October 20, 2013
This year marks the 70th year of the wartime mobilization of Japanese students for military service. A students’ group at Keio University has launched a project to collect personal war memories to pass them on to future generations.
In September 1943, as it became clear that Japan was losing World War II, the Imperial government announced that it will mobilize university students aged over 20 for the war. On October 21, 1943, a departure ceremony of students was held at the Outer Gardens of the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. The successive governments have failed to investigate the number of students who were sent to the front and died, which is estimated to be between 50,000 and 200,000.
This summer, the university’s Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies started an archive project, “Keio University and War”. The project members have been hearing from former mobilized students and their bereaved families, and gathering personal effects. Tokura Takeyuki, an associate professor at the university who leads the project, told Akahata as follows:
In 2009, a note left behind by a kamikaze pilot went on display at an exhibition marking the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Keio University. On May 11, 1945, Uehara Ryoji, a 22-year-old student at the university, crashed his plane into a U.S. warship off Okinawa. The previous day, he handed the note to his colleague. It said, “Tomorrow, one of the liberalists will die.”
Reading the note, I felt the weight of reality. Even at that time, everybody lived his own life like us. I decided to launch this project with the thought that we need to think about the war with a sense of reality.
The number of project members is eight, including students. We intend to conduct interviews with at least 100 persons. We are going to open to the public the collections of those stories and remains of personal effects at exhibitions and on the Internet by 2015, the 70th year of the end of WWII.
As the people who experienced the war have been declining, precious letters and other articles left by them are in danger of being thrown away. In many cases, the war dead have become strangers to their descendants and their personal remains are easily disposed of.
Meanwhile, some ex-student soldiers became story tellers at this point. We could hear from various persons so far: a pilot who departed for a suicide attack on board a Zero fighter and returned alive because he could not find an enemy ship; and a student who failed to meet the physical standards for conscription.
Nowadays, the public has a tendency to avoid talking about war. I think it is not good for everyone to be reluctant to discuss the matter. To discuss the history is to learn from it, I believe.
In September 1943, as it became clear that Japan was losing World War II, the Imperial government announced that it will mobilize university students aged over 20 for the war. On October 21, 1943, a departure ceremony of students was held at the Outer Gardens of the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. The successive governments have failed to investigate the number of students who were sent to the front and died, which is estimated to be between 50,000 and 200,000.
This summer, the university’s Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies started an archive project, “Keio University and War”. The project members have been hearing from former mobilized students and their bereaved families, and gathering personal effects. Tokura Takeyuki, an associate professor at the university who leads the project, told Akahata as follows:
In 2009, a note left behind by a kamikaze pilot went on display at an exhibition marking the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Keio University. On May 11, 1945, Uehara Ryoji, a 22-year-old student at the university, crashed his plane into a U.S. warship off Okinawa. The previous day, he handed the note to his colleague. It said, “Tomorrow, one of the liberalists will die.”
Reading the note, I felt the weight of reality. Even at that time, everybody lived his own life like us. I decided to launch this project with the thought that we need to think about the war with a sense of reality.
The number of project members is eight, including students. We intend to conduct interviews with at least 100 persons. We are going to open to the public the collections of those stories and remains of personal effects at exhibitions and on the Internet by 2015, the 70th year of the end of WWII.
As the people who experienced the war have been declining, precious letters and other articles left by them are in danger of being thrown away. In many cases, the war dead have become strangers to their descendants and their personal remains are easily disposed of.
Meanwhile, some ex-student soldiers became story tellers at this point. We could hear from various persons so far: a pilot who departed for a suicide attack on board a Zero fighter and returned alive because he could not find an enemy ship; and a student who failed to meet the physical standards for conscription.
Nowadays, the public has a tendency to avoid talking about war. I think it is not good for everyone to be reluctant to discuss the matter. To discuss the history is to learn from it, I believe.
