Tokyo Museum Preserves Memories of WWII Student Conscripts

A collection of roughly 200 items detailing the life of a promising art student who died in Manchuria during World War II has been donated to the Wadatsumi no Koe memorial museum in Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward, according to Jiji Press.

Itaru Maruo was a student at Tokyo Imperial University, the forerunner of the University of Tokyo, when the Imperial Japanese military called him up in 1944. Born in Tokyo in 1920, Maruo enrolled in the Department of Aesthetics and Art History within the Faculty of Letters in 1942, where he studied painting while captaining the university hardball baseball team, Jiji Press reports. A baseball magazine of the era described him as the finest talent produced by the university club since its founding, according to the same coverage.

Wartime Mobilization and Service in China

Deployed to China under the wartime student mobilization program, Maruo fell ill repeatedly and faced frequent hospitalizations, according to Jiji Press reporting. He is believed to have been caught up in the Soviet invasion, dying at an army hospital in Manchuria—now northeastern China—on Aug. 30, 1945, roughly two weeks after Japan’s surrender. He was 25 years old, and Jiji Press notes that his remains have never been returned to Japan.

Throughout his military deployment, Maruo continued sketching the daily routines of military life and requested art supplies and second-hand paperbacks from his parents, according to Jiji Press. In one recovered letter cited in the reporting, he wrote that knowledge remains unchanged even from a dirty book, adding that he would devote himself to military duties while looking forward to reading them.

Museum Preservation and Archival Access

In late July, Sonoko Hamazaki, the 63-year-old granddaughter of one of Maruo’s cousins, discovered picture postcards, notebooks, and letters at her parents’ home and subsequently donated about 200 items to the Wadatsumi no Koe museum, located near the University of Tokyo’s Hongo Campus, according to Jiji Press. Hamazaki stated in the reporting that she donated the materials because she wanted people to understand what Maruo thought about and dreamed of, noting that his life was cut short by force with lingering regret.

The Wadatsumi no Koe memorial museum preserves approximately 2,100 items, including letters and diaries from young men conscripted under the student mobilization program who faced the anguish of leaving parents behind and the bitter regret of cut-short futures, according to Jiji Press. Fusako Watanabe, the 90-year-old chair of the museum’s board, emphasized in the reporting that the handwritten documents drive ongoing efforts to pass on memories and prevent a return to a society that robs young people of their futures. The museum is set to mark the 20th anniversary of its opening in December.