By SATSUKI TANAHASHI/ Staff Writer
August 23, 2023 at 18:44 JST
Participants offer prayers for the victims of the sinking of the Tsushima Maru evacuation ship 79 years ago at a memorial service held on Aug. 22 in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture. (Satsuki Tanahashi)
NAHA--Prayers were offered here on Aug. 22 for the nearly 1,500 passengers, more than half of them schoolchildren, of the Tsushima Maru, an evacuation ship that sank off the coast of Kagoshima Prefecture during the Pacific War.
About 250 participants including survivors and bereaved family members marked the 79th anniversary of the tragedy in a memorial service that was held without COVID-19 restrictions for the first time in four years.
“We must never repeat war,” survivor Masakatsu Takara said at the ceremony, noting recent security developments in the Okinawa region.
Takara, 83, heads a group of survivors and bereaved families.
The cargo ship was on its way from Naha to Nagasaki on the night of Aug. 22, 1944, when it was torpedoed and sunk by a U.S. submarine in waters near the Tokara islands in Kagoshima Prefecture.
Of nearly 1,800 people onboard, 1,484 were killed, including 784 children.
The full account of the incident remains unclear because the Japanese military and police silenced survivors and bereaved families to keep the sinking secret at the time.
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