Moving a bit further west. Here is Uwajima, a city in Ehime Prefecture that was the home port of the Ehime Maru, a fisheries training vessel sunk by a U.S. Navy submarine in a tragic accident offshore from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Relatives of the victims, saddened by the tragedy, were further discontented by the outcome of the U.S. Navy's disciplinary action against the commander and other crew members of the USS Greeneville. It is easy to assume that the action taken was in keeping with the intention of the governments of Japan and the United States to avoid serious damage to their alliance. Although more than half a century has passed since the end of the war, popular memory of that war has not yet disappeared.
People recall history on strange occasions.
If you listen carefully along the western part of the Seto Inland Sea, you can hear the voice of Steven Spielberg from the giant screen at Universal Studios Japan. He is saying that the hero of an adventure film cannot avoid great difficulty, and that the hero embarks on an adventurous journey to overcome it. At Teshima, a plan was advanced to build a museum that would pass on a record of the negative legacy for future generations. Here, we find a most human action aimed at recovering a lost element of the people themselves. The problem does not end there.