My Life: Interview with Sunao Tsuboi, Chairperson of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, Part 9
Jan. 30, 2013
Marriage
by Sakiko Masuda, Staff Writer
Faced with opposition to their marriage, couple takes sleeping pills
While working as a teacher at Ondo Junior High School in his hometown of Ondo (now part of Kure), Mr. Tsuboi was taken ill with anemia and hospitalized. He was discharged about six months later.
I was leaning against the wall of the second-floor teachers’ room one day gazing at the setting sun when a student from another school called to me. It was Suzuko, who later became my wife. Seven years younger than I, she was small and very lovely. At first we got together with several other people, but a few years later just the two of us began meeting. But the good times didn’t last long. Suzuko was warned by her family that atomic bomb survivors wouldn’t live long.
In the face of the opposition to their marriage, the couple took sleeping pills on a hill overlooking Ondo Seto (now part of Kure) in hopes of being united in the next life.
After a while, for some reason or other I came to. I was about to take more pills when Suzuko came around also. After that the two of us wept. It seemed like it was all over for us. We couldn’t be together in this world or the next. But then her father, the one who had opposed our marriage most strongly, was killed in an accident. Eventually her family heard that I was regarded as a good, devoted teacher. They decided that although A-bomb survivors may not live long, I was alive, and they dropped their opposition.
We got married in 1957 and had three children. But my wife died of a stroke in 1992. She was 59.
In 1955 Kiyomi Hotta, a playwright from Mr. Tsuboi’s hometown of Ondo, published “Shima” (The Island”), a drama based on the atomic bombing. It is the story of a young victim of the A-bombing who resolves to live while faced with death. There is a scene in which the young man, who is in love with one of his students, struggles over whether or not to marry because he is an A-bomb survivor.
It’s a fictional account, but the main character, Manabu Kurihara, and the student, were based on me and my wife. Mr. Hotta said he wanted to hear about my atomic bombing experiences. We spent three or four hours under the kotatsu foot-warming table talking and eating tangerines. Mr. Hotta’s younger brother was a teacher at the same school where I worked. I didn’t realize my story would be dramatized, so I opened up to Mr. Hotta and my story was turned into that wonderful play.
At the end of the play, Manabu vows to live. That determination not to die – that’s just how I felt then. I spoke to the audience after a performance in Kobe. “Manabu is here today. What happened to the couple after that? I’ll leave that to your imaginations,” I said.
(Originally published on January 26, 2013)
by Sakiko Masuda, Staff Writer
Faced with opposition to their marriage, couple takes sleeping pills
While working as a teacher at Ondo Junior High School in his hometown of Ondo (now part of Kure), Mr. Tsuboi was taken ill with anemia and hospitalized. He was discharged about six months later.
I was leaning against the wall of the second-floor teachers’ room one day gazing at the setting sun when a student from another school called to me. It was Suzuko, who later became my wife. Seven years younger than I, she was small and very lovely. At first we got together with several other people, but a few years later just the two of us began meeting. But the good times didn’t last long. Suzuko was warned by her family that atomic bomb survivors wouldn’t live long.
In the face of the opposition to their marriage, the couple took sleeping pills on a hill overlooking Ondo Seto (now part of Kure) in hopes of being united in the next life.
After a while, for some reason or other I came to. I was about to take more pills when Suzuko came around also. After that the two of us wept. It seemed like it was all over for us. We couldn’t be together in this world or the next. But then her father, the one who had opposed our marriage most strongly, was killed in an accident. Eventually her family heard that I was regarded as a good, devoted teacher. They decided that although A-bomb survivors may not live long, I was alive, and they dropped their opposition.
We got married in 1957 and had three children. But my wife died of a stroke in 1992. She was 59.
In 1955 Kiyomi Hotta, a playwright from Mr. Tsuboi’s hometown of Ondo, published “Shima” (The Island”), a drama based on the atomic bombing. It is the story of a young victim of the A-bombing who resolves to live while faced with death. There is a scene in which the young man, who is in love with one of his students, struggles over whether or not to marry because he is an A-bomb survivor.
It’s a fictional account, but the main character, Manabu Kurihara, and the student, were based on me and my wife. Mr. Hotta said he wanted to hear about my atomic bombing experiences. We spent three or four hours under the kotatsu foot-warming table talking and eating tangerines. Mr. Hotta’s younger brother was a teacher at the same school where I worked. I didn’t realize my story would be dramatized, so I opened up to Mr. Hotta and my story was turned into that wonderful play.
At the end of the play, Manabu vows to live. That determination not to die – that’s just how I felt then. I spoke to the audience after a performance in Kobe. “Manabu is here today. What happened to the couple after that? I’ll leave that to your imaginations,” I said.
(Originally published on January 26, 2013)
