終戦しゅうせん後ごにも死者ししゃが…戦没せんぼつ者しゃ資料しりょうデジタル解析かいせきで見みえた戦争せんそうの傷痕きずあと

When and where did the soldiers who left their hometowns for the battlefield die?

This year marks 80 years since the end of the war, and we used AI and other digital technologies to analyze the places and dates where soldiers died.

What became clear from there was the tragic reality that continued even after the war had ended.

A certain list is kept in Chuo Ward, Fukuoka City.

List of War Dead from Fukuoka Prefecture

This is a document compiled by the Fukuoka Prefecture Bereaved Families Association to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, 30 years ago, containing records of war dead from Fukuoka or those with ties to Fukuoka.

Records include information such as where more than 64,000 soldiers died, the dates of their deaths, and the names of their bereaved families.

This year marks 80 years since the end of the war, and NHK, in collaboration with the Nishinippon Shimbun, which is headquartered in Fukuoka City, has been working on digitizing valuable materials.

We digitized the data using AI. This time, with permission from the Bereaved Families Association, we scanned each page of the booklet and analyzed the image data with AI.

Taking personal information into consideration, we extracted the place and date of death of each soldier listed on the page as data, and organized it into a digital database that allows for aggregation and analysis.

About 61,000 records were extracted.

When we compiled and analyzed when they died, traces of the soldiers’ tragic final moments became apparent.

This is a graph summarizing by month when the soldiers died, showing that the deaths were concentrated in the year before the end of the war.

The number of soldiers who died in 1944 and 1945 increased rapidly.

It was found that more than 29,000 people, nearly half of the total, died in the year leading up to the end of the war.

We visualized from the database when and where the number of deaths surged in the fierce battle zones.

Here is a graph that broadly categorizes the listed places of death in battle into seven groups.

The soldiers who went to war died in various places far from their hometowns.

The month with the highest number of fallen soldiers was March 1945, when, in addition to the Philippines and Burma now Myanmar, Iwo Jima—where fierce battles were fought between Japanese and American forces—also saw a large number of casualties.

The next most common was June 1945.

The number of people who died in Okinawa was rapidly increasing.

Also, the number of people who died in Burma increased between June and September 1944.

What does this tell us?

We analyzed it together with experts.

Why did the number of soldiers who died in Burma increase rapidly after June 1944—was it due to starvation and disease caused by lack of supplies?

Professor Akira Yamada, a military history expert and director of the Meiji University Noborito Museum for Peace Education, says that the background lies in the Imphal Operation.

The Imphal Operation was a campaign in which the former Japanese Army, which had occupied Burma at the time, aimed to capture the northeastern part of neighboring India.

Operations that disregarded supplies ended in disastrous defeat, and many soldiers lost their lives during the subsequent retreat.

Professor Akira Yamada: The failure of the Imphal operation caused the Japanese defensive line to completely collapse.

The operation itself was canceled in July, but it can be seen that casualties continued to increase as fighting with the British forces invading Burma persisted, and as the Japanese army retreated, they were unable to properly care for wounded or sick soldiers due to a lack of supplies. Professor Yamada also paid attention to the data from September 1944.

It is suggested that the unusually high number of soldiers who died on certain dates may be related to little-known, harsh battles.

The Battle of Lameng and Tengyueh

As the unfavorable situation in Burma continued, this refers to battles in which the Japanese garrisons stationed in two towns near the border in Yunnan Province, China, were said to have made a last stand.

There were also people whose records of soldiers who died on this day listed Lameng and Tengyue as the places where they fell.

Professor Yamada: With no reinforcements and unable to retreat, the unit was wiped out, so it is believed that the number of casualties suddenly increased at that point.

In the same way, on Iwo Jima in March 1945, the former Japanese military was annihilated in an environment where there was nowhere to escape, and it can be assumed from the graph that the number of deaths sharply increased during that period. Sacrifices continued even after the end of the war. Furthermore, records show that nearly 3,000 people died between August 15, 1945, when Emperor Showas radio broadcast announced the end of the war, and the end of that year.

Looking at the locations, there were many records such as Manchuria, China, and the Soviet Union.

Professor Akira Yamada: Even looking at the graph, a considerable number of soldiers died after the war.

The war ended on August 15, but that doesnt mean there were no more victims after that.

We inevitably end up overlooking certain things, so we must make sure to pass them down properly, including those. The feelings of the bereaved families emerged from the data as traces of the tragic battles.

How will the bereaved families feel about it?

One of the bereaved families of the war dead, Mr. Tsunemitsu Arakawa 86 from Fukuoka Prefecture

Kazunori, the father, served as a communications soldier in Okinawa, which became a fierce battlefield, and is said to have transmitted the commanders message describing the horrors of the Battle of Okinawa: The people of Okinawa have fought this bravely.

The roster records Mr. Ichinobus name along with Okinawa Naval Headquarters as the place of death in battle.

Mr. Tsunekatsu Arakawa said, When thinking about peace, I think its important to have data showing that at the beginning of that war, this many people died, and by the end, when we were losing, so many more people had died. Mr. Arakawa has been involved in collecting the remains of war dead in Okinawa, and he says he feels a sense of crisis as the number of people who remember those times decreases and the memory of the war fades away.

I feel that digitizing records of war will become a new way to pass on memories to the next generation.

Mr. Tsunekatsu Arakawa said, Its important to preserve data itself, as it can serve as a reference for future generations when they look back on what things were like at that time. Efforts are spreading across various regions. Regarding the list of war dead that NHK jointly digitized this time, detailed analysis results are scheduled to be published in the Nishinippon Shimbuns newspaper, app, and website in mid-month.

Also, the Akita Sakigake Shimbun in Akita Prefecture has a special website where they publish the places and circumstances of death of soldiers from Akita Prefecture.

Professor Yamada, who has been working on preserving war materials, also points out that it will continue to be necessary to digitize records of the war, such as those of the war dead.

Professor Yamada: After so much time has passed since the war, its possible that the materials themselves have been lost.

War was not something carried out by individuals, but rather a choice made by the nation itself. Therefore, including the aftermath, I believe it is important for the country to properly preserve and pass down records. Mobile Deployment Project - Naoya Saito / Fukuoka Bureau - Moe Kojima