Okinawa Peace Memorial Park
The Okinawa Peace Memorial Park, situated on Mabuni Hill, the site where the Battle of Okinawa ended, was created to mourn the loss of close to a quarter of a million people. A 12-meter-high lacquer Buddha, a symbol of peace, can be seen in the the Okinawa Peace Hall, as can an art museum and a series of pictures titled "War and Peace.” One of the key features of the park is the Cornerstone of Peace inscribed with the names of some 200,000 individuals, including civilians and Japanese and foreign soldiers, who lost their lives in the Battle of Okinawa. The concept of the stone monuments is to remember those who died and to pray for them, to share lessons learned from war and to provide a place for meditation and learning. The vast park is also home to the Peace Memorial Museum, which exhibits testimonials of survivors of the war, a meditation forest and a peace bell.
Himeyuri Memorial Tower
The Battle of Okinawa lasted approximately 3 months in 1945. Himeyuri Peace Museum commemorates the 227 students and teachers who died in the battle. In March 1945, 222 female students and 18 teachers were inducted into the Japanese Army to tend to the sick, carry food and water to the troops, and bury the dead. The girls came to be called the "Himeyuri Student Corps" after the war because the school's nickname was "Himeyuri". With the situation worsening day by day, the group withdrew to the southern part of the main island of Okinawa (Itoman City) on May 25. On June 18th, the students and teachers were suddenly given an order to disband by the Japanese military. In the early morning of the following day, one of the shelters where they were hiding was attacked, and 42 of the 50 Himeyuri teachers and students in the shelter were killed. Of the 240 members of the Himeyuri, 136 lost their lives in the Battle of Okinawa.
Naval Underground Headquarters
The Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters, or ‘Kaigungo’, is a tunnel complex, built in 1944 during the Battle of Okinawa. Roughly 20 metres deep and 450 metres long, the tunnels served as the headquarters of the Japanese Navy, and an underground air-raid shelter. Some 4,000 soldiers lived, worked, and hid here, enduring bombardments from American forces, until the final surrender and the end of the war.
