S03, Miyu Kojima ‘18, Tomō Sugisaka, Family friend, 1926, Hiroshima
On November 15, 2016, I interviewed a family friend, Mr Tomō Sugisaka. He is about 90 years old.
Q: What were you doing during the Second World War?
A: One year before the end of the war, at around the beginning of October 1944, I joined the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in Etajima (Hiroshima), and until the end of the war, August 15, 1945, I studied there until the end of the war, on August 15, 1945.
However, on August 6, I remember that I was setting up a physics experiment at school, and the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Well, I didn’t know it was called an atomic bomb at the time. I just knew it as a “special bomb.” Just when I was about to start the experiment, I saw an absolutely blinding flash of light, and a few seconds later, a couple of glass windows and other objects shattered. We immediately rushed into a bomb shelter, but we were soon let out. As you may know, Etajima is only 15 kilometers from the center of Hiroshima, so when I got out, and looked in the general direction of the city, I saw a massive mushroom cloud, looming in the sky. After this, however, we still had classes until the 15th. There was an announcement on the 15th, where all of the students were crammed into the assembly hall, and someone took up the podium and spoke. I had difficulty hearing and only heard noise, but from the general atmosphere of the room, I deduced that we had lost the war. There was crying.
We were told to go back to our hometowns, but some cadets wanted to prolong the war. Some of wanted to make suicide bombs and attack the enemy in small submarines, and they encouraged others to take up arms. But many of us stayed calm, as we were ordered. Some of us, including me, were glad that we lost. That is all I remember thinking. I felt relieved. I had been prepared to die, but when I realized that I was going to come home alive, I was elated.
Now, I don’t remember exactly how I got home, but I remember standing in Hiroshima Station on August 21. I remember there was a roofless train meant to carry coal, and those who wanted to go to Tōkyō went on that. However, the thing I remember the most was the station. There were no walls or roofs but only the platform, because that was made out of concrete. The image of the destroyed city is burned in my mind to this day. Wherever I looked, all around me, was a burnt, brown field. Now that I think about it, some 100,000 people died on the day of the bombing, and there must have been at least a thousand people in the station, yet I saw not a single one. Everything had been cleaned up: the destroyed roof, the burnt bodies, everything was cleanly hidden.
I gave a press conference on this two years ago and talked about how I wondered what lives those who cleaned up those bodies led afterwards. How they felt, how they did it. Then, an architect came up to me and said that his father was hired to sort and clean up the corpses. I asked him, “can I talk to your father?” but he replied, “no, he died at the age of 72.” Then I felt relieved, realizing that this man had enjoyed the peaceful time after the war, and had died peacefully as well. Another person told me that his father, a Navy Air Corps pilot, had to walk all the way to Hiroshima because the train rails were warped, to do the same job.
These are my strongest memories of the time. Again, even now these images are burned in my memory. I remember hearing stories about other air corps members who dodged death because the train to Hiroshima was delayed before the bombing, but afterwards they were also ordered to collect bodies.
Q: What did you do during your time in the Naval Academy?
A: My father and brother both graduated from the Naval Academy, and my father did not participate in the war, but my brother was killed as a Zero fighter pilot. The academy taught us English, and before afternoon training, we had “normal school.” Everybody woke and slept at the same time, and we ate at the same time, and we were together constantly, 24 hours a day. I remember, on the first day of school, when we went to Etajima for the first time, we were in normal civilian clothing. We had a series of tests, physical and academic. If we passed, we received tailored uniforms to attend the admission ceremony, and we had to send back everything we had brought. The one thing I was allowed to keep was a Japanese-English dictionary.
Speaking of which, Inoue Shigeyoshi, one of the past head principals, said that English was a necessary language to acquire, so learning it in the Naval Academy was a must. However, other Imperial military schools, such as the Army, saw it as a hostile language, and did not teach it. I still have the English dictionary they gave us. It wasn’t Japanese-to-English or vice-versa, it was English-to-English. I liked to think that Inoue Shigeyoshi was very forward-thinking, and of course, he opposed the war. He realized that Japan would not win this war. He wanted to counteract the influx of students who would be less educated because they were going to be pulled out of school to factories to work. He wanted to make sure students would be able to study without the fear of having nothing to eat every morning.
In my father’s time, the Naval Academy had about 100 students; for my brother, 600 students; and for me, around the 75th and 76th graduating classes, there were around 3,000 students in total. The influx was pushed by Inoue, because of the start of the war. Inoue also pushed for a Naval Engineering school, where students would study engines and later operate the engines in ships during the war. This school was finally established before the 75th class graduated. Even now, when asked what these students did during the war, they would, with pride, say that they went to the engineering school.
Q: What is the most vivid memory of your time in the Naval Academy?
A: Ever since my brother and I were children, our father prepared us to enter the academy, so I didn’t see anything that really surprised me. I remember the surprise that many of the other students experienced, but I was used to it. I excelled in my classes, unlike many of the others who were constantly fighting fatigue. Many tried to sleep during their free time, but if they were caught, they were punished.
So, the most vivid memory I have is being engaged in studies, and my lack of interest in the war. I didn’t know what was happening on the war front, and I didn’t care. By the time I was admitted into the school, Japan had already lost the Battle of Midway, and Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku had been killed. None of these things ever crossed my mind. I only thought of the Academy as somewhere to study.
Q: What did your father do during the wartime period?
A: My father graduated from the Academy right when the Russo-Japanese War ended, and he was on the reserve duty list for a while, but eventually he retired, right after the war began. [According to the Japanese Wikipedia page, he retired in August of 1942]. He was a rare example of a naval officer who never had any experience of war in this time period. He was, however, often on various ships, the last of which was the battleship Nagato, where he was the captain. He had also been captain of the Kuma and the Fusō, and the commander of a unit in Shanghai. When I was in elementary school, my father invited me to come and see the Nagato, and I remember eating lunch in the officer’s cafeteria. I was about five or six years old, and I remember a midshipman serving me. There was then a brief break, where he showed us his photographs. For him, when the Japanese lost, his life must have changed. The only life he knew was of the Navy.
For me, when the war ended and I went to a normal high school, there was an air of discrimination called “zol-ten,” meaning “the soldier [zolder in German] has changed schools.” That’s how I remember it, but when I talked to my fellow graduates, they claim to have never heard or said this.
Q: What did your brother do during the war?
A: My brother was an instructor for Zero-sen fighter pilots, and he was later drafted into the actual fighting force, in Kagoshima, and was shot down by a Grumman [a fighter plane designed by the Grumman Corporation]. When he was killed, my parents were never informed about how he had died. They sent me a letter saying that the barracks had burned down and my brother was dead. All we got was a wooden box, wrapped in cloth, with a single, white piece of paper inside. I think that my parents were notified by mail. However, only after the war and the forensic investigations that took place, I learned that he went down fighting in a plane.
Q: How did you feel when he died? Did it affect your studies?
A: I didn’t feel anything at the time. Of course I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t sad. Part of me expected and prepared for this outcome, and I felt nothing. I remember the times that we had played together and the fun we had, but I also remember that, when I was told he had been killed, I didn’t feel any emotion. I even felt that I knew the same would happen to me, and I think I accepted it, in a way. After I joined the Academy, I never had a social visit with him. Before I joined, I remember my brother visiting during the winter break, and I saw him at my middle school, in a beautiful military uniform, with two sakura-shaped medals, signifying that he was at the top of his class, or at least within the top five. It is said that many joined the Academy once they were inspired by these decorations. In a way, it was one way to recruit people. For the soldiers, it must have felt good, having everyone looking up to you, and turning their heads.
Q: What did you do after the war?
A: After the war, those who had graduated from the Academy were given an opportunity to continue their education at the university level. However, General MacArthur had ordered universities to admit no more than ten percent of former military-related personnel. I remember that I applied for a top high school (the First Higher School, nicknamed Ichikō) instead of university, and there was only an interview for entrance. A row of professors from various fields asked me many questions, and I answered them all perfectly, so I thought that I would get in easily. Now that I think about it, the fact that my father, my brother, and I all had military roots, so I was, in a sense, the least likely student to be accepted at a top Japanese high school. [Many top Japanese schools had opposed the war.] So I went to a less renowned high school, and then moved on to a university.
I remember having a ton of fun during this time, even with the “zol-ten” attitude. The Academy had allowed me to learn a lot, but they never taught philosophy, and that became my favorite subject. I studied philosophy with vigour, and in this way, I blended into the crowd. I remember studying figures such as Kurata Hyakuzō, and I read many books.
I remember almost failing the exam to join a new class, because I was so engrossed in the new social opportunities that came with my school life. Everyone wanted to take that exam after one gap year of doing nothing anyway, and that’s what they did. Unfortunately for them, I was the only one that passed, and because I felt it was pointless to waste such an opportunity, I entered the new class. When I moved onto university, I joined the architecture class, not because I was interested, but because I felt it was a class I could mess around in. [His work includes country club resort buildings.]
Q: Is there anything you would like to say about Japan or about the war?
A: If someone killed someone else right now, it would be considered a crime. But during war, the more you killed, the more medals you got. I often wonder how we can make such a distinction, and how humans can change so rapidly. I don’t want to become such a person, and I think problems should be talked over, not fought over. When I was in Etajima, air raids took place, and bombs were dropped on the nearby areas. In a few minutes, the fighting would be over. When I left the bunker, I saw injured men being carried over to the hospital, and I would wonder how fast all of this happened, and how fast all of it ended.
After this conversation, we talked more about his architectural designs, and about more recent developments. Sugisaka Tomō has given permission to allow a permanent record to be kept of this interview.