Battle of Okinawa

This theme covers the command bunkers, airfields and battlefields of the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, together with the memorials and museums that preserve its memory. The Battle of Okinawa (March–June 1945) was the largest ground battle fought on Japanese soil in the Pacific War, and because soldiers and residents were mixed together on a small island, a large share of the dead were civilians — as many as or more than the military dead.

Japan formed the 32nd Army on Okinawa in March 1944 under Lieutenant General Ushijima Mitsuru and mobilised residents to build airfields and positions; U.S. carrier raids on October 10, 1944 burned most of Naha. U.S. forces landed in the Kerama Islands on March 26, 1945 and on the west coast of central Okinawa on April 1. The 32nd Army fought a delaying battle from underground positions around Shuri, to hold off the invasion of the home islands as long as possible, while the Army and Navy flew mass special attack sorties from Kyushu and Taiwan and the battleship Yamato was sunk on April 7 on a one-way surface mission. In late May the headquarters abandoned Shuri and withdrew to Mabuni in the south, and great numbers of sheltering civilians were caught in the fighting that followed. Ushijima killed himself on June 23 (June 22 by some accounts), ending organised resistance, though scattered fighting went on; the formal surrender of Japanese forces in the islands was signed on September 7.

Okinawa Prefecture estimates about 200,000 dead in all: some 28,000 Okinawan soldiers and civilian employees, about 94,000 other residents, about 66,000 Japanese troops from other prefectures, and about 12,500 Americans. Civilians died from shelling, starvation and malaria, and also by being driven from shelters by Japanese troops, killed as suspected spies, and in so-called "group suicides". The degree of military orders or coercion in these deaths has been disputed in textbook screening and litigation, while research and testimony in Okinawa stress the involvement and inducement of the military. Many middle-school boys and girls drafted into units such as the Blood and Iron Student Corps and the Himeyuri Student Corps also died. Okinawa remained under U.S. administration until 1972 and U.S. bases are still concentrated there, so memory of the battle is inseparable from today's base issues.

Under this theme visitors will find underground works such as the 32nd Army headquarters tunnels and the former Navy Underground Headquarters; battlefields such as Kakazu Ridge and the Maeda Escarpment; natural caves (gama) where residents sheltered; and, at Mabuni, the Peace Memorial Park, the Cornerstone of Peace inscribed with more than 240,000 names, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum and the Himeyuri Peace Museum.