Memories of students killed in World War II live on at Tokyo museum

Watercolor paintings by Itaru Maruo, a student deployed to China by the Imperial Japanese Army who died in World War II, are now displayed at the Wadatsumi no Koe memorial museum in Tokyo. | JIJI

JIJI

Sep 10, 2026

In 1944, as World War II entered its final stages, Itaru Maruo was a promising student at an elite university, dreaming of a career in art. Then the Imperial Japanese Army called him up.

Deployed to China under the wartime student mobilization program, Maruo fell ill and was hospitalized time and again. He is believed to have been caught up in the Soviet invasion and died at an army hospital in Manchuria, in what is now northeastern China, on Aug. 30, 1945, about two weeks after Japan’s surrender. He was 25. His remains have never been returned to Japan.

In late July this year, a relative donated some 200 items that once belonged to Maruo, including his memoirs, to the Wadatsumi no Koe (Voices of Fallen Student Conscripts) memorial museum in Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward, a short walk from the University of Tokyo’s Hongo Campus.

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