True Father Departs Korea to Study in Japan

From the 1943 graduation album of the Waseda Technical High School, Tokyo. True Father stands in the back, center.

After graduating from the electrical engineering department of the Kyongsong Institute of Commerce and Industry in Seoul, True Father traveled to Japan to continue his studies. Korea was under Japanese colonial rule, and this was the first time True Father left his native land. In his autobiography, As a Peace- Loving Global Citizen, True Father noted that he went “because I felt that I had to have exact knowledge about Japan.”

Nevertheless, his leave-taking was painful. On the train from Seoul to Pusan, he “couldn’t stop the tears from flowing,” covered himself with his coat and “cried out loud.” It grieved him, he said, “to think that I was leaving my country behind as it suffered under the yoke of colonial rule.”

He promised that he would return, “carrying with me the liberation of my homeland.” True Father boarded the ferry from Pusan to Shimonoseki, Japan, at 2:00 a.m. on April 1, 1941. On arriving in Tokyo, he entered Waseda Koutou Kougakko, a technical engineering school affiliated with Waseda University. He stated that he chose electrical engineering “because I felt I could not establish a new religious philosophy without knowing modern engineering.”