High School Student Colorizing Photos Taken During World War II; Colorized Photos Make People Seem Alive, Less Distant

By Naoto Suzuki / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

6:00 JST, May 25, 2025

MATSUMOTO, Nagano — World War II-era photographs colorized by a high school student with the aid of artificial intelligence are being exhibited in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture.

Aoi Takizawa, the 17-year-old student behind the project, said that his generation, like those that came before, has a responsibility to pass on memories of the war to posterity.

Takizawa, who is from Azumino in the prefecture, attends Nagano Prefectural Matsumoto Agatagaoka Senior High School as a third-year student. About 30 of his colorized photographs are being displayed on the first floor of the Matsumoto City Chuo Library in collaboration with the Matsumoto municipal government.

Takizawa said he began to study the war after seeing photographs of victims of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in the city. A second-year junior high school student at the time, he visited the city to attend a ceremony, which is held every August, to mark the anniversary of the bombing. The photos of hibakusha shocked him.

Takizawa continues to research the war as a high school student. In February last year, he went with a group to Tinian, an island among the Northern Mariana Islands, to mourn the South Pacific war dead. The trip to the island, which was a fierce battleground during the war, was organized by Zenkoji temple in Nagano City.

Many soldiers from the former Japanese Imperial Army’s 50th infantry division, which was stationed in Matsumoto, died on the island.

After that trip, Takizawa joined a Matsumoto city government-organized youth group, which aims to get young people to think about peace and to share their thoughts with others, and attended the same memorial ceremony in Hiroshima with the group in August last year. During that trip, he happened to see colorized photographs of before and after the war.

The photographs, which included children smiling and eating watermelon, were among the exhibits of a project utilizing old photos and the latest technologies to restore memories from that time. The project, called “Rebooting Memories,” is led by University of Tokyo Prof. Hidenori Watanave.

Takizawa said that colorizing the photographs made the people in them seem alive and that he felt closer to them as a result. The feeling was different from the “distance” he sensed from the black-and-white photos he saw as a junior high school student.

Takizawa became interested in the AI-based specialized computer software to colorize the photographs, which led him to read Watanave’s books and research the technology online.

He borrowed a photo of the infantry division from the Matsumoto City Archives and started recreating the colors of their uniforms and barracks by comparing them with reference materials.

He also tried colorizing photos he found in his great-grandmother Mitsu Maruyama’s photo album. One of the photos was taken at Ameichi, a traditional New Year candy market in Matsumoto, in the early days of the Showa era (1926-1989), right before the war. Another was taken near what appears to be the Sensaibashi bridge in the city center. The photos show the peaceful days experienced before the war.

“Everyday life used to be the same as it is now,” Takizawa said, “but the war snatched it away.”

The photos on display are divided into three sections: “pre-war Matsumoto,” “students during the war” and “the 50th infantry division,” with color and black-and-white photographs displayed side by side for comparison. They are scheduled to remain on display through March 31 next year.

Takizawa’s great-grandmother died four years ago at the age of 95. He said he regrets being unable to hear her thoughts on the war.

With this year marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, it is becoming more and more difficult to hear the testimonies of the survivors.

“I have come to realize how difficult it is to hear their stories,” Takizawa said. “I want to continue my activities to encourage people to think about the war through colorized photographs, interview videos and other media.”