Japan ex-volunteer soldier, 96, recalls being 'trained as an expendable'

Itoshima, Fukuoka -- Former Imperial Japanese Navy volunteer Muneharu Yamaguchi, now 96, recently shared his harrowing experiences from World War II training during a gathering of around 30 people at a community center in this southwest Japanese city. In September 1944, as Japan struggled in the Pacific War, Yamaguchi, a second-year student at Kafuri National School in Maebaru (now part of Itoshima, Fukuoka Prefecture), saw an advertisement seeking navy volunteers and applied without consulting his parents.

Accepted in March 1945, he became a seaman second class at the former Hofu Naval Communications School in Yamaguchi Prefecture (now the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force's Hofu Minami Air Base). The training was brutal, with recruits being called "expendables" and subjected to frequent beatings with a wooden stick, dubbed the "military spirit injection rod."

Recruits underwent rigorous instruction in electricity, Morse code, semaphore, and even practiced jumping into tank tracks loaded with explosives, a suicide mission. Yamaguchi still carries a scar on his buttocks from these beatings. Trained to act as targets for enemy tanks, he understood the term "expendables" fully when he witnessed a mushroom cloud on August 9, 1945, the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

Shortly after, he was told the war was over. Despite initially volunteering for military service, Yamaguchi now reflects on the remarkable resilience of the young recruits who endured such conditions without desertion. He emphasizes the importance of a world without war and acknowledges the need for Japan to consider potential countermeasures against future threats.