Mr. Chin Suping (87 years old) At the time of exposure to the radiation, he was 18 years old. Mr. Chin, who comes from Taiwan, went to Japan to be a soldier and was being trained at Etajima-mura as a member of a Special Attack Unit.(suicide units) He went to Hiroshima as part of a rescue operation and was exposed to radiation after the atomic bomb explosion. He fought fires all night long but it was beyond help. From the next day, he undertook the disposal of dead bodies. He gathered many dead bodies of female students and cremated them without being able to identify the corpses. He tells that he will never take up arms and would like to create a world in which people can live peacefully.

【Volunteered to be soldier and going to Japan.】
I am from Ershui, Changhua Prefecture (Jpn., Nisui, Shoka-ken) in central Taiwan. My family was engaged in farming. I am the third eldest child and the second son. In the past, schools were called Public School (Ko-gakko) not Elementary Schools (Sho-gakko). Schools where Japanese children studied were Elementary Schools and ones where Taiwanese children studied were Public Schools. They were different. If your parents were influential, like doctors and so on, you could enter Elementary Schools like Japanese children. Ordinary people like me went to Public Schools and when we entered Junior High School, we studied with Japanese students. Taiwan was a colony of Japan at that time and there were of course discriminatory treatments. Japanese children had superiority feelings and students from Public School and Elementary Schools fought each other because the schools were next to each other. If you entered Junior High Schools, you studied with Japanese. You needed to take an exam to enter the schools, but Taiwanese could not easily enter. Even if you took an exam and the results were the same as a Japanese, you still would not pass. There was discrimination as such. I think it was Showa 19, 1944, year before the surrender of Japan. Soldiers on Saipan island died in mass suicide attacks and the island was occupied by America. It was just before MacArthur and the American army landed on Leyte island in the Philippines. Some people were deceived by the Imperial Headquarters which said Japan was still alright but we thought we were powerless against the United States. But the education in the past was uniform and we were educated to devote ourselves to the Emperor and to work for the country.

We could not judge things objectively, and I was told by my school teacher, "Go" and I could not (say no). . . .I was told by the teacher "Take an exam" and I volunteered to go in the army. My brother was also in the Navy and I enlisted in the Army without saying anything to my mother. I told a lie to my mother that I was going over to Japan for study. There was an air raid just on the day when I left for Japan and we could not do anything, so only my relatives barely were able to accompany me to the nearest station. Then we gathered at an assigned meeting spot in Taipei. We gathered on 4 January in Taipei and had physical examinations and then left for Japan with about 200 people. They were going to enter military related schools or become military cadets. Li Teng-hui, who would later become President of Taiwan, happened to be also on board. We did not head for Okinawa but to the west and went north along the coast of the Chinese mainland to Qingdao. We then went to Korea and along the west coast to Pusan, and Moji, Ujina, taking 28 days to get to Japan.

【As a member of a suicide unit.】
We left Ujina and gathered at Shodo-shima in Kagawa Prefecture. There was a unit named Wakashio-butai (Young Tide Unit). We were all 17 or 18 years old, above third grade of junior high school. We took an aptitude test and were assigned to correspondence or artillery units. The rest of the people including me became members of a suicide unit. We received basic training for that until June. On the evening when the basic training ended, we were on our beds and told to write the number 1 if we wanted to enter the suicide unit, number 3 if we did not want to. I wrote 3 because I did not want to enter the unit. But we were all inevitably assigned to the suicide unit. To allow us to select was just a sham. It seemed that they were going to train all of us as members of the suicide unit. We then went to Ujina in Hiroshima. The Ship Training Division was there and we were assigned to the 10th Training Corps of the Ship Training Division. The people in the 10th Training Corps of the Ship Training Division were all members of the suicide unit. We operated small boats in the suicide unit. The boats were called Marure. They were shuttle boats. To disguise their purpose, The letter “Re”was written inside a circle (maru). Therefore, Marure appeared to be shuttle craft. We called the boats Marure but they were actually suicide attack boats. One aircraft carrier was moored at Etajima. We trained night and day aiming at the ship. When we came close to the ship, we dropped a depth charge bomb. Then we were told to run away for our lives. The boats was 5 or 6 meters long and about 1.8 meters wide, carrying a 250 kg depth charge bomb on the back of the cockpit. Most of the boats were hit before approaching enemy ships, we mobilized with about 100 boats at one time as a strategy, one person carrying a 250 kg explosive. One unit had nine boats and the nine people acted together as one military unit. Just one person was not enough and all attacked together. Even if A was hit, B succeeded, that was our plan. Aiming at the place under the smokestack of enemy ships, we went for the side of the ships from about a 30-degree angle, and ran away at a 30-degree angle again, after dropping a depth charge bomb. Suicide units were secret. The enemy also thought suicide units were only airplanes. So we obtained excellent results in the Philippines and Okinawa. They were not in newspapers and such but we comrades knew them. The food was good because we were in a suicide unit. The people in our unit lived on an island and we often ate fish. And the salary was also good, which was different from ordinary units because we were soldiers in a suicide unit.

【On the 6th of August.】
It was fine weather on the 6th of August. It was about 8 o'clock when we finished our meal as usual. It was just before we started the next training. It was just in a rest period and we were washing our dishes. I saw it, called a Pika (bright flash). Something flashed suddenly like cameras in the past which used magnesium bulbs when they took pictures. Then we heard a boom. The light came first before the sound. Our barracks was a warehouse and the ceiling was high. A spider’s nest fell from there; that was the only damage. There was no damage to humans. The army units stationed in Hiroshima city were all destroyed and only we in the suicide units remained intact. We got ready and went to Hiroshima city because we were the only unit working as an organization. We ate lunch and left Etajima-island at 12 o'clock. When we saw Hiroshima from Kirikushi, we found that it was burning with smoke rising all around. When we got Ujina, we found that Ninoshima became a holding facility in which wounded persons were treated. Seriously injured people and ones who had collapsed and could not move were neglected. Treatment was only for the people who could move. Injured soldiers came but there was no medicine for treatment. When we got there, four hours had passed and many injured people gathered at Ujina. It was a hell on earth, beyond description. I remember the scene from Ujina to Miyuki Bridge. I crossed Miyuki Bridge and proceeded jumping over high-voltage lines and debris and gathered at an open space at the Hiroshima Bus and Railway Service Company. We were told to extinguish fires first but there was no tools for that so we hit fires with embers we picked up from the roadside. If we hit fires and they went out, we hit the next fire but the previous place began to burn again. We threw water on places which burned furiously. We had no buckets so we just used our hands. There was nothing more we could do. We did fire fighting all night long in the evening of the 6th of August. There was nothing more to burn by the next morning. Wooden buildings were all burnt down and the only remaining things were structures of concrete with reinforced steel. Windowpanes melted and became like candy.

【Disposal of dead bodies.】
On August 7th, we cleared away only things which were visible on the ground such as the dead bodies of animals, horses, and humans. A unit carried and put away many dead bodies of female students which had fallen on the ground of a school and cremated the remains. We burnt them without the inspection of any government authorities. We dug trenches two meters wide, ten meters long, and one meter deep, and put dozens of men and women and embers into the trenches and burnt them. We said we burnt some dozens of people in these trenches. We treated dead bodies roughly and I feel awful for the dead persons. There were bad smells there; we had no gas masks and protective clothing. We wore only army clothing for summer. We covered only our noses and mouths with towels which concealed the smell a little. We did all this work by hand because there was no tools and heavy machines, we neglected dead bodies which were under fallen walls. We dealt with only visible things. They were all burned black without clothing like roasted Peking ducks. Only belts remained on the bodies. Female students in the past wore baggy work pants gathered at the ankles instead of trousers. Parents who knew their daughters had been working there came to find them from the outskirts of Hiroshima. I saw a person who embraced a dead body and cried, judging from the pattern of the pants which was half burned. The person said "This is my daughter." I saw the scene and thought we should not go to war in which the weak become victims. But I could not do anything about it. As ordered, I continued to dispose of dead bodies for a week. We went back to the unit in Etajima-island on about 13th August.

【The end of the war and back to Taiwan.】
It was fine weather on the 15th of August. We gathered in the courtyard of our unit, and then we were told to listen to an important radio announcement which would be made. I could not catch what was said but I just understood we lost the war. I thought we would be pushed around as captives as was rumored but, on the contrary, we were not treated like that. We did not need to mobilize as a suicide unit and I had a sense of relief, thinking we were saved. And I thought I would go back to Taiwan soon. I left the Army on the 15th but had no place to go because I had no relatives there. Then I was employed by a rich farmer in Hiroshima because they suffered from a lack of hands. They had pigs there. I was given food for taking care of the pigs and working in fields. But I thought I could not go back to Taiwan forever if I worked like that and I went to my platoon leader who lived in Hita in Kyushu. Because he once said when we parted, "Come to my home if you are in trouble.” But I thought I could not disturb him. Me being a man who had a big appetite coming at that time when there was not enough food so I went to Sasebo in Kyushu. There was a facility named the Repatriates Relief Bureau there in which they let the people from Manchuria, Korea, and Taiwan live and return to their countries. I lived there waiting for a ship. And I came back to Taiwan in May of Showa 21, 1946.

【To begin to talk about his experience of exposure to the radiation.】
I had kept a diary but I threw all my belongings and pictures away before I returned to Taiwan. Because I had been a soldier of the Japanese Imperial Army I was considered to be a man who supported an enemy country. Once I came back, I never told of my past. I told nothing even to my wife. She would not be my wife if I said "I was a victim of an atomic bomb." In fear them inheriting radiation sickness I did not tell them anything. There was a tsunami or big tidal wave in Japan and a nuclear power station exploded in Fukushima and many people provided assistance in public. I appeared in a newspaper article because I knew the dangers of nuclear power stations. A group of people who were exposed to radiation was made and I talked when a newspaper reporter came. This was the first time I had said anything in public. I began to talk about my experience of exposure to radiation since there was the tsunami in Tohoku, Japan. I said that we should never abandon hope. I talked about how Japan had been destroyed completely in Showa 20, 1945 but now it had recovered. You do not need to worry because Japan would get back on its feet again. I have talked about atomic bombs, my past, and what I did in Hiroshima. I made these things public for the first time.

【My desire for peace.】
I think we should never go to war. We should have some weapons for defense but had better not have nuclear weapons. I think people who experienced war like us have to tell the suffering of war to young people as much as we can, and deliver the message to our descendants. I was an atheist and did not believe in God. But I, who was destined to die as a soldier of a suicide unit, have survived and have not had any (radiation) after effects. I came to think that I had God's special blessing then I came to believe in Christianity. We should throw away all these weapons and I would like to create the world where human beings on this earth can live peacefully without war. I talk like I know something but I have seen war and this is what I think.

Translation: Seminar Class in Kyoto Junior College of Foreign Languages in 2017
Supervisors: SHONAKA Takayuki and Paul D. Scott
Translation Coodinator: NET-GTAS (Network of Translators for the Globalization of the Testimonies of Atomic Bomb Survivors)