J06, Ichitarō Ōmura ‘01, Mr Inoue, Grandfather, 1928, Kyōto, Hiroshima
I interviewed Mr Inoue, who is my maternal grandfather, to learn about World War II. I heard that he was in the Naval Academy, but I didn’t hear exactly what he was doing or why he joined the Naval Academy. I rang him on Saturday evening, November 13, to hear about these and other experiences he had during the war.
When World War II began, he was only thirteen years old, so he was still in middle school in Kyōto. He studied a lot harder than the other boys, because he was short. He was only about 150 centimeters at that time, and boys had to be over 160 centimeters to join the Naval Academy. Nobody wanted to join the Army, because everyone said that the Army training was a lot harder than the Navy, and Army soldiers sometimes could not eat for a day or two. So, for the first three years of the war, he spent every single minute studying to join the Naval Academy. He said that he didn’t stop studying until the sky got dark and he couldn’t see the book any more.
When he finally graduated from middle school in 1944 (Shōwa 19), he took the test to join the Naval Academy. He was already below average at most of the skills tests because he wasn’t good at sports, so the only way he could get in was getting an extremely high score on the paper test. He got the top score and joined the Academy. He was so proud of the score that he got that even now he tells this story to everyone who visits him, Mrs. Inoue said.
After he joined the Academy, he thought how hard it would have been if he had been in the Army, because the Navy training was much harder than he thought. He had to jump off the ship everyday, and the other training mostly took place in the water, which wasn’t helpful for him, because he couldn’t swim. When any cadet made a mistake, they all had to line up on the wall, and the officer hit them. Mr Inoue was counting up to ninety-eight times that he got hit, but then he lost count. The worst student got hit more than five hundred times, he remembers. He said his most exciting time was meals.
The Navy’s meals were pretty good, compared to the Army. They had rice every day, and they had meat, fish, and everything. Sometimes they had wagashi (Japanese sweets) for dessert. After the Navy command realized that Japan was going to lose the war, they made the students learn English, and they started having ice cream for dessert. So now, Mr. Inoue can understand English very well. He said that he had a great experience in the Naval Academy, and he is very happy that he is alive now, because he was going to be assigned as a Kamikaze pilot, within two or three days before the war ended.
After the war, he went to Kyōto University, and then he worked for Mitsubishi Rayon, where he designed a great invention, a cleaning water machine. He says all his inventions are based on the phrase that he learned during his war experience, which was “Never be afraid to make mistakes.”