Editing Yasuhiro Nakasone (section)

=== Education, bureaucratic career and war ===
Nakasone described his early childhood and youth as a happy one, and himself as a "quiet, easy-going child" nicknamed "Yat-chan". He attended a local primary school in Takasaki and was a poor student until the fourth grade, after which he excelled and was at the top of his class. He entered Shizuoka [[Higher school (Japan)|Higher School]] in 1935, where he excelled in history and literature, and learned to speak fluent [[French language|French]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Making of the New Japan|date=6 March 2015|publisher=Curzon Press|isbn=978-0-7007-1246-5|pages=6–13}}</ref> 

In the autumn of 1938, Nakasone entered the [[Graduate Schools for Law and Politics and Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo|Faculty of Law]] of the [[University of Tokyo|Imperial University of Tokyo]]. During his time at the university, he was strongly influenced by {{Interlanguage link|Teiji Yabe|ja|矢部貞治}}, whose lectures on politics fascinated him. He also developed the belief that personality should not be used as a means to achieve something, which contributed to his strong anti-communist and anti-Nazi views.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |last=Nakasone |first=Yasuhiro |date=1992-01-06 |title=私の履歴書 第五回 一心不乱 |url=https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZZO52769180Z21C19A1000000/ |access-date=2025-01-26 |work=[[The Nikkei]] |pages=36}}</ref> On the night of 10 March 1940, he received a phone call from his father telling him that his mother in Takasaki had fallen seriously ill. By the time he arrived in Takasaki on the first train the next morning, she had already passed away. The fact that his mother had not told him about her illness, so as not to distract him from his studies, became an impetus for him to work harder. He passed the high-level bureaucrat recruitment examination. He began working for the [[Home Ministry]], which was as prestigious as the [[Ministry of finance|Ministry of Finance]] due to its extensive authority.<ref name=":0" />[[File:Nakasone Yasuhiro in Imperial Japanese Navy.JPG|thumb|upright|Nakasone in the [[Imperial Japanese Navy]]]]Nakasone applied for the Navy's programme that allowed graduates from elite universities to serve as officers for two years without rising through the ranks. After completing a training period at the Navy Paymaster's School in [[Tsukiji]], he became a lieutenant.<ref name="NYT01" /> With 2,000 staff under his command, ranging from young doctors and scholars to elderly ex-convicts, Nakasone departed the naval base at Kure on 29 November 1941 on a mission to build airfields. Aboard his ship, he struggled to issue effective orders to his staff and ultimately selected an ex-yakuza with eight convictions as his assistant to relay his commands. In January 1942, he arrived at [[Balikpapan]] in [[Dutch East Indies]], where his unit was raided by a retreating Dutch cruiser.<ref name="mindy kotler">{{cite news |last1=Kotler |first1=Mindy |title=The Comfort Women and Japan's War on Truth (Published 2014) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/comfort-women-and-japans-war-on-truth.html |work=The New York Times |date=14 November 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=『報道特集』 がついに中曽根元首相の「土人女を集め慰安所開設」文書を報道！ 息子の弘文が慰安婦否定の責任者ってなんの冗談？ |url=https://lite-ra.com/i/2015/07/post-1323-entry.html |access-date=15 October 2020 |work=本と雑誌のニュースサイト／リテラ |issue=July 2017 |publisher=LITERA}}</ref> On the beach, he cremated the first 23 casualties among his staff, including his ex-yakuza assistant. This experience left a deep and lasting impression, which profoundly influenced his political beliefs.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Nakasone |first=Yasuhiro |date=1992-01-09 |title=私の履歴書 第八回 戦友を焼く ーー 空襲に腹固めあぐら |url=https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZZO52769180Z21C19A1000000/ |work=[[The Nikkei]] |pages=36}}</ref> There, he realized that the construction of the airfield had been stalled due to the prevalence of sexual crimes, gambling, and other problems among his men, so he gathered [[comfort women]] and organized  a brothel called “comfort station” as a solution.<ref name="mindy kotler" /> He managed to procure four Indonesian women, and a Navy report praised him for having “mitigated the mood of his troops".<ref name="mindy kotler" /> Nakasone married Tsutako Kobayashi, the daughter of geologist Giichiro Kobayashi, on 11 February 1945. A fortnight later, he lost his younger brother, Ryosuke, in an air accident.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Yasuhiro |first=Nakasone |date=1992-01-10 |title=私の履歴書 第九回 結婚 同僚の妹、お使いが縁 |url=https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZZO52769180Z21C19A1000000/ |access-date=2025-01-26 |work=[[The Nikkei]] |pages=40}}</ref> 

Upon returning to Tokyo after the end of the Second World War, he resumed his suspended career at the Home Ministry. He observed the growing prevalence of communism among the Japanese people, but the [[Civil service of Japan|Civil Service]] was largely powerless to address it under the absolute authority of the [[Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers|Allied Occupation Forces]]. While supervising the police force in [[Kagawa Prefecture]], he decided to abandon his bureaucratic career and stand in the upcoming general election.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Nakasone |first=Yasuhiro |date=1992-01-12 |title=私の履歴書 第十一回 初当選 白い自転車駆り演説 |url=https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZZO52769180Z21C19A1000000/ |work=[[The Nikkei]]}}</ref> He later wrote of his return to Tokyo in August 1945 after Japan's surrender: "I stood vacantly amid the ruins of Tokyo, after discarding my officer's short sword and removing the epaulettes of my uniform. As I looked around me, I swore to resurrect my homeland from the ashes of defeat".<ref>{{cite book|first=Robert|last=Harvey|title=The Undefeated: The Rise, Fall and Rise of Greater Japan|location=London|publisher=Macmillan|date=1994|page=362}}</ref>