The 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in August brought into sharp focus the steep decline in the number of people with firsthand experience of the war.
For the first time, more than half of participants at the government-hosted national memorial service for the war dead were born after the war. This demographic shift underlined the urgent task facing Japan to hand down wartime memories.
The annual national memorial service was held at the Nippon Budokan hall in Tokyo on Aug. 15, 80 years to the day after then-Emperor Hirohito announced Japan¡¯s surrender. A total of 3,358 relatives of the war dead attended the event and mourned about 3.1 million people who lost their lives in the war.
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