Stories of the Japanese People 00047 [Yayoi] The Discovery of the Toro Ruins

Now, following the Yayoi-cho ruins, let us look at the Toro ruins (Shizuoka City, Shizuoka Prefecture), which are representative of the Yayoi period.
July 10, 1943 (Showa 18). Hiroshi Yasumoto (1914–1987), a teacher at the Shizuoka City Anzai National School, arrived at the Shizuoka branch of the Mainichi Shimbun carrying a dugout canoe on his back. To the surprised reporter Yutaka Mori (1917–2001), Yasumoto spoke with an excited expression, saying, "It's a major discovery."
Reporter Mori had only just transferred to the Shizuoka branch in April, but he and Yasumoto were on friendly terms. By 1943, the Pacific War was already clearly heading toward defeat, and supplies were running low.
Yasumoto said that a dugout canoe had been found at the planned construction site for a Sumitomo propeller factory in Toro, Shizuoka City. Upon hearing Yasumoto's story, reporter Mori thought,
"This is big news."
He contacted the head office in a hurry and headed for Toro.
At the construction site, nearly 600 laborers were swinging pickaxes and shovels. Fragments of Yayoi pottery unearthed there were lined up endlessly, leaving no room to step.
Mori began snapping photos in a frenzy. Suddenly, accompanied by a roar of abuse, he was struck on the back of the head and fell to the ground. Looking up, a man in a military uniform was shouting,
"You idiot, do you know where you are?"
Mori remembered that this was the construction site for a military factory. After being interrogated for about an hour, Mori was released, but all his film was confiscated.
From what Mori could see, the military was ignoring the ruins and continuing with the factory construction. The laborers, knowing nothing, were nonchalantly smashing pottery and trampling over dwelling sites as they worked.
Mori worried, "Is it really okay to leave such valuable ruins like this?"
Because his film had been confiscated, Mori wrote an article for the head office titled "Major Ruins Discovered in Shizuoka," using a photo of the dugout canoe. It became the top story with a four-column headline in the Shizuoka edition and appeared as a small one-column article in the national edition. This was the first report on the discovery of the Toro ruins.
Around the time this article was published, Yasumoto reported the discovery of the ruins to the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education dispatched Professor Yoshito Harada (1885–1974) of the University of Tokyo to investigate, and he advised,
"It is necessary to conduct a full-scale excavation."
And so, the excavation of the ruins began under wartime conditions.
Although the excavation was conducted under the constraint of not hindering the factory construction, wooden artifacts were unearthed one after another, and rows of stakes thought to be remnants of rice paddies were also discovered.
The war intensified and the excavation was temporarily suspended, but it resumed after the war, and the Toro ruins became so famous that they are synonymous with the Yayoi period. Behind that success were the efforts of a national school teacher and a Mainichi Shimbun reporter.