The test was very difficult. This is the test to become a pilot, geared as it was for university graduates. But I was somehow able to pass, I was only 19, the youngest one in my company, the training was very strict. They didn't give us any leeway at all, the slightest mistake, and we were out. They were not worried about the human life involved, but they wanted to protect the airplanes. So to get this license, you had to be extremely careful. We had to line up in front of the military officers responsible for our training. And I was asked what is your weak point? I answered that I was prone to act on my own authority to decide on my own to do something and to do it. That's not a shortcoming. I was told, when the control stick is in your hand, any number of things can happen. And you will have to be able to decide and react immediately. You won't have any time to consult anyone else. You must act on your own authority. So it's a strength, they said. Then they asked me what my strength was acting with resolve. I said, when I commit to doing something, I don't back down and get discouraged midway. I definitely carried through with my goal. But now I see that there wasn't much of a strength, because not knowing what's right, you can carry through with the wrong aim. I see now that not wanting to listen to good advice, if there is any available is ridiculous. Having the right goal is so important. Having the right goal. And if one looks deeply then becoming a kamikaze pilots not the goal of destruction of many lives was not an appropriate one. We all wrote our last war words, which were carefully folded, wrapped and carried by the commander of our battalion. I wrote that I was ready to die for my country at any time, that even knowing I might die in training, I felt no remorse. We trained hard finishing in just one year, of course, that it should have taken much longer. We were up against a large, strong country with powerful weaponry. Our hastily and poorly built planes were no match and combat for their fine ones. So battalion was moved to Manchuria where the pilots would wait for their orders to fly from there. One by one, the pilots would bought airplanes loaded with explosives take off and aim for large ships. If just one would hit right, a large aircraft carrier with 100 or so planes could be sunk in one blow. They were the that was what we were studying to do. It was only five days after my graduation, August the fifth 15th 1945 that I was supposed to take my final flight. The other pilots went before me giving their lives. And I waited my turn. Since I was the youngest. Our commander was keeping the last in line. I had my ritual sack a cup. Just then, just when I was on the verge of setting off. We heard the Emperor on the radio announcing the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of the war. I couldn't believe my ears. I was devastated because I was not able to do anything to protect my country. Later, we learned that we had been deceived by our leaders and that it was Japan who was the aggressor. I was shocked. All my comrades had given their lives. And here I was still alive but to what purpose? nothing made sense to me. It was then that I tasted the bitter pain of living. I suffered the anguish of Being alive when so many were dead. Not only not only was his real reason for being at that point taken away and that he wasn't going to fulfill His mission, but he was suffering also from what might be described as kind of survivor guilt. Japan surrendered on August 15. If the war had ended, even one day later, I would have flown my final flight. And I wouldn't have been able to meet the teachings of the Buddha Dharma in this lifetime. So, again, like with his mother, this this sharp sense of what am I here for? Why have I been spared? He continues, I was in the 24th component company, which is the number of Jesus on the body sat for must have followed me right into the Army because I was saved many times over. When the war ended, I was sent to a Soviet prisoner of war camp for almost a year. Many of my friends died there. I was working in the hospital and we had to bury the dead. The ground was so frozen that we couldn't. So many soldiers died there, most of them in their 20s Dreaming of their homelands and their families. Then one day, one of the Soviet soldiers asked me to drink alcohol with him. He wouldn't take no for an answer. So I had no choice but to join him. Since I was so weak, and almost never drank alcohol before and had almost never drank alcohol before. I got very sick, and was left in bed in the hospital. The next morning, most of my fellow soldiers were sent to the labor camps in Siberia, where most of them died. Just on the brink of death, again, my life was miraculously spared. I was taken care of so another, another narrow escape. My life was spared over and over. And yet I couldn't rejoice in this. I couldn't appreciate it not yet. I felt only anguish and despair. Those who had died was their death in vain. Did they die? And that was it. What is the meaning of life? These questions stayed with me. They took over my mind. And I had to find out what I could do what was in my own power to do to somehow in some way, make it up to all those young men who had given their lives. I returned to Japan on a boat that arrived at the port of Hakata on Kyushu island on June the ninth 1946.