Japan weighs disturbing grave of over 700 children to recover Tsushima Maru relics

More than eight decades after her mother narrowly survived the sinking of the steamer Tsushima Maru, Tsugiko Taira says the wreck still speaks to her. She believes artefacts lying on the seabed could give new voice to one of the worst civilian maritime tragedies of World War II.

As director of the Tsushima Maru Memorial Museum in Okinawa, Taira has spent decades preserving the memory of the disaster. She says the renewed debate has reopened a long-standing tension between viewing the wreck as an underwater grave or as an archaeological site that can deepen public understanding of war’s human cost.

“Recovering even a small number of items that have lain on the seabed for more than 80 years will serve as further evidence of the Tsushima Maru incident,” she told This Week in Asia. “However, I do harbour concerns that any recovered items might undergo changes or accelerated deterioration when moved from their underwater state to land.”

She believes that carefully retrieving objects linked to some of the 1,484 passengers and crew who died – including more than 700 children who were being evacuated from Okinawa to mainland Japan ahead of the Allied invasion – will serve as powerful reminders of the disaster and reinforce calls for peace.

Now in her sixties, Taira is already imagining how any recovered items might be displayed.