The Yaeyama War Told Through Pictures [Reprint]

To avoid repeating foolish history

In 2020, marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the war, Nanzansha published "The Yaeyama War Told Through Pictures" by Shiohira Masamichi.
Masamichi Shiohira, who experienced the last war on Ishigaki Island as a boy, has been working as a war storyteller with a strong belief that children, who will carry the future, should never again have to experience war.
However, since stories alone are not easily conveyed to children today, he decided to draw pictures of the scenes from his memories and present them.

When people talk about the "Battle of Okinawa," they usually focus on the main island of Okinawa, where the ground fighting took place, but in the Yaeyama Islands, there was also war damage and devastation not seen anywhere else, with thousands of innocent civilians dying from "war malaria."
This book visualizes through illustrations the situation in Yaeyama during the war, of which there are almost no photographs or other records, making it a very valuable resource for telling and passing on history.
I hope that many people will read this book and use it to ensure that memories of the war do not fade away and that the same mistakes are never repeated.

In Okinawa, every school in the prefecture offers peace studies classes in June, the month that marks the end of the Battle of Okinawa.
The first time I was asked to talk about my war experiences to children in a peace education class was when my son, who is now 51 years old, was in junior high school. Since then, I have been invited almost every year to speak about my war experiences at elementary, junior high, and high schools.
As I talked, I realized that it was difficult to convey the true nature of the war through words alone, so I began to illustrate my experiences. The 59 pictures and explanations shown here may not be accurate in places, but I have created them based on my memory as best as I can.
I wanted to convey the fact that such a war actually took place in Yaeyama 75 years ago.

From the author's "Afterword"

Author: Masamichi Shiohira Format: B5 landscape, 162 pages in black and white Publisher: Nanzansha (June 2023)