Vol.108 A Cadet's War Experience and Thoughts Afterward - Memoirs of the 14th President, Moji Ali

In the October 1983 issue of "Hosei," the predecessor of this journal, a memoir titled "The End of the War in the Valley of Death on Luzon, 40th Anniversary of the Deployment of Cadets" was published. The author was then Professor Ari Bakuji of the Faculty of Law.

In December 1943, Ari, a student at the Imperial University of Tokyo (now the University of Tokyo), enlisted in the army as a student, went through the Maebashi Military Academy, and was sent to Luzon Island in the Philippines "as a de facto suicide squadron on land.

In his memoirs, Ali recounts his heroic experiences on the Philippine front, where he suffered from malnutrition, knee injuries, and malaria encephalopathy, and even after the war ended on August 15, many of his comrades starved to death before surrendering in September.

Around 30 years after the war, he decided to write the memoir because he felt it was his "duty as a survivor" to leave a record for his fellow student soldiers and their families, who "were sent out with great fanfare but are still sleeping in a foreign land unknown to the public. At the suggestion of Faculty of Law professors Tadashi Ishimoda and Shozo Fujita, who read his memoir, he made significant additions to it and published it in 1987 as "The Battle of Luzon: Valley of Death" (Iwanami Shinsho).