For this special broadcast of only four and a half minutes, Japan has a special synonym called "aftersound broadcast". When some elderly Japanese talk about the memory of that day, they will use "that voice" as a reference and have mixed feelings.
Qiao Xiong Kamakura, an honorary professor at Saitama University, still clearly remembers that when he was a sixth-grade pupil, he and his parents heard "the voice" around the worn-out radio. Because it is old-fashioned classical Chinese and the radio waves are noisy, he has no idea what it means. Only after the broadcast, my father breathed a sigh of relief and said, "That's good", which has impressed him so far.
What impressed him deeply was that the teachers who had been desperately inciting war suddenly made a 180-degree change overnight, which surprised the students.
Another retired scholar, Hiroshi Yoshida, was only in the second grade of primary school. He told reporters that his family was evacuated in the countryside of Kobe, and he and his classmates knelt in the school yard to listen to the "important broadcast" as required by the notice. The sound in the loudspeaker is so strange that I can't understand it at all. It is even more incredible to see many teachers crying beside them. But when I left school and returned to the village, I found that the villagers were very happy and said, "It's finally over."
The "sound" of that day 70 years ago is still the "turning point" of many Japanese people's life and death. Nobu Chongsong, who is over 90 years old, told reporters that at that time, as a member of the "special attack team", he had received an order to take off at 3 pm that day to "attack". Suddenly ordered him to "pause", and then he listened to the radio in the house borrowed by the military. Before that, although he, like many Japanese at that time, had seen Hirohito, who was known as the "modern god" when he was studying in a military school, he had never heard his voice. I think that cadence is very strange, unlike the way ordinary Japanese speak.
Chongsong soon understood that Japan had surrendered and the war was over. He lamented that, unexpectedly, he thought he would be miserable because of years of militaristic education, but the first thought that flashed through his mind was: "This is saved."
Compared with the older generation who experienced the war, Japanese born after the war were generally not impressed by "that voice". Murata, a professor at Yokohama University, said that Japanese born after the war, even scholars and experts, rarely fully listened to the recording of Aftersound Broadcasting, let alone delved into its contents. Many young people don't even know the expression "yuyin broadcasting".
On the afternoon of the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima nuclear explosion, a local girl named 19-year-old, who was inviting passers-by to "embrace peacefully" next to the nuclear explosion site, was asked if she knew about "Yuyin Broadcasting". She looked puzzled and asked with a smile, "What is that?" ? After careful explanation, she said that she seemed to have heard "the voice" on some occasions when she was a child, but she didn't understand its content at all. She was only told by adults that this represented the end of the war.
With the approach of the 70-year post-war node, the topic became hot again. The newly released documentary "The Longest Day in Japan" deliberately highlights the plot of "Aftersound CD".
At the beginning of this month, the Japanese Palace Office released the original sound of "Jade Sound Disc", which has been kept secret ever since. It is reported that six soundtracks were recorded at that time, and "Final War Day" was tightly sealed and collected in the Japanese royal family. When the allies asked for the original recording, they got a copy. After that, the "sound" appearing in various radio and television programs is a reproduction sound source that is about 10 second slower than the original sound.
Also on display with the public are photos of abandoned scenes inside the "Annex to the Imperial Library", which was used to hold a command meeting to decide to surrender and finalize the contents of the surrender book. The Japanese Palace Office said that the disclosure of these historical materials is to help the Japanese people remember the history of war and prevent the memory of war from being forgotten.
In conversations with many Japanese people on this topic, I found that "that voice" 70 years ago was only a symbolic "background sound" of the end of that war. What still leaves an impression is the phrase "can't stand it, can't stand it" often quoted in radio and television programs here.
Seventy years ago, on the way to school less than 10 km from Hiroshima, an old man in Xinze experienced the terrible experience that "special bombs" made him "unable to see light and hear sound" for a while. In August of 15, he was asked what "sound" meant to him, and after a long silence, he said: Never again.
On the other hand, Professor Qiaoxiong Kamakura thinks that there are still many problems in the contents of the surrender, such as not mentioning the aggression against China, such as the expression of the nature of war, and so on. To commemorate the 70 years after the war, the most important thing is to review history correctly.