Portraits of Yoshiharu, Tatsuo, and Ryoji Uehara by Shunsuke Kamijo

2025/05/14

Ryoji Uehara is widely known as the special attack pilot who left behind a final testament that graces the opening pages of "Listen to the Voices from the Sea" (Kike Wadatsumi no Koe). His words on the eve of his sortie, in which he identified as a "liberal" and even foresaw Japan's defeat, are famous as a representative testament of a fallen student soldier. After attending the former Matsumoto Middle School, he entered the Keio University Preparatory Course in Hiyoshi and had just advanced to his first year in the Faculty of Economics at Mita when he joined the army through student mobilization; he was an active Juku student at the time. The statue on the right depicts Ryoji in his military uniform, with the Order of the Golden Kite, awarded posthumously, visible on his chest.

Who, then, are the other two? In the center is Ryoji's eldest brother, Yoshiharu, and on the left is his second eldest brother, Tatsuo. Yoshiharu graduated from the Keio School of Medicine in March 1940 and became an army surgeon, while Tatsuo graduated from the Keio School of Medicine in September 1942 and became a navy surgeon. These older brothers also lost their lives in the war. Leaving behind their parents and two younger sisters, the Uehara family lost three sons, all alumni of Keio University, to the war.

The first to lose his life was Tatsuo. On September 3, 1943 (death officially confirmed on October 22), the submarine I-182, on which he served as a surgeon, was sunk in the waters of the New Hebrides Islands. Next, on May 11, 1945, Ryoji took off from Chiran in Kagoshima Prefecture for the Okinawa area as a member of the Army Special Attack Corps 56th Shinbu Squadron. Then the war ended. Having lost two sons, the family waited anxiously for the repatriation of the eldest son, the pillar of the family.

In the spring of the following year, upon hearing news of the long-awaited repatriation of the eldest son, his father, Torataro, prepared beer to welcome him home. However, it was a case of mistaken identity. Instead, a comrade-in-arms brought news that Yoshiharu had died of illness in Burma on September 24, 1945.

The father, a former army surgeon who had opened a clinic in Ariake Village (now Azumino City), Nagano Prefecture, behaved bravely, but he commissioned the sculptor Shunsuke Kamijo to create portrait busts of his sons, which he kept displayed on the family Buddhist altar throughout his life. Furthermore, he left his sons' letters, notebooks, and all other mementos untouched, preserving them exactly as they were. The Keio History Museum Spring Special Exhibition: "Modernity and War for One Family—Yoshiharu, Tatsuo, and Ryoji Uehara and Their Family" (Period: June 19 – August 30, 2025) is an attempt to question one of the consequences brought about by Japan's modern era through the vast amount of items left behind by these three brothers from Keio and their family.

(Takeyuki Tokura, Professor, Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies)