SAU PAULO--Shigeko Kinjo had lied to her family for the past 60 years about what happened to her right hand.

The 86-year-old Japanese woman from Okinawa, a resident of the Vila Carrao district of this metropolis, has only her thumb and pinkie finger on that hand--the rest are damaged, missing partly or in their entirety.

When her children and grandchildren asked how it occurred, her usual response was, “I chopped them off by accident when I was playing with a kitchen knife.”

But the hard truth is that her fingers were lost in an explosion during the Pacific War in Saipan, one of the places she had spent her turbulent life--a story she is now sharing.

Kinjo was born to Okinawan parents on this island, a mandated territory of Japan from 1920-1945.

By 1940, an estimated 75,000 Okinawans crossed the Pacific to start their new lives in countries overseas, including Peru and Brazil. Her family was among the large numbers of Okinawan immigrants who settled in Saipan.

But after the Pacific War broke out, Japanese settlers were thrown into deep tragedy. In June 1944, when Japan’s eventual defeat in the war started to seem inevitable, she and seven other family members fled across the island to escape the bloody battle there. Kinjo was just 9 then.

They hid in the daytime and came out after dark to look for water and food.

One day, an Imperial Japanese Army soldier came to a cave where they were taking refuge. When her 4-month-old sister burst out crying, the soldier ordered her parents to kill the baby.

“U.S. troops might discover us if the baby keeps crying,” he said. “Strangle her to death.”

Her family was kicked out of the cave, and the soldier took their food and water.

They trudged to find another cave as the U.S. military’s bombs rained down, lighting up the night sky almost like daytime. A naval bombardment followed.

One of the shells landed nearby and shrapnel struck her sister’s head, whom her mother was holding on her back. The toddler died instantly.

Kinjo’s mother put her blood-covered body under a tree, apologizing repeatedly for leaving her daughter behind.

They managed to find another cave only to be told by a Japanese soldier to get him water from outside.

When Kinjo was wading through bushes with her mother, something extremely hot suddenly touched her foot, pierced through her thigh and blew three fingers off her right hand. They could not find water, so they returned to the cave.

Seeing her blood-soaked right hand, the soldier did not blame them for failing to bring him water.

After days of escaping from the carnage, her father told the family it was time to end their misery by taking their own lives. Many Japanese in Saipan jumped from high cliffs and into the sea and died from the fall or drowned to avoid the shame of being captured by U.S. troops.

When they reached the beach, Kinjo saw many bodies floating in the sea, including a woman with long hair rocking in the water.

But their lives were spared as her father changed his mind at the last minute.

Her memory is not clear about how much time elapsed since, but the next thing she remembered was seeing U.S. soldiers surrounding her.

One of them took a swig of water from his flask, then handed it to her.

With this gesture, she thought to herself, “They are not going to kill me.”

She was taken to a prison camp, where U.S. medical staff treated the injuries to her right hand.

She and her family subsequently returned to Okinawa, but sad news awaited them. Kinjo’s older brother who had remained in Okinawa to attend school was killed in the Battle of Okinawa.

One of every four islanders perished in the battle in the closing days of the war, and he was one of them.

Japan’s southernmost prefecture was reduced to ruins. On top of that, large plots of land for farming and homes were seized by the U.S. military, which had become the occupying forces, to build bases there.

Okinawans were left with little means to make a living, although the island saw explosive growth in the local population after the war was over.

Facing the enormous challenge of securing a living in Okinawa, Kinjo’s parents migrated to Bolivia in 1954 on the first installment of an immigration program led by the U.S. authorities.

But Kinjo remained in Okinawa to attend junior high school. After graduation, she worked as a maid. But the low-paying job did not leave her with much, so she switched jobs to mow the grass on a U.S. military base near what is today's Naha Airport.

She married a man she became acquainted with through her job at the base. She and her husband followed her parents to Bolivia five years later.

Kinjo and her husband were assigned land in Bolivia by lottery. Theirs was in a jungle and the nearest city was about 100 kilometers away.

Still, she found they were “fortunate.” Their fields were fertile, bringing bumper crops. Some immigrants were not so fortunate, having to toil on poor soil in their plots.

But Kinjo and her husband came to realize that Bolivia was not the right place for them, considering the future of their children. Their two sons, who were born in Bolivia, became stateless as the couple could not register their births with the authorities.

The two daughters, who were born in Okinawa, were becoming school age. Kinjo wanted them to get a decent education.

“We should move to a city so that our children can get educated,” Kinjo recalled thinking.

In 1964, her family headed to Brazil by train and entered illegally with the money they made from the bountiful harvest at their farm back in Bolivia.

As soon as they reached Sao Paulo, Kinjo asked a fellow Okinawan running a travel agency to submit their sons’ birth certificates to local authorities on their behalf. Their sons were granted Brazilian citizenship.

And the family followed the procedures to live in Brazil as legal immigrants.

They had succeeded, but their life was still tough. The daughters attending elementary school helped their parents make ends meet, working even on Sundays.

Kinjo juggled sewing work as a part-time seamstress and selling flowers at an open-air market. Excessive use of a sewing machine to make money made her remaining fingers on the right hand bent.

Five decades have passed since Okinawa was returned to Japan in 1972. Kinjo still retains her Japanese citizenship, but questions of her identity remain.

“I see myself as an Okinawan,” she said. “But I do not know whether I am Japanese. I could not afford to think about it. I was so busy trying to survive.”