80 Years On: Visually Impaired in Japan Faced Fear of Unseen Enemy Plane Attacks

From Jiji

August 6 2025

KYOTO – In the closing months of World War II, people with disabilities in Japan, like their able-bodied neighbors, desperately sought shelter from relentless air raids. 
   “I couldn’t move my hands or legs because of the sounds of machine-gun fire,” recalled Isao Shirahata, an 89-year-old resident of Kyoto, western Japan, who is visually impaired. “Such a terrifying thing must never happen again.”
   Shirahata was born with low vision due to glaucoma. As a child, he lost sight in his left eye after accidentally striking it on a bicycle brake lever, leaving him with only limited vision in his right eye.
   In April 1944, at 8 years old, Shirahata enrolled in the Kyoto prefectural school for the blind in the capital city, leaving his family home in Miyazu, Kyoto Prefecture, to live in the school’s dormitory.
   To help students protect themselves, music teachers played recordings of U.S. military aircraft sounds, training them to recognize the approach of enemy planes. “The B-17 had a heavy, rumbling sound. The Curtiss had a light, whirring sound,” Shirahata remembered.