Yoshiko Shimabukuro ended her career as a storyteller at the Himeyuri Peace Museum in Itoman, Okinawa Prefecture, earlier this year, confident that her younger successors can help visitors understand the misery of war and importance of anti-war efforts.
The museum opened in 1989 in dedication to a group of 222 students and 18 teachers from Okinawa Daiichi Women's High School and the female division of Okinawa Teacher's School. They were mobilized by the Imperial Japanese Army as a nursing unit on March 23, 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa in the closing months of World War II. The group was called Himeyuri Gakutotai (Star Lily Corps).
Of all the students and teachers, 136 died, most within a week after an order of dissolution was issued to the unit on June 18, 1945. The death toll included one teacher and nine students who committed suicide.