"We were not too badly off for sweet things as Yasuko bought some on the black market through somebody she worked with. The stuff was a kind of candy made by a farmer living in the hills behind Furuichi, who used starch got by soaking the roots of a plant related to liquorice. Yasuko's friend used to buy it from this farmer, and would let her have some of it. We only used it for sweetening things a few times, though. Most of it we sucked as it was, to stave off hunger, though we felt it was an awful waste.

As for sake, the same thing happened in our neighbourhood association as everywhere else - once it went on the ration, people who had never touched it before the war started drinking. A peculiar thing to happen.

Besides the cigarette ration, someone at the works would let us have a share of leaf tobacco he bought on the black market. We would hang it under the floorboards for a while to moisten it, shred it with cloth shears, and wrap it in the thin, fine paper from an English dictionary - "Indian paper," I was told it's called. In the years before and after the end of the war, we smoked a whole pocket dictionary in our house."