(ILOILO CITY | by Shun Ohno, Aug. 25, 2025) — On August 22, I attended a memorial service for World War II war dead at Sunburst Park in Iloilo City, Panay Island.

The next day, I visited a small monument in the hills of Maasin, just outside Iloilo City—the site where about 40 Japanese civilians took part in a tragic mass suicide during the last days of the war. When local NGO — LOOB — learned of my plan, its director Ms. Yukie Kobayashi, several Japanese student interns, staff from the local Nikkei-jin association, the town’s vice mayor, and barangay captain all joined. What I thought would be a quiet visit turned into a solemn prayer gathering of more than a dozen people.

On March 21, 1945, surrounded by U.S. and Philippine troops, the Japanese elementary school principal urged his group: “We cannot trouble the Japanese soldiers any further.” Many civilians, mostly women, then took their lives using grenades or guns. The place became a “sea of blood.” Yet about ten children survived, rescued by Filipino farmers who raised them as their own.

These survivors became known later as the Japanese war orphans left behind in the Philippines. Some remained as tenant farmers, some were invited back to Okinawa by relatives, and others migrated to the United States. Most have now passed away.

Today, very few people in either Japan or the Philippines know this history. According to Ms. Agnes Suplico (60), the landowner who maintains the site, only a handful of Japanese visitors have come this year. With Japanese support for upkeep long ceased, the weathered statue of the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus stands in painful neglect.

Like the title of the newspaper series that I had worked by Sep. 2025 and my new book published in Dec. 2025, they (mass suicide victims) also seem to “Forgotten Japanese”.


Japanese and Filipino participants who remembered war victims and prayed for eternal peace. They include Shun Ohno, UP Prof. Rico Jose, Ms. Yukie Kobayashi, Japanese intern students affliated with the local NGO, LOOB, Vice Mayor, Barangay Captain of the local municipality and barangay.


Ms. Agnes Suplico who has been taken care of the memorial in her Land


Statue of Mary and Jesus


Inscription of the monument


Inscription of the monument