Keisaburo Toyonaga

Several months later, my mother and Hiroyuki got better.  We could not depend on our relatives any longer, so we decided to settle in Funakoshi where my mother’s relatives lived.  As we lost our house and everything in Onaga, we rented a small house near my grandparents and started our new life there.  When my mother lived in Yokohama, she went to a dressmaking school.  She was qualified to teach and started a dressmaking class for some women in our neighborhood.  Still, it was hard to make both ends meet, so when I was a sixth grader, I started to deliver newspapers to support my family’s finances.  Hiroyuki, who was weak, was often absent from school and went to see a doctor until he was a sixth grader.  I am not sure whether his sickness was caused by the radiation.

After I graduated from Funakoshi Elementary School, I went to Funakoshi Junior High School and Kaita High School, which were public schools near my house.  When I was in the third year of high school, I decided to work after graduation to support my family, but I could not find a job.  My mother told me to go to college.  Thinking about my family’s financial situation, I could only go to a national or public college where I could commute from my house. Because I hadn’t not studied much at high school, I studied very hard for two years.  I was finally accepted into the Chinese Literature Department of Hiroshima University in 1957 and was lucky enough to receive a scholarship.   Still, I needed to do part-time jobs, such as being a tutor and a bicycle parking lot attendant at the baseball stadium to earn my school fees and buy textbooks.

I wanted to be a journalist after graduation, but I chose to be a teacher because I had to commute from my house to save money and support my family.  I got a degree in the teaching course of the university, but If I got a job in a public school, I didn’t know which school I would be assigned to.  So, in 1961, invited by Mr. Nishimoto who was my junior high school teacher, I got a job as a Japanese teacher at Hiroshima Denki Institute High School of Technology.  The school had two departments, Electrical Machinery and Machinery.  I was in charge of a first-year class of the Machinery Department in my first year.  Later, the school created a Technical Course and a General Course, and accepted girls, too.  At first, the number of girls was small, but they gradually increased.  Then the number of students in the departments other than the General Course decreased, and the Technical Department was abolished.  In 1993, when I retired, the school had only the General Course and in 1999, the school’s name was changed to Hiroshima Kokusai Gakuin Junior and Senior High School.