Main Body
Epilogue: The Day of Defeat: For Japan and for Tokyo Imperial University
In this epilogue the author describes the experiences in August 1945 of Tōdai students and professors. He reports the threat that the American Occupation of Japan might requisition the campus for its headquarters, a threat Tōdai parried adroitly. Ōuchi and Arisawa, two former members of the Faculty of Economics, had fascinating experiences, Ōuchi in the Bank of Japan in August and Arisawa in the immediate postwar years of economic recovery. The author concludes with further thoughts on the “double weave” of history and a pessimistic view of Japan’s leadership in 1945 and sixty years later.
The Emperor’s Broadcast, Heard in Yasuda Auditorium
In Chapter 14 I mentioned Tōdai on August 15. On August 15 the professors and students still at Tōdai gathered in Yasuda Auditorium and listened together to the emperor’s broadcast. I quoted from the memoirs of Ishizaka Kimishige, formerly professor at Johns Hopkins University. As I copied down those words, history suddenly felt real. Some of those who witnessed that historic scene are still alive and speak to us of history in the first person, and when they do so, history changes. Ishizaka surely wasn’t the only person there who is still alive today. Thinking it’d be fascinating to find others and hear their stories, I began to gather data.
Yet most of the students who were in Yasuda Auditorium that day have died, and even if still alive, they are already in their 80s; so there are issues of health and of memory, and gathering the data isn’t easy. As I proceeded to check the graduation lists of the various faculties, I learned that a good many were still alive, but not many of those had actually been at Yasuda Auditorium that day. To begin with, liberal arts students—mobilized into the services or into labor battalions—weren’t on campus. As for the students of the science faculties, some had left the city from the start, such as virtually all the students of Engineering II (they were in Chiba). In some cases a faculty’s students had been evacuated out of Tokyo. For example, mathematics students had been evacuated to various spots in Nagano Prefecture and at the request of the military were calculating bullet trajectories and the like. Even the faculties still on the main campus had seen labor mobilization take most of their students, so many who technically were still on the school’s rolls weren’t on campus on that day at that hour.
Experimenting on Medical Students
First, let’s single out people who indeed did listen to the emperor’s broadcast that day in Yasuda Auditorium. As we know from the fact that Ishizaka was there, quite a few students of the Faculty of Medicine were present. For example, there’s Hosoya Kensei (1949 graduate, Tōdai professor emeritus). Hosoya explains why many medical students were present:
We had matriculated into the Faculty of Medicine in 1945—about 160 of us. The largest war-year class. Ishizaka wa