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| The weather station said it would rain all day long today. Early in the morning, the east sky was covered with light clouds but it had no rain. The clouds were cleared up as it was nearing the dawn. There might be a chance for taking one shot picture of Mt. Fuji with the night view of the Gotemba city because it had the strong winds last night. I abruptly drove up to the Otome mountain pass. |
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A big cloud shadowed the top of Mt. Fuji. But as it had already a sunshine, I could see the mountain clearly. The street lights in the Gotemba city could be seen with my eyes but they were too weak for camera. I was late at least five minutes. When I went there again before noon, the heavy clouds covered the mountain and Gotemba city completely and had pretty strong rains.
＊Mr. Hideo Kitagawa informed me that he could get from a public library a book titled as "Submarine I-58 came back," wrote by Tsurayuki Hashimoto, a commander of boat, who ordered Mr. Toshio Mizui, our classmate, to make the suicide attack against the enemy transports riding on a Kaiten, a human torpedo, on August 10, 1945, only five days before the end of war. When Mr. Kitagawa looked through a book, he found the commander of submarine I-24 was also Mr. Tsurayuki Hashimoto. He ordered Ensign Kazoo Sakamaki to make a special attack against USS warships anchored in the Pearl Harbor from off the Oafu island, Hawaii on December 7, 1940 riding on a mini submarine which had troubles on its gyro system.
It was a big surprise to me. I was mobilized to work at the Kure Naval Arsenal as an engineering cadet from the university student since February 1945. I was present a few times at the test firing of torpedo at the torpedo test site within the arsnel. Ths gyro system was the most important instruments of torpedoes. If its adjustment is not perfect, the torpedo not only cannot go straight but sometimes makes U-turn and comes back to the firing station. The controlling system of mini submarine boat was almost the same as that of torpedoes. Therefore to send a boat which had troubles on gyro system was a foolhardy decision made by the commander, I think. When I wrote an article for a magazine about Mr. Sakamaki's attack, I showed him my draft. He asked me to delete the part where I criticized the commander's action. But after my article was published, he told me it was quite a pleasure for him to have an article published for the first time which reported it was almost impossible to steer a boat which had troubles on its gyro systems. The commander of I-24 who ordered to launch the mini submarine boat was also the commander of I-58 who ordered Mr. Mizui to make a suicide attack riding on Kaiten, a human torpedo. I was really surprised.
