<Begin Segment 16>

MN: Now, you were still in the army. How long were you in the army?

FH: 'Til November the 30th of that year. Because somebody had to do with the people, for the repatriation, and the soldiers coming back from all kinds of battlefront. And so I was retained to do those kind of work. 'Til November the 30th, yes.

MN: And at the same time, you were studying to go to the National Higher School.

FH: Uh-huh.

MN: Can you tell us what that National Higher School is?

FH: Well, it is a sort of elite school, because the capacity of the nationwide National Higher Schools were equal to the imperial universities. There were seven imperial universities, Tokyo, Kyoto and Tohoku in Sendai, and Kyushu, and also Hokkaido and Osaka and Nagoya. But the capacity was equal. So that if one enters this National Higher School, then it was almost guaranteed that if one does not select between the location and the field of study, he can enter the imperial university. And so the entrance exam was very, very competitive. You had to work very hard to enter that school.

MN: You know, I'm really amazed, though. Here, there's a war going on, and you're thinking about continuing your education. How were you able to find time and the energy to study and think about the future?

FH: Well, ever since I graduated from the middle school, that was my goal, to go into the higher education. But I took about six, seven exams and failed in all of them. And they say that there's no use taking these guys because of the age, I was one year older, going to be conscripted and drafted into the army. And so you go to this school and then drafted into the army, there was no use. I don't know whether that was the reason, or my grade was not good enough, but I failed in all of them. And so after... but I still had this idea of going to this school all through my life, even in the military. I had no books, I had nothing to study, but I always had that in mind. And so when I was released at November the 11th, November the 30th, I said, "This is my goal. I'm going to pursue that." And I think everything worked real well for me because we almost did not miss the class. Very occasionally, very seldom we moved the class, doing the work for the military factories and so forth. But the next year and next year, two years later, they were almost, went to the production field instead of going to school. Like my wife, too, she's about five years younger than I am, but from day to evening, working in the factory and so forth. Matter of fact, my wife is one of the Hiroshima A-bomb survivor, but she was working into the factory when the A-bomb was dropped. Well, this is sidetracking. But anyway, that was kind of the situation. So when I took the exam, even if we skipped classes now and then, but it's very seldom. The other guys, especially about two years behind us, they hardly went to school at all. And so, you know, we were very much... you know, was very grateful that I went to the whole education system. And so I passed the exam and I became a student of the sixth National Higher School, yes.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.