In August and September 2026, a rumor circulated online that Keiko Mori, a 22-year-old teacher in Japan, defied orders to lead 30 students to their deaths with hand grenades rather than allow them to surrender to American forces during the Battle of Okinawa in June 1945.

On Sept. 3 for example, a post on Facebook read:

WOW: In June 1945, a 22-year-old teacher named Keiko Mori in Okinawa was ordered to command her 30 students to commit suicide with hand grenades rather than surrender.

She refused. And she said to her students, “Live. No matter what they say, you must live.” While Japanese soldiers, who were forcing death for the sake of honor, searched for them, she hid her students in a cave for 12 days.

Even when food ran out, she sang songs and taught arithmetic using stones. When American soldiers eventually discovered the cave, she stepped out first, holding up a white shirt to protect her students.

(David J Harris Jr., accessed via Facebook)

The post included an image that allegedly showed Mori holding a white garment in the air while leading a group of children out of a cave.

Other examples of the claim appeared on Instagram and TikTok, and social media users want to know whether the rumor was true.

The rumor was fictional. We found no credible reports about the claimed monument in Okinawa honoring Mori. Such a monument would have come up in online searches if it existed. According to Pangram, a highly regarded artificial intelligence detector for images and text, both the text and image accompanying the story were created by AI. Given the above, we’ve rated this claim false.

We could not determine the rumor’s source

Fake image and article helped spread false rumor

According to Google Gemini’s chatbot, “most or all” of the image that claimed to show Mori and her students that circulated alongside the story’s text had been generated using Google’s AI tools. Google’s AI tools add SynthID, an invisible watermark, to their creations, and tools like Gemini can identify if the watermark is present.

*Let us note here: AI detection tools are fallible. We caution people against using them for definitive answers on media’s authenticity without supporting evidence.

Pangram also identified a section of this article as having been generated by AI. The article was written almost entirely in short, one-line sentences and the same page also contained an article about singers Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus. It’s unlikely an authentic news outlet would have put those two stories together on the same page.

Rumor reflects grim WWII history

Despite evidence that the story about Mori was false, the tale could have been inspired by real events. According to an article in the peer-reviewed Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Japanese authorities disseminated “disinformation about the motives and behaviour of the invading Americans” during 1945, which led people in Okinawa to believe it was better to die by their own hands than be killed or captured by American soldiers.

The journal article included the eyewitness account of Miyahira Haruko, who reportedly told a Japanese newspaper that a Japanese soldier on an island that is part of Okinawa Prefecture gave her a grenade and told her to take her own life rather than be captured by American forces in early 1945.

Haruko reportedly said her mother and sister committed suicide together during this period. The journal article said that some Japanese people committed suicide in “dugouts and caves.”

Ultimately, the fictional story about Keiko Mori resembled glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as “stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental.”

Creators of such content capitalize on social media users’ willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link.

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In September 2026, an aerial photograph of trees growing in concentric circles spread online, with social media users claiming they were part of a decades-old forestry experiment in Japan.

The claim: Photograph authentically shows a circular “experimental forestry” project in Japan.

“In 1973 Japan planted trees in concentric circles as part of an experiment in forestry spacing. This is what they look like today from above,” one Reddit post captioned the photograph.

(Reddit u/Impressive_East)

Apparently, that image and other photographs showing the same formations have circulated online for years, appearing on platforms such as Instagram, 9GAG, Facebook, Pinterest and X.

In short, the photograph was real, and the claim about the forest was also accurate. It showed two experimental plots of Japanese cedar near Nichinan, a city in Miyazaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. According to the Miyazaki Southern Forest Management Office, the experiment was established in fiscal year 1973 to study how different planting densities affected tree growth and wood quality. As such, we have rated this claim as true.

In fact, the photograph circulating in 2026 was not new. The same forest has attracted attention before —we traced it to December 2018. One of the images  circulating at that time was also available in The Associated Press’ image archive.

Origin of the photograph

The photograph first gained attention when Japanese news outlet Sankei News published it in a story about the forest.

(www.sankei.com)

The outlet credited the image to Miyazaki Southern Forest Management Office, a regional office of Japan’s Forestry Agency. Its caption (translated from Japanese via Google Translate) read, “A circular pattern visible in the mountains of Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture.”

The image later appeared in numerous social media posts and articles.

What the photograph shows

The photographs circulating online show Japanese cedar trees arranged in two groups of concentric circles in a national forest near Nichinan, in Miyazaki Prefecture. An AP caption describing the forest said the trees in the outer ring were approximately 20 meters (66 feet) tall, about 5 meters (16 feet) taller than those near the center.

The circular forest was also discoverable on Google Maps and Google Earth, as the Miyazaki Southern Forest Management Office gave its location as 31°43’50.0″N, 131°23’05.0″E.

According to the office, the experiment was linked to changes in the local timber industry. Obi cedar was planted sparsely in the area for shipbuilding timber, but demand later shifted toward wood for general construction.

Researchers created the experiment to study how different planting densities affected tree growth and wood quality. It was established in fiscal 1973, with the cedar seedlings planted in March 1974. The trees were arranged in concentric circles at different distances from one another, creating planting densities of about 377 to 10,027 trees per hectare. Seen from above, this produced the circular pattern that earned the site the nickname “mystery circles.”

Later surveys showed that planting density affected the trees’ size and growth. A 2011 study concluded that around 2,000 to 2,800 trees per hectare was suitable for lower-cost forestry. The experiment’s final report, completed in fiscal year 2023, concluded that planting densities of 1,500 trees per hectare or fewer could be effective in terms of financial returns and afforestation costs.

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In August 2026, a rumor spread that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had declared brass musical instruments to be a national security threat to justify imposing tariffs on them.

The claim: In August 2026, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump declared brass instruments a national security threat and imposed tariffs on them.

One Facebook post about the claim read:

Trump vs trumpets!

This week, the Trump administration declared tubas, trombones, trumpets, and French horns a national security threat.

Brass instruments could soon face a 25% tariff on imports, parts, and accessories, as part of a wider push to expand tariffs on aluminium, steel, and copper. The six-page proposal, published by the Department of Commerce, uses the words “national security” nine times.

(Facebook page Classic FM)

Variants of the claim also spread on Reddit and on X.

The social media posts echoed reports in blog posts and news outlets, including the website of Classic FM, a radio station dedicated to classical music, and HuffPost.

Meanwhile, several curious readers emailed and searched the website seeking to verify the information.

It is true that on Aug. 6, 2026, the Department of Commerce published a request for comment on the Federal Register for a proposed rule to impose tariffs on brass instruments, among other products. The publication cited national security concerns.

However, it was not the instruments themselves the government department appeared to focus on, but the material from which they are made — a copper alloy. The request for comment cited Presidential Proclamation 10962 of July 30, 2025, in which Trump said copper “in all forms” — including its alloys — “is being imported into the United States in such quantities and under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States.”

As a result, we’ve rated the claim mostly true.

Background of the proposed tariffs

The request for comment featured a list of several products on which the Commerce Department proposed to impose tariffs. Besides “brass-wind musical instruments and parts and accessories thereof,” the list included fire extinguishers and oxygen tanks.

These imported products needed to be subjected to tariffs because they contained aluminum, steel or copper, the Commerce Department said. All three metals were the target of three separate presidential proclamations in which Trump deemed their importation excessive and a national security threat.

Proclamation 10962 specifically concerned copper “in all forms,” including alloys. The material for brass instruments is an alloy of copper and zinc, which presumably justified their inclusion in the list of imported products worthy of tariffs. The Commerce Department’s request for comment appeared to argue that imposing such tariffs helped protect domestic industries:

As explained in the reports submitted by the Secretary to the President and cited in Proclamations 9704, 9705, and 10962, steel, aluminum, and copper are being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States. Therefore the President ordered adjustments of imports to protect U.S. national security interests by identifying derivative products on which tariffs must be imposed in order to protect the U.S. defense industrial base. The U.S. defense industrial base is critical to protecting U.S. national security interests.

The request for comment also said the Commerce Department would seek to impose 25% tariffs on these products, except for those deemed to be “agricultural equipment,” which would be subject to 15% duties.

By law, the Commerce Department cannot impose this rule before a period ending on Aug. 27, during which it will receive comments on its proposal.

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