Yonaha Momoko, a member of the student nurse corps who survived World War Two's Battle of Okinawa, has died at 96. She dedicated much of her life to traveling around Japan and passing on her wartime experience.

Yonaha reportedly died of natural causes Friday at her home in Okinawa Prefecture's Naha City.

Yonaha was mobilized as a member of the Himeyuri Student Corps at age 16 in 1945. She cared for wounded soldiers in an underground field hospital for the now-defunct Imperial Japanese military.

She said she lost a fellow corps member, one year older, to a bombing attack.

Yonaha also said her father and two older sisters visited her at the hospital's entrance and asked her to let them in. But she felt she had to refuse and later they died.

She said her heart ached due to those incidents.

Yonaha moved to Tokyo's neighboring prefecture of Saitama after the war. Shocked to find that people in mainland Japan did not know much about the Battle of Okinawa, she started holding lectures across the country to share her experience.

Yonaha, together with other alumni members, worked hard to collect donations for the construction of the Himeyuri Peace Museum in Okinawa's Itoman City. After she returned to the prefecture in her 70s, she shared her experience with museum visitors until the age of 90.

The head of the museum, Futenma Chokei, said Yonaha conveyed her gloomy war memories in a calm and gentle tone of voice as visitors motionlessly listened.