Showa, Men Had It Tough Too 79: Volunteering for the Army Youth Aviators (1)

This is the story of Tsugio (my father), who was born in a farming village in Kagoshima in the early Showa era and lived out his life there as a farmer until the age of 82.

In the latter half of the 1930s, Tsugio, the only son of a farming family, was attending a prefectural agricultural school that the locals called "Higher Agriculture and Forestry."Around 1943, as the effects of the war reached the lives of ordinary people,Tsugio would often watch theairplanes (military aircraft) flying overhead,,and began to consider the path of becoming an Army Youth Aviator..

So, in thethree sections agoandtwo sections ago, I provided an overview of the Army Youth Aviation School, which could be called the history of the youth aviators, but let's return to Tsugio's own story.

The path ahead involves volunteering, enlistment, and training after enlistment, but there is little I was able to hear directly from him while he was alive. Most of what I write here is the imagination of his daughter, Fumi (me). It is based on the social conditions of the time, my father's personality, and the characteristics of the region, assuming this is how it must have been.

Now, Tsugio thought that if he were to become a pilot, he would prefer the Army Youth Aviators over the Navy Preparatory Flight Training Program, but he struggled with who he should consult.

There are people in the extended family who became Navy personnel, but they are not close enough for me to consult casually, and in the first place, they rarely come home. To ask someone knowledgeable in the village, I would have to go through my father. I thought about talking to a cousin I get along with or someone of my own generation, but if I told anyone in the village or the region,
"Tsugio says he's going to be a soldier!"
(Tsugio says he's going to be a soldier!)
It is as clear as day that a rumor with added embellishments would spread in the blink of an eye. I absolutely wanted to avoid that. Because—.

He did not want it to reach the ears of his father, Kitaro.

Kitaro, born in 1880 as the fifth of six children, was a hard worker who, as I have mentioned many times, bought and expanded many houses and properties in his lifetime. Tsugio is his only son, born after a late marriage and a remarriage [354]. Everyone, including those around him, understood without saying a word how great the expectations for Tsugio were.

No, since he was born as the heir to a farming family, it was so natural that he should take over the family business as soon as possible, and it seems that no one, including the parties involved, felt any doubt about it.

Naturally, Kitaro thinks he does not want him to become a soldier. If a rumor were to start that he was "looking into becoming a soldier," it is obvious that Kitaro would stop every single one of his subsequent actions.

What is a way to research the "Youth Aviators" without the people in the village or region knowing—?

After much deliberation, Tsugio decided to ask his teacher at the agricultural school. It is not that there are no classmates from elementary school at the agricultural school, but he could just consult when they were not around. There is no opportunity for his parents or the people of the village to come to the school.
(Continued in "Volunteering for the Army Youth Aviators" ②.)

[354] Kitaro's own life is written about as "The Meiji Era Without Literacy: Kitaro."