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MN: When did the government start pulling students out of the classroom to help in the factories?

JD: Okay. Yeah, that came, announcement came to us in December 1944, and I was about end of the first semester in junior high school at that time. As I mentioned, I was one year behind from regular school, so most of my students, classmates were thirteen, I was going to be fourteen at the time. So when the announcement came I was attending a municipal technical school, which is like engineering school, in city called Kure, which was a good hour and a half train distance from where I lived in the country, and when I heard the announcement I said I'm gonna change my school, transfer myself to Hiroshima to be closer. And as I mentioned, the reason I went to Kure is because my uncle taught English there and I wanted to be by him, so there was advantage there to go into that school. So then I transferred when I learned about they're gonna be conscripted to work for the war effort, and transferred to Hiroshima municipal technical school, sort of same, same category, but in the different city, and it'd be closer to home. It'll be only about half an hour on train ride for me to get to that school, so that's why I made the transition.

And so from January in 1945 I was assigned to work at the Kure, I mean Toyo koujo, Toyo factory located city of Mukainada, which is a station before Hiroshima, so it'd be, from where I lived it'd be the third station to Mukainada, for Hiroshima it'd be one station to the north. So that's where I was assigned to work, and being a technical school student, I was assigned to work one of the lathes, that was the machinery that spins and I could do carving on the, on the machinery, on a steel bar, and I'll make a round steel bar and check it with micrometer. And the reason we were assigned there to work on this particular machine is that we used to get machinery from Germany, Japan being allies, and Germany was very much advanced in machinery, so this particular factory had machinery from Germany that would make rifles, and when Germany surrendered in April 1945 we couldn't get any parts for it, so they knew that this is gonna be happening, so from January of '45 they knew that Germany had problem sending parts, so we started to make our own parts to supplant this rifle making equipment, so I was assigned to this particular machine because of that. And to work on the machinery I had to be very critical 'cause we, one in one hundred it'd come out perfect. It was that critical that it could work, so you worked under the lamp, machinery, on a stand, and you'd carve this rod as it'd spin and you'd carve it off and check it with micrometer to come out just the precise size, and that was my assignment. So I worked from eight o'clock in the morning to five in the afternoon. We had a lunch break at noon, and I took a seven-thirty train to get to Mukainada station and then walk a, maybe about a, maybe a mile or so to get to my particular station. It was a giant factory there. They made airplane parts and rifles at this factory. There were lots of girls, too, about my age worked at this factory, and the girl students were assigned to distributing oils, the various oils required in the industry like this and different grades, and also some of the girls were assigned to test a completed rifle. They'd put it on a stand and clamp it and then aim it to a certain point and make sure the bore, rifle bullet will fly correctly and make adjustment to it, and that was their assignment. And the firing range was underground, so we couldn't hear their, the sound, but... various students were assigned to various parts of the factory.

MN: So it sounds like you weren't getting an education. You were basically workers.

JD: No. We, they were completely out of, out of classroom, but we were still student status, so we had to take roll call every morning when we went to the, our factory, so we assembled in the courtyard as we do at school and our name would be called out, and students would come from various parts of Hiroshima area, outside, south, north, east, west, and assemble at the factory.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.