CHIBA—Susumu Ishii was on his way from school totally unaware that he would become the “face” of wartime destruction and postwar reconstruction in this prefectural capital.

The Chiba municipal government has long used a black and white photo widely called “Yamiichi ni Tatsu Shonen” (A boy standing at a black market) to show what the city was like in the aftermath of World War II.

The image first appeared in a municipal publication 50 years ago.

It was likely snapped around autumn 1946 at the black market along what is now Chiba Ginza street in the municipality’s Chuo Ward.

But not much else was known about the photo, including the identity of the boy wearing in a military uniform in the center of the picture.

According to Chiba city, no details or other records connected to the photo remain.

‘I KNEW IT WAS ME’

A friend told Ishii, now 91, about the picture in a city publication.

“I was surprised because I knew it was me just from a mere glance at the image,” Ishii said.

For several years now, Ishii, who lives in Inage Ward here, has publicly acknowledged that he is the photographed boy and explained his life before and after the picture was taken.

Ishii said the photo was shot after he left school and was heading to his rented home located within a fish dealer’s building near the Chiba prefectural government office.

He could not afford to buy the uniform of the prefecture-run technical school he attended, so he wore clothes sold by the imperial military.

His uniform was known as “Potsdam clothing” in tribute to the Potsdam Declaration, which called for Japan’s unconditional surrender in the war.

Ishii has a photo of himself in the Potsdam clothing while his classmates wear uniforms with stand-up collars.

In the photo of the black market, the boy appears to be living in hardship, but his facial expression is blurred.

As the image shows, the area, much like other parts of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area, was still recovering from the firebombing raids.

FLEEING THE FLAMES

Ishii was at his home just west of present-day Keisei Chiba-Chuo Station on July 7, 1945, when the U.S. bombs started falling on the city.

Ishii heard an alarm and rushed out to the yard in the early morning. The moment he told his parents to “come here,” a bomb exploded nearby.

Surrounded by flames, he ran alone to a shrine near the coast.

It began raining around midnight. He spent his time there gazing upon the sea.

When dawn broke, he began returning to his home and found charred corpses in the bombed-out ruins along the way.

“They might be my relatives,” he said he thought at that time.

When he neared his home, he found his father alive. His mother and younger brother also survived.

But their home was burned to the ground.

Ishii said he stayed at a temporary shelter with a fire-damaged galvanized iron roof until about three months after the war ended. His family then rented property.

His school, destroyed in the bombing, was relocated to a neighborhood near Tsudanuma Station. When the photo was taken, Ishii had to use a train to get to the school.

The black market sat between his new home and the former Japanese National Railways’ Chiba Station near the current JR Higashi-Chiba Station.

Black market vendors sold Japanese littleneck clams and orient clams caught in nearby beaches, as well as sugar, skim milk powder and other articles from overseas.

Ishii bought those items to barter for other materials in rural areas. To help his family cook, he used his bicycle to carry home charcoal in straw bags from his grandparents’ home in the Chosei-gun area in Chiba Prefecture.

“I could obtain nothing during that period unless I moved my body,” Ishii said.

POSTWAR RECOVERY

Four years after the end of the war, Ishii entered the predecessor of Hosei University’s engineering department. He studied telecommunications but became a teacher following his graduation.

“Students at that time had a hard time finding jobs, and it was difficult to gain employment offers linked to one’s major,” Ishii said. “I was the only one in my circle who was able to start working as soon as I graduated.”

Ishii served as a junior high school teacher in Yachiyo and Funabashi in Chiba Prefecture. His school in Funabashi stood next to a plant of Mitsubishi Kakoki Kaisha Ltd.

Ishii had been mobilized at that plant for the war effort.

“I managed to survive aircraft machine-gun fire there,” he said. “I felt it was fate that I worked there again more than 10 years after the end of the war.”

In 1957, Ishii married Kazuko, a teacher three years his junior who died in 2018.

They had two children, and their growth allowed Ishii to see firsthand that his nation was on the track to recovery.

“Only a mess remains after warfare,” Ishii said. “The life afterward is tough for survivors of the war. I want people to understand through the photo how hard it is for one person to open up a pathway from that mess.”