ANGKOR and I

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6 My Encounter with Angkor Wat My Birth and Upbringing in Hokkaido Having been born and raised in Hokkaido, and due to the fact that as a child I had long resided in Obihiro, I guess I am a native of Obihiro. However, my real place of birth was Hamanaka city in the subprefecture of Kushiro. Since my parents had shifted there from Memuro city in Tokachi subprefecture to work at deforestation, I was born there in 1937 (Showa 12), and with my older and younger sisters, we were a family of three siblings. My father was a member of the second generation of pioneers, who entered Memuro city from the Toyama subprefecture. However, after their fields had been washed away due to flooding by the Tokachi River, my parents had no choice but to go and work as a couple, due to poor harvests and the cold weather. This was despite the fact that they had already obtained a new field on higher ground. My father thereafter with the help of relatives obtained a job at the South Manchuria Railway (Manchuria Railway), and so in 1939 we reallocated to Fushun city in the former region of Manchuria (now Northeast China). It was an exodus of 6 family members including my grandmother, and my father worked as a field technician at a Fushun coal mine. I commuted to the national school in Fushun, but in my second year the area was confronted by the defeat of Japan in the war. Yet, since my father was involved in jobs such as requisitioning the coal mine, handing over control and so on, we were unable to return to Japan at once, and so the entire family returned to Japan in 1949. Fushun being a cold place I have fond recollections of skating over frozen ponds. However at the close of the war, while playing on a skate rink my skates were Chapter 1