Around the World in 128 Days - Naha, Okinawa, Japan - Okinawans and the Battle of Ok

 

Travel Day 53 - February 25, 2024 - 10,733 Steps

The further north we go the colder it gets. It hasn't been this cold since sometime last year.

It sure wasn't looking like this 79 years ago and back 79 years ago is where we are going today.

It's spring training time in Japan of baseball with a game today in this stadium we drove past. Even with the miserable 63 degree and windy weather today here it is far better than the weather up north on Japan's main islands.

Push to turn on, push to turn off. Unfortunately many of the old men on out turn couldn't figure it out, so I ended up turning off a number of spigots they left running. I sure hope I never get old.

Mitsubishi make darn near every thing.

Over in the Ladies, Linda was having fun also taking photos.

Your butt goes toward the high part.

That's more like it. Did you know the number one thing Chinese tourist buy in Okinawa is - drum roll please - toilet seats. No kidding, it's true.

Back in history, the day the Americans invaded Okinawa on 1 April 1945.

Our first stop of the day was the underground Headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Navy.

Down you go until you are some 30 meters underground, which was below the depth to which American bombs and shell would penetrate.

Typical passage way.

It was completely dug in 3 months by hand with picks due the fact it was in dirt and not rock. 

The pick marks are still visible some 79 years later

It is fairly well marked with signs in both Japanese and English

In this room the Japanese Navy Commander took his own life by shooting himself rather than face the disgrace of surrendering to the Americans.

Not the marks on the walls of this room.

The sign explains what took place here.

A number of the other staff officers also committed suicide, though by hand gernades rather than shooting themselves in this room.

Typical Okinawan grave. During the battle Japanese soldiers as well as civilians would use thes gaves as shelter.

Shisa statues, the only things we bought, but if they work like they are supposed to they will kept the bad luck out and the good luck in.

Chery blossoms. Photo by Linda, who else.

The amazing thing isn't that there are so many things grow, it's how small all the fields are.

See what I mean.

Himeyuri students memorial cenotaph and peace museum. One of, if not the, most emotional museums we have ever visited. There were no photographs allowed  in the museum, sorry to say.

The original cenotaph erected in 1946 is the small inscribed stone to the far right. 

The new cenotaph and the opening to cave where the final hospital was located.

There are many natural caves on the island and the Japanese soldiers and Okinawans both used them during the war, albeit for different reasons. As you stand here an look at the entrance which which required ladders to get down to, it is shocking to think that you may be standing on the very spot where one of the girls was killed or wounded after the Japanese told them they were no longer needed and to get out of the cave while intense fighting raged all around.

Peace cranes.

Guide talking to us before we left the bus to visit the site.

Sanshin, the traditional 3 stringed Okinawan instrument. It's what our guide Max was playing in the video I posted in the previous blog.

$253 for this one in the tourist shop.

Another very emotional experience which recounts the horrors the Okinawans faced as the Japanese fought practically to the last man against the overwhelming might of the Americans.

Our group was much smaller than normal. It is sad so many Americans would rather go shopping that to try to understand what took place here in 1945 and why it cost so many lives including well over 100,000 Okinawan civilians who had been indoctrinated by the Japanese to believe the Americans would dismember the men and boys or if the were women or girls, rape them if they were captured alive. We think of all the atrocities committed by the Germans and Soviets , but the Japanese were no better and possibly worse.

There are over 240,000 names inscribed on both sides of these stones as a memorial to all the persons who lost their lives, almost all of them during the battle.

Row on row they stand stretching out of sight.

Quick overview.

The memorial is divided into three sections, the larges by far being for the Okinawans, then the Japanese, with the third section being for those from other countries, the vast majority being the 12,000 plus Americans.

Section by section.

Trying to capture how massive the memorial is.

This scene from the Okinawan section mirrors what we see in Washington D.C. at the Vietnam Memorial. In fact it could have been Linda with me as I looked at my brothers name on the wall. War isn't over when the fighting stops.

Munitions were everywhere on the island as this glass floor in the museum shows. All together the US fired over 2,700,000 shells during the battle that went on for months.

Back on the ship it was a night to go to the Fair. Lind said we should attend, but before it took place,

I don't know if it is the real me in these last two phots or if the lighting was real bad. Some may side towards it being both. Confirming that at times I can be Bad Bob.