Okinawa   沖縄

We rejoined the ship and sailed for OKINAWA, the site of the last horrible fighting in the Pacific War.  We visited the memorials – very depressing.

Near the end of World War Two, Okinawa Honto became the site of one of the war's bloodiest battles, when the US forces invaded and occupied the island. An estimated 200,000 people, including more than 100,000 civilians and 12,500 Americans were killed in the battle, which lasted from April to June 1945.

The main memorial to the Battle of Okinawa is the 

Peace Memorial Park

Other monuments in the park include the "Cornerstone of Peace", a collection of large stone plates with the names of all fallen soldiers and civilians, including Koreans, Taiwanese, Americans and Britons.

Himeyuri monument and museum:

  It commemorates the fate of female high school students, who worked in army field hospitals in caves under horrendous conditions. Most of them did not survive the war approximately 80% of the girls and their teachers perished. Survivors committed suicide in various ways because of fears of systematic rape by US soldiers. Some threw themselves off cliffs

 

  

The island is the southern most of the Ryukyu Chain and has a multi- cultural history.  It was basically Chinese until the mid 19^th Century when the Japanese tool over.  From what we could tell, it does not really wish to be part of Japan and the people would like to get the American bases off the island.

After a day at sea we reached land at Keeling, Taiwan and had a wonderful but altogether too short visit to Taipai.