ABSTRACT
Atoyama had only a modest chance of bringing a pregnancy to term while working in the mines. Many Japanese coal-mining women worked extra hours to sustain their families. At some mines, they left infants at the pit mouth in an unattended shelter. Continual daily separations from infant children could cause suffering for mining women. The recollections of retired female miners in Makkura begin with those of a woman who remembers being concerned primarily about the possibility of an accident preventing her from raising her children and how important loving contact with them was to her. For many coal-mining women, then, the frustrations and stresses of their work and daily lives were transmuted into animosity toward their husbands. Yet redirecting frustration was the very thing they accused their husbands of doing. Though the life was undoubtedly hard, many girls seem to have found mine work preferable to other occupations.
