For the past several years, a 98-year-old former Japanese soldier who was interned in a Siberian labor camp at the end of World War II has been recounting his experiences to schoolchildren to encourage them to value peace.
"I hope you will carry the future with you so peace will endure for a long time to come," Masaru Nishikura, of Sagamihara in Kanagawa Prefecture, told a group of visiting junior high school students last month at the Memorial Museum for Soldiers, Detainees in Siberia, and Postwar Repatriates in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward.
The 40 or so third-year students from Toin Daiichi Junior High School in Toin, Mie Prefecture, listened quietly as the usually mild-mannered Nishikura spoke with controlled passion for about an hour.