Tsushima-maru Memorial Museum

In the summer of 1944, as the war closed in, Okinawa began evacuating schoolchildren and older people to the mainland. The Tsushima-maru was a cargo ship about 30 years old, and it had just landed soldiers from Shanghai when it took on evacuees in Naha, among them pupils from eight of the city's national schools. Parents had hoped for a warship. On 21 August three cargo ships and two escorts left Naha for Nagasaki.

At about 10:12 on the night of 22 August the American submarine USS Bowfin torpedoed the Tsushima-maru some 10 km northwest of Akusekijima in the Tokara Islands. The attack came while most passengers slept, and the ship went down in under ten minutes with nearly everyone still in the holds. Many who escaped were swept away by the seas of an approaching typhoon, and bodies washed ashore on Amami Oshima six days later. Survivors were ordered by the police and military police to say nothing of the sinking, so no full count was made at the time. The foundation's list held 1,484 names as of 22 August 2024, and 784 of them were schoolchildren evacuated with their classes. It puts the number of survivors at about 280 and treats both figures as uncertain.

The museum opened on the 60th anniversary of the sinking. Visits begin upstairs with the departure and the sinking, and one case holds the school bags of two young sisters, which survived because they travelled on another ship of the convoy. Downstairs a reconstructed classroom tells the story of the school evacuations, and a wall of portraits shows the dead. Over 20 years families have provided about a quarter of the victims' photographs, and a search tool tells some of their stories.