"People in Kobatake, like everywhere else, they were saying, were going out digging for pine tree roots. Even my old mother was tottering off to dig in the hills, and had given herself blisters on her hands. Oil was extraccted from the roots by Steaming , and was used - so naval officers had come specially to the village to tell everybody - to oil the engines of the planes whose job it was to shot down B-29's. Pine root digging had been organized as a type of voluntary war work, and a hut for steaming the roots had been erected by the river in the valley..."

CHAPTER 13