Masabumi Hosono ( Jap. 細 野 正文 Hosono Masabumi , October 15, 1870 - March 14, 1939 ) was a Japanese man who escaped during the wreck of the Titanic and was ostracized in his homeland because he saved himself and did not stay on a sinking ship [1] .
| Masabumi Hosono | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Date of Birth | |
| Place of Birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
| Citizenship |  Japan |
| Occupation | civil servant |
Content
Biography
Hosono, a forty-year-old civil servant, worked in the Japanese Ministry of Transport and in 1910 was sent to the Russian Empire to familiarize himself with the workings of the local state-owned railway transport system. Hosono returned to Japan through Europe and America. For a while he stayed in London , then in Southampton on April 10, 1912, he boarded the Titanic with a second-class ticket. On the night of April 14-15, Masabumi Hosono was awakened by a steward who informed him about the evacuation from the ship. From the second-class cabin, the Japanese could not get to the lifeboats, so the steward invited him to go to the third-class deck. In a dramatic situation, when places in the boats were primarily provided to women and children, Hosono still managed to get into the boat number 10 (according to other sources, the boat number 13 [2] ). At about 8 am on April 15, the passengers of this boat were rescued by the crew of the ship " Carpathia ". Even in the smoking cabin on the ship Masabumi Hosono felt the negative attitude of the sailors towards him. Here, on the Titanic's letterheads, he began to write a letter to his wife, talking about the crash and rescue aboard the Carpathia, while the ship was on its way to New York .
Arriving in New York, the Japanese, who had lost everything in the crash, came to the New York office of Mitsui and asked for help in order to return to Japan. He was supported, and Hosono sailed from San Francisco to Tokyo . While Hosono was in the US , local newspapers wrote a lot about him, calling him “the lucky Japanese guy” ( Eng. Lucky Japanese Boy ). In Japan, Masabumi Hosono also became the target of media and public attention, but with a touch of criticism; he was even called a coward for the lack of samurai spirit. And some newspapers reported that he entered the boat, disguised as a woman. He was dismissed from the Ministry of Transport, but was soon reinstated, as the government found it necessary not to follow rumors and not to lose a good employee. All this could not but affect the state of mind and health Hosono. He died on March 14, 1939, and his family believed that public censure was one of the reasons for his death. After his death, on the basis of the memories of Hosono himself and other passengers, his sons attempted to rehabilitate their father.
In culture
- Masabumi Hosono is mentioned in a number of works of art, in particular, in the books of Ivan Kudishin - “Titanic: a tragedy that delighted the world” and Richard Davenport-Heins - “Ice Ghost: stories from Titanic”.
- In April 2014, on the anniversary of the death of the Titanic, an exhibition dedicated to Masabumi Hosono, the only Japanese who was aboard the Titanic, opened in Yokohama [3] [4] .
Notes
- ↑ TITANIC ACCOUNT RESTORES REPUTATION SURVIVOR FELT SHAME UPON RETURN TO JAPAN Archived copy of March 29, 2015 on the Wayback Machine (eng.)
- ↑ HOSONO, Mr Masabumi - Titanic Second Class Passenger Biography (eng.)
- ↑ Masabumi Hosono exhibition opens in Yokohama
- ↑ In Yokohama, an exhibition of the things of the only Japanese who managed to escape from the Titanic (inaccessible link) will open . The date of circulation is February 11, 2015. Archived February 11, 2015.
Literature
- Twenty-first Century Japanese Business / Jon P. Alston, Isao Takei. - iUniverse, 2005. - ISBN 9780595355471 .
- Higgins, Andrew . A testament to the will to live, The Guardian (December 13, 1997).
- Mehl, Margaret D. The Last of the Last November 25, 2003). The appeal date is April 13, 2012.
- Pellegrino, Charles. Farewell, Titanic: Her Final Legacy. - Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. - ISBN 978-0-470-87387-8 .
- Stringer, Julian. The China Had Never Been Used! // Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster. - New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. - ISBN 9780813526690 .
- Wormstedt, Bill. An Account of the SS Titanic : A Centennial Reappraisal / Bill Wormstedt, Tad Fitch. - Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2011. - ISBN 978-0-7524-6210-3 .
- 安藤, 健 二. タ イ タ ニ ッ ク で 助 か っ た 日本人 の 謎 (Neopr.) // 新潮 45. - 2007. - March ( t. 26 , № 3 ). - pp . 98-105 .