Prince Hisahito Visits Repatriation Museum in Maizuru

   Maizuru, Kyoto Pref., Feb. 12 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Prince Hisahito, the only son of Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko, visited Wednesday a museum in the western Japan city of Maizuru to learn about the Japanese internees in Siberia and their return to the country after World War II.
   In his private visit to the Maizuru Repatriation Memorial Museum in the city in Kyoto Prefecture, the 18-year-old prince was guided by members of a group of student volunteers to pass down the history of repatriation of the postwar internees in then Soviet labor camps in Siberia to future generations.
   Looking at diaries written with soot ink in the waka poem form on the back of white birch bark sheets that were brought back to Japan by such internees, the prince commented that they might have been confiscated if they had been found at the camps. At a diorama depicting Maizuru Port at the time when the port was serving as the landing venue for the repatriates, he asked how far it was from a port in Siberia or elsewhere they were embarked.
   At the museum, he also met with two female repatriation storytellers in their 80s and heard about their experiences in taking care of the returnees. When it came to the lives of people immediately after the end of the war, the prince made a question regarding the availability of clothing.
   Later, he visited the restored Taira Repatriation Pier at the port.

(2025/02/12-19:58)

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