WW II Battle Sites Fading Away but Not Forgotten

By Tsutomu Yamashita, Asahi Weekly

　「負のイメージが強い」「再開発の妨げになる」といった理由から、全国の戦争遺跡が風化して消えて行く一方で、地域の町おこしを兼ねた遺跡の保存運動や顕彰が静かなブームを呼んでいます。筆者も戦争遺跡が好きなひとりで、各地で高齢化しつつある歴史の「証人」に出会うことを楽しみにしています。

　"Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."

　Like this famous phrase by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, after he was relieved of his command during the Korean War, many Japanese war ruins are quietly fading away into history, while others are being discovered by a younger generation curious about the war.

　Many local guidebooks on war ruins are now being published in Japan, and local governments are swinging into action to preserve and to restore the sites.

　One sunny Sunday in September, I visited the tiny island of Sarushima in Yokosuka. It is the only uninhabited island in Tokyo Bay, and had been used for military purposes since the Edo Period, when Commodore Matthew Perry helped tear down Japan's national isolationist policy and bring it into the modern age.

　We can now visit the island by a 10-minute shuttle ship ride from Mikasa Park in Yokosuka, where the famed battleship Mikasa -- which fought the Russian Baltic fleets in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) -- is on display.

　Walking around the island, visitors can see old war ruins such as a fortress and several big batteries built to defend Tokyo against attacks from the U.S. Air Force and Navy.

　When World War II ended, the U.S. occupied the island and destroyed the Japanese military facilities, so only the ruins still remain.

　In the 1990s, the historical island has been reborn as a tourist attraction and museum. Today visitors can find the old brick walls of a fortress constructed in the Meiji Era -- more than 100 years ago -- that were part of a powder magazine for a big cannon.

　At the hilltop on the island, they can look over the Boso Peninsula, 　which also has many war ruins. For example, the militarily important Tateyama city in the south of Boso Peninsula, where U.S. forces landed soon after Japan's surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, has nearly 50 war ruins related to the Japanese Imperial Air Force.

歴史観は足で変えよう！

　When you visit these war ruins, which are still "living" silently around you, your viewpoint toward the past war or history sometimes changes dramatically because of what you see.

　Farther south, on the tiny island of Ninoshima in Hiroshima Bay, there are many war ruins because large military quarantine facilities were built there after the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) to check the health of Japanese soldiers and for signs of plague upon their return home from Asian battlefields. From the island, I could overlook Kure city, where the giant battleship Yamato was built.

　Hiroshima had many of the nation's most important military bases and harbors, which would be the launching point for campaigns against other Asian nations.

　Countless Japanese soldiers and people left the Asian continent from Hiroshima and returned home by way of Ninoshima, although tourists who visit other more famous sites -- such as the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima -- seldom visit the island. One day, I happened to meet Yoshiyuki Hamamoto, owner of a passenger ferry that runs between Hiroshima and Ninoshima, who wrote a guidebook on the history of mysterious Ninoshima Island, and provided copies on his boat for passengers visiting the island.

　He was born on Ninoshima, and his mother was a nurse for the military quarantines there and his father was a navy engineer, helping to maintain submarines.

　A lot of islanders worked in the military industry, but surrounded by military secrecy for so long, the history of the island is not well known to visitors from outside of Hiroshima.

　On the island, a lot of small old houses surrounded by a thick soil bank still stand. Islanders said the houses were used as powder magazines, as Hiroshima and the neighboring Kure city areas were once one of the biggest naval ports in Japan, as Yokosuka has been since the Meiji Era.

　Hamamoto said, "In August 1945, around 10,000 A-bomb victims were carried to this island from downtown Hiroshima. But almost all of them were in serious condition, only to die and be buried on the island."

　This island is one of many war sites around Japan that are mostly forgotten today, erased from our memories and destroyed because to many people, they are linked to past Japanese militarism and thus have a negative image.

　Many of the ruins have been razed and cleared to make way for urban development, since the cost to maintain these as tourist sites is expensive, and the prevailing public opinion has been opposed to preservation and renovation.

　But many are still around, giving everyone a chance to see our "living history" before they fade away into time and dust.

• "Old...away."　「老兵は死なず。ただ、消え去るのみ」。
• was...War　　朝鮮戦争の間に職を解かれた
• are...history　静かに歴史の中に消えて行く
• are...sites　（戦争）遺跡の保存や、復元のために動き始めている
• Commodore...Perry　ペリー提督（1794-1858)。江戸時代に米大統領親書を幕府に提出し、開国を迫った米国の海軍軍人
• national...policy　鎖国政策
• Russian...fleets　ロシアの（世界最強と言われた）バルチック艦隊
• Russo-Japanese War　日露戦争
• fortress　要塞
• battery(-ies)　砲台
• powder magazine　火薬庫
• cannon　大砲
• quarantine　検疫所
• launching...against　〜に対する軍事行動の出発点
• surrounded...bank　分厚い土塁に囲まれた
• are...image　過去の軍国主義に結びついており、それゆえ、負のイメージがある