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My Life: Interview with Sunao Tsuboi, Chairperson of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, Part 3

Hiroshima Technical Institute

by Sakiko Masuda, Staff Writer

Boarding in the city and studying mechanical engineering

In 1943 Mr. Tsuboi enrolled in the mechanics course at the Hiroshima Technical Institute (now the Faculty of Engineering at Hiroshima University), which was located in Senda-machi (now part of the city’s Naka Ward). He left his home in Ondo-cho (now part of Kure) and commuted to the school from lodgings in Showa-machi (now part of Naka Ward).

I enrolled in the Hiroshima Technical Institute because I wanted to learn technology so I could serve my country. I wanted to make good planes and get the enemy. While I was a student all I thought about was winning the war. Of course, I learned physics and industrial mathematics, but at the direction of my teachers I also helped design engines for military aircraft and do technical drawings for them.

I played sports to get in shape for the war too. Everything I did was for the war. I think it was a club activity, but I made some practice flights in a glider near the school. I was also sent to work at a steel mill in Fukuyama and at a hydroelectric plant in Kake (now part of the town of Akiota).

In November 1944 Mr. Tsuboi was drafted and underwent a physical examination. Because he was underweight, he was passed at the second highest level.

The examiner said I had passed and read out my level and asked me to repeat it. When I did my voice was quavering with chagrin. The war was going badly for Japan, and I had hoped perhaps I could pass at the highest level. I was terribly disappointed.

Every time other students went to the front I felt frustrated. Thinking about it now, people might wonder why I was in such a hurry to die, but I believed I could serve my country by joining the military.

A classmate from Kure First Middle School (now Kure Mitsuta High School) was being sent to the front, and Mr. Tsuboi hurried to see him off.

A friend who was going to college in Tokyo came back to Hiroshima to go off to war. I went to Hiroshima Station to see him off. When we were in junior high school we had promised each other that whichever of us survived would gather the other’s ashes.

My friend was surrounded by a lot of people. Our gazes met, and there was silence for a moment. Then he handed me a Rising Sun flag on which people had written messages to him. I took out a razor I’d brought with me and cut the little finger on my right hand with it. Then I wrote “Good fortune in battle” in blood on the flag. My friend was gazing at me steadily. I said to him, “I’ll be going soon too.” But the A-bombing occurred before I could go off to war.

(Originally published on January 18, 2013)

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