NAGOYA--When high school student Shoma Isobe relocated from Hiroshima to Nagoya, he was stunned to discover that “everything is different here" regarding the teaching of World War II.

Isobe wondered why the brutal bombing of Nagoya, which reduced the city to ashes and claimed the lives of 8,000 people, was not depicted in school textbooks, which feature primarily the Great Tokyo Air Raid as well as the nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Rarely was the destruction of Nagoya even touched upon in the classroom, with no official memorial events organized there by the city’s government.

So, Isobe, who had been taught about the devastation caused by the 1945 atomic bombing to Hiroshima in his earlier school days, started a drive to designate the day of peace in Nagoya to mourn the victims of local air raids. 

Isobe, 21, now a college senior, embarked on his quest six years ago.

It took years, but the small but significant issue stayed in the spotlight so long that the municipality finally was forced to make a decision.

In March, Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura formally announced his intention of honoring the victims of the city’s aerial attacks during a city assembly meeting.

ATOMIC BOMBING PART OF HIROSHIMA EDUCATION

Born in Hiroshima, Isobe returned to his childhood hometown of Nagoya in 2017 to attend high school there.

In Hiroshima, Isobe had been immersed in a range of topics on the U.S. atomic bombing.

Students were supposed to write essays, paint a map of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and craft origami paper cranes as traditional symbols of peace in classes.

Children had to attend classes for learning objectives on Aug. 6--the day of the atomic bomb attack--during their summer holidays break.

Under a specialized peace program developed by Hiroshima city’s board of education, dedicated supplementary textbooks are distributed to elementary, junior and senior high schools for students to learn about the bombing’s effects, the preciousness of life and the horrors of nuclear weaponry through classes.

The bombing is also featured in various subjects, such as Japanese language teaching, social studies and moral education.

Isobe acknowledged some classmates were reluctant to listen in such classes. He, himself, was not so actively engaged in them either.

Even so, Isobe found the terror of the atomic bombing stuck in the back of his mind and asked his great-grandmother, a farmer’s daughter in Akitakata, Hiroshima Prefecture, about the historical event.

His great-grandmother told him that she watched a line of trucks carrying bombing survivors on their platforms whose “skin had been terribly wounded and melted.”

The eyewitness description provided by a relative sounded horrifyingly vivid to Isobe.

STUDENTS ALARMED AT APATHY IN NAGOYA

After enrolling in Toho High School in Nagoya, Isobe first learned about the city’s air raids.

A memorial service is held annually on the grounds of the private academy, which is famed nationally for its prestigious baseball club, in December since 1995, because 20 mobilized students and educators were killed at a munitions plant in World War II.

To his amazement, only a portion of students participated in the ritual. He alike saw a classmate nodding off while the principal was recounting the incident via the school broadcast system.

Isobe even questioned the fact that the ceremony took place exclusively at the school’s site.

Asumi Michihata, now 21, who was the president of the educational institute’s student council then, and others in the same year shared his sentiment.

As student council members four years their senior had submitted a request to Nagoya city to organize a commemorative service, Isobe and his peers decided to reach out to the local government again.

The students visited the privately run Peace Aichi museum and asked that student councils from other schools extend their cooperation.

YEARS OF LOBBYING PAY OFF

A collective petition with 50 signatures was presented to the city assembly via an assembly member that way, but the assembly failed to reach an agreement to adopt the students’ request.

Isobe recorded their activities in a video for their junior successors. The student council of the Toho High School took over the project four years later, leading to the submission of its plea to the municipality in January this year.

Kawamura decided to accept their request to designate a day of remembrance.

The proposal sounded appealing in particular to Kawamura because he lost his grandmother in one of the Nagoya air raids.

Nagoya instituted in fiscal 2010 its unique allowance system to compensate citizens physically impaired by their war-related injuries because the central government has no system to compensate civilians for their war damages. 

According to Nagoya and other sources, 17 prefectures and municipalities across Japan designated days of peace by 2019 through ordinances to mourn the war dead.

The step is mandatory to organize prayer services or memorial events for these local governments, including Okinawa, which is well known for its destruction from the Battle of Okinawa, and Tokyo, which remembers those killed in the March 10 air raid on the anniversary each year.

On May 6, Isobe was among more than 100 high school students and others in Nagoya who turned out to discuss the commemoration of those victimized in the city’s air raids. There, a participant insisted the incident “should more often be referred to in classes.”

“Some say younger people are less interested in this kind of problem, but passionate individuals will definitely emerge if given an appropriate opportunity,” said Isobe.

Nagoya city on May 21 held the first meeting to talk about designating a day to honor the victims of the Nagoya air raids, with an eye on introducing a related ordinance by the end of this fiscal year.