When Naoki Kato put the 237,779th stone atop a pile of numbered stones at a local high school here Tuesday, it marked the completion of a monument in memory of the victims of the Battle of Okinawa in the closing days of World War II.
The stone monument, dubbed "the voice of stones," was built over a three-year period by students at the private Suzuka High School in Suzuka in Mie Prefecture.
Kato, 19, was a second-year student in June 1997 when English teacher Yuzo Nagao, 65, had talked about a high school student in Okinawa Prefecture who piled up the same number of stones as the number of names etched on the peace monument in Ito in the island prefecture.
Inspired by the story, Kato and some other students began collecting stones from a nearby river, piling them up in a schoolyard.
What was started by a small number of students has since gathered a number of willing helpers -- not only their fellow students and teachers at the high school, but some 150 people from other parts of Japan. Those in distant prefectures like Yamagata and Kanagawa sent photos of stones they had collected.
The monument, made from numbered stones, now measures 2 meters x 2 meters at its base and is over 1 meter high.
"What we have completed here is a kind of memorial monument (for the war victims). So this is not something about which we should get overly excited," Kato said. "Still, I am glad to see its completion."
Nagao said Japan's main islands "are deep in peace at the expense of Okinawa."
"I wanted the students to understand the regret and sorrow of the people of Okinawa by physically piling up all those stones," he said.