka, a professor of ancient history at Senshu University in Tokyo, said trauma continues to torment many survivors of the Great Tokyo Air Raid.

He has spent more than 10 years interviewing survivors to record their experiences.

Tanaka said many of the more than 100 people he spoke with became lost for words and unable to continue sharing their thoughts when they were struck by a particular mental image that had touched their heart.

To those unable to find words to describe their experiences, he suggested they try painting pictures.

Tanaka said many of those who painted to express what they had experienced still suffered from flashbacks and other symptoms.

“An air raid destroys not only people’s lives and bodies but also their minds and the quality of being human,” Tanaka said. “We must understand that victims continue to be mentally afflicted.”

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