Fragments
of Japan

紙片の日本史

1943

A Japanese soldier's diary from Guadalcanal that survives only in English. Captured, bound into the enemy's records, and only the writer's name is missing

The paper fragments of ordinary people, followed one sheet at a time. Diaries, letters, wooden tablets, ledgers. Most of the people who wrote them are not the kind whose names history keeps.

What has been verified is stated as verified; what is unknown is stated as unknown.Certainty: 🟢 checked against primary sources ・ 🟡 from published books ・ ⚪️ a name, and no more

Fragmentsof Japan

A Japanese soldier's diary from Guadalcanal that survives only in English. Captured, bound into the enemy's records, and only the writer's name is missing

Lost Horse — a 1,300-year-old missing poster

Man's fifty years: not Nobunaga's words, not Atsumori's. They belonged to the man who killed him

Sunday became a day of rest 150 years ago this year. Before that, the offices closed on the days of one and six

"If this got out — seppuku, surely?" Insults, a cipher, Chūshingura: a 2-million-character diary

A dog went on the Ise pilgrimage alone — lodging paid from the bamboo tube on its neck, it came walking home with a shrine amulet

A retired 56-year-old set out to measure the earth on foot — and ended up mapping Japan

"Nothing but Food" — a samurai's 195 days, the year the regent was killed

A man remembered for his sayings — Hikonojō Kamimura

The Ainu language had no writing system. So at nineteen, she made her own way to write it.

They knocked on the sunken submarine. Six hours and forty-two minutes later, an answer came. For the next four hours and forty-five minutes, they talked.

There were ten roads to becoming a fighter pilot. Which one you entered decided the paper you filled in, the exam you sat, and the school you went to — a 1933 guidebook

Called in under “Intelligence Matters of the Special Duty Agency”: 384 men, and the roll of the 141 who passed is the one paper that is missing

"Complaints are for the weak" — a diary still not home from Guadalcanal

Graduates of the Nakano School turned fifty thousand enemy Indian soldiers into allies without a fight. The fifty-page report went on to say what came next

"The End" — a soldier's notebook, home sixty years late

"Today, too, I am alive" — a nameless diary from Makin, kept only in the enemy's translation

Ten years without a victory — the thirteen years of Chitoshi Isozaki

A company commander killed on Guadalcanal. He rose from private, graduated first in infantry at the military academy, kept standing at the front, and said he would become the best company commander in Japan

A Japanese soldier's diary from Guadalcanal that survives only in English. Captured, bound into the enemy's records, and only the writer's name is missing

Peleliu, called the toughest battle of the Pacific war — and in the margin of the telegram that ended it, one nameless line

Yunnan, China — Ramou. The record of a mountain held for a hundred days says "all killed in action." Two hours before that.

In this Peleliu photograph, the man on the left did not exist for 66 years. By the day his name came back, he was gone

Three brothers from Azumino. All three were killed in the war.

"Eat something good, and live well" — a father's words from a starving island

"I also think it might have been better to do as you said" — two days before his sortie, a twenty-three-year-old writes to his mother

Iwo Jima: the two prisoners who carried the enemy's letter — twelve hours in which meeting your own side was the greatest danger, and no record on either side says whether it arrived

The Man Who Left the School Behind VIVANT's Betsuhan Found His Own Family Register Erased

The thirty-four of Peleliu, and the paper that carried no title

"Be sure this letter reaches Japan" — 4,500 characters carried home from a camp where no paper could be kept

Fragments
of Japan