MEDITERRANEAN CONFERENCE CENTER
July 19–21, 2026 

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Shigeo Kurihara

栗原茂夫

Shigeo Kurihara is a Japanese writer and a member of the Japan-Europe Palace Art Association.
His works have been exhibited not only in Japan, but also in countries around the world.

栗原茂夫は日本の作家。日欧宮殿芸術協会の会員。
日本のみならず世界各国に作品を出展。

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 My Home, Saipan, the Island of Desperate Defense—A Boy’s Memory of War 

 私の故郷・玉砕の島サイパン−少年が見た戦争の記憶 

Artist’s Statement

This book is based on the memoirs left behind by the author’s mother, who experienced war firsthand and wrote about her life in her later years. Before her death, she told him:
“I only wrote the trunk of the tree. You must add the branches and leaves.”
With those words in mind, the author completed this work by connecting his mother’s memories with his own recollections of the same era. Written in a documentary-like style with minimal dramatization, the book seeks to faithfully preserve the reality of war for future generations.
At the center of the story is a family of pioneer settlers living on an island: a husband and wife and their four sons.
On June 11, 1944, the family experienced their first air raid and fled into a cave together with the seven members of the Aoki family. As food and water became nearly impossible to find, hunger and thirst pushed them to their limits.
On June 26, American soldiers discovered the cave, shouting, “Come out!” The second son was taken outside first. When his mother saw him again, she asked, “Did you drink water?” He answered, “I drank a lot.”
Still waiting for her husband to return, the mother quietly told her children:“If we die, let’s die together.”
The family was later sent to a civilian internment camp, where the youngest son and the third son died of starvation. No photograph of the youngest child was ever preserved.
This book is both a family record and a testimony to the devastating human cost of war.

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Japan-Europe Palace Art Association Commentary

Shigeo Kurihara’s My Homeland, Saipan: Memories of War Seen Through a Child’s Eyes is far more than a conventional wartime memoir or historical document. At the heart of the book lies a handwritten testament left behind by the author’s mother in the final years of her life. Kurihara takes what she once described as “the trunk of the tree” and gives it “branches and leaves” through his own memories, research, and lived experience. As a result, the work carries a remarkable depth of memory that transcends the perspective of a single witness, becoming instead a layered record passed across generations.

What is particularly striking is the book’s refusal to dramatize the horrors of war through excessive rhetoric. Rather, the unbearable heat inside the caves, the frustration of wounded soldiers, and the father’s silent glances toward his family accumulate into vivid human scenes that reveal, with extraordinary clarity, what it meant simply to survive under catastrophic conditions. There is neither heroism nor sentimental exaggeration here; what remains is the stark reality of human beings struggling to stay alive. It is precisely this restraint in narration that gives the work its profound emotional force.

Moreover, the book does not confine war to the past. The deaths, hunger, fear, and enduring bonds of family continue to confront the reader with essential questions about human existence itself. Combining the integrity of documentary literature with deeply nuanced human portraiture, this work stands as an exceptionally valuable contribution to the literature of war and memory.