I recently stumbled across a war story I knew nothing about. I was at the library looking for books to keep my older son reading in Japanese, now that he no longer attends Japanese school. Since he had just made a trip to Hiroshima with his international school, I chose books about Japanese children's wartime experiences. My son was interested, but I was the one who got hooked. What caught my attention was the gakudo sokai (pupil evacuation), a government program in which more than half a million children were sent in school groups to the countryside.

By 1944, Japan was losing the war and preparing for enemy invasion. In June, the government announced a plan to evacuate schoolchildren and teachers from major cities. The purpose was not so much humanitarian as tactical; by sending children to safer areas, the military hoped to ensure an adequate supply of soldiers for the future. It also wanted to free mothers from child care so they could focus on the home-front defense effort.

In early August, 230,000 schoolchildren boarded special trains out of Tokyo, followed by more evacuations from the capital and 12 other cities including Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka. The school groups went to nearby rural areas to the only facilities available, usually Buddhist temples and country inns. In all, about 580,000 children were sent away from home in the evacuation program. Many other children were evacuated privately to relatives.