Prince Hisahito Visits Port in Kyoto Pref. That Welcomed those who were repatriated

The Yomiuri Shimbun

7:00 JST, February 13, 2025

MAIZURU, Kyoto — Prince Hisahito, the son of Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko, visited the Maizuru Repatriation Memorial Museum in Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture, on Wednesday.

The city is home to one of 18 ports that received ships carrying people who were repatriated from abroad after World War II. By 1958, about 660,000 people returned home through Maizuru Port.

The museum holds about 16,000 objects, including those related to Japanese people who were detained in Siberia and their repatriation to Japan. Prince Hisahito, a third-year high school student, observed exhibits that included models of repatriation ships and a diorama of the port, while listening to a guide’s explanation.

When he saw the “Shirakaba Nisshi” (White birch diary), a collection of about 200 tanka poems and haiku written on tree bark by a prisoner in Siberia, Prince Hisahito, 18, made a comment about the effect of writing with a small number of words.

Prince Hisahito then visited the re-creation of a pier that once greeted returnees, where he listened to a senior citizen who spoke about the days in which they welcomed those who were repatriated.

Prince Hisahito has visited many places associated with World War II. He went to Okinawa in 2013, Nagasaki in 2016 and Hiroshima in 2018, where he laid flowers at a cenotaph and listened to the experiences of atomic bomb survivors.

When he was in the sixth grade of elementary school, Prince Hisahito listened to a lecture on the history of the Showa era (1926-1989) from writer Kazutoshi Hando, who died in 2021, on the anniversary of the end of the war.

Prince Hisahito’s visit to the museum is believed to have been in the works since his father and mother visited in 2017. The prince was able to make the trip as he is set to enter the University of Tsukuba in April and he has no high school classes now.