| １．Return to Hometown
The end of the war saved Kyozo's life from serious illness at the coal
mine, and he came back to his hometown in late 1946.
Kyozo returned to his next life by first staying in the Shingu Hospital,
but staying in the hospital was too boring for him.
He left the hospital after only one month without the doctor's approval,
and then Kuma began to care for him at home.
The bed on the second floor of his home with a good view of the sea gave
him much relaxation, with lots of refreshing air and sea breezes. Though
returning back to nothing, the couple had their children, Yoriko, Kyota,
and Kyoji. They had already grown up so rapidly.
The children were glad and romping around for their father's return. A
poor but peaceful life came back to the family.
Kuma went to the field on the hill, leaving the store and her children
to her helper Sanae. Sanae, a niece of Kyozo, is a widow with a child.
She is working as a clerk at the Wozumi Store before noon until dusk.
The seaman can never stay still at home. Escaping the bed room, he walks on the sand beach from Miwasaki to Sano with a thin bamboo stick in hand. He has a clear intention to search for a spot where turtles lay eggs, poking the sand with the stick. Turtle eggs ready to hatch under the sand along the beach of Kyozo's walk are the most unlucky. They have no other choice than to be dug out by a natural enemy.
For Kyozo, turtles' eggs used to be an important nutritional source on
Thursday Island in the Arafura Sea. It is all the same here, but most of
the time there are no turtle eggs lined up in a fish store, though turtle
meat can be seen.
Therefore eggs along the beach were destined to be a sacrifice to their
natural enemy.
He does not hunt them extravagantly. He finishes his hunt with a sufficient
amount for him and his family because he knows the natural blessing well.
Turtle eggs and meat blessed Kyozo and helped him come back to life.
The eggs, soft and as large as ping-pong balls, are kept in a sand box.
Kyozo eats four or five pieces at a time on boiled rice and barley with
a bit of soy sauce at every breakfast and lunch.
Kuma and the children also love such a dish.
The trouble is that the eggs left in a sand box became the shape of baby
turtles after only a couple of days, and baby turtles crawled out from
their soft shells in a week. Kyozo ate them in any shapes without any care.
Kyozo loved turtle meat much more. He ate them stewed like sukiyaki with
a lot of vegetables from the field. The children recognized its good taste
and vied with their father for pieces from the stew.
- - - - -
Yakuzas and some tough guys did not want to eat turtle meat, even though
they knew its good taste. They worried about some hidden sexually transmitted
disease. Especially syphilis was said to be brought to light forcibly once
this meat went into the body.
2. Back to His Usual Life
Such distinctive days brought Kyozo back to life smoothly. The speed of
his recovery was much faster than the hospital's diagnosis.
In less than half a year he began to go to the sea and dive. Despite Kuma's
worry, he restarted his hobby in the sea by chasing fish for food around
Suzushima Island and offshore.
With an underwater gun he swims wearing only a loincloth (fundoshi) around
Suzushima Island near the fishing port.
When coming back after a span of diving, a lot of catches were in the bottsuri
box.
During a severe life after the war, such catches were, just like before,
served at dinner as well as taken to neighboring families and Sanoh parents.
Kyozo got back to his previous carefree life.
The seaman's territory was not only around the small island. He often rowed
a small temma boat alone, to the offshore. He dove to search for any fishes,
like sea beams, tuna, bonito, ..., and with his underwater gun caught such
fishes as fishermen would capture by nets or reel rods.
3. A Story of an Underwater Gun
As a man of ingenuity, Kyozo had not been able to overlook present inconveniences
or tiny matters about everything in life, such as tools, since his days
in the Arafura Sea.
The improvements he made included several inventions. He never wanted to get a patent for anything. So afterward he even forgot that he had made such inventions himself.
But the invention of an underwater gun deserves recognition. Here I would
like to refer to how he invented it as a shooting tool for fishing. This
news was reported by main newspapers even in English.
In the year 1933, he returned from Arafura Sea and started to live in Miwasaki,
his hometown. He viewed the sea, thought of fish swimming under the rock
shore and coastal waters, and then thought about how to catch the fish
while diving.
A certain image came to the mind of this ingenious man very easily. It
was like a whale-shooting gun. It was not only a gun, but had a spear chained
with its bamboo stick different from whale-shooting.
When he had this idea, he immediately sat down in his room, took out a
sheet of graph paper among his usual tool set, and drew his image with
colored pencils and a triangle on it.
During this time he is in a different world, not accepting anything, even
tea served by his love.
After his image is completed on paper, the next task is the procurement
of materials for the parts. Each of them is specialized within his idea.
The role of a whale-shooting gun as a spindle is played by a thin bamboo
tree, which has to be strong and straight. He is sure to get it at a near
bamboo grove.
What Kyozo calls "chokkiri" is a fishing spear. As for how to
shape it from a metal piece, he consulted with Seiroku Urata, a black smith
of his same age. It is interesting that the suttered Seiroku has been an
intimate friend with quiet Kyozo since their childhood.
Kyozo began his work at his friend's familiar workplace of bellows. The
master Seiroku teaches his apprentice, looking at both the tool picture
and a metal piece of a two-wheeled cart.
For an elastic cord, a key material for the purpose of a bowstring, he
found a suitable one, which could be useful to be cut for the right length,
at a general store in Shingu.
It is up to the black-smith master for deciding how each of these parts
can be fit together well. ... He, stammering, teaches Kyozo saying like
"チョチョチョッと、こここんな風に" (Look, ... like this way", in a stammering
voice.) The apprentice stares at the skillful fingerpoint of his boyhood
friend and nods one by one. It is as if they are back in the world of their childhood. ...
Their careful work to complete wholly is quite easy as planned, because
he is good and used to such a job.
Five underwater guns and their five times of chokkiri should be good enough
for now.
The underwater gun may have been an epoch-making invention as a shooting
tool in the sea at that time, while it would have been quite a big trouble
for the fish. Kyozo was against useless killing, but quite a number of
fishes were thinned out.
Though no one knew how the knowledge of this matter spread, several people,
both from domestic and overseas, approached Kyozo and requested to apply
for an international patent. But this kind of thing was just not in his
nature.
"I don't like to keep it only for myself."
Saying so, he did not reply, and had nothing to do with it at all.
According to my younger brothr, there are several others of his invention,
including a mowing machine for seagrass.
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