war, peace and protest
(the history they don't tell you about at newcomers' orientation or high school history books)
With its perpetual flame for peace and slabs of granite inscribed with the names of the more than 241,000 people who died on all sides during the Battle of Okinawa, the Okinawa Peace Memorial Park in Mabuni is the island’s most famous monument - but also one of its most controversial. Critics argue that it whitewashes responsibility for the war by listing the innocent dead alongside the soldiers who killed them; moreover, in 1999, prefectural officials altered displays at the park’s museum to downplay atrocities committed against islanders by the Japanese military. Norimatsu and McCormack also note how President Bill Clinton in 2000 used his visit to the park not to promote peace but to justify the Pentagon’s ongoing presence on the island.
Fortunately for visitors looking for alternative - and less sanitized - memorials, there are over 400 other monuments to war and peace on Okinawa. Many of these pull no punches in chronicling civilians’ suffering during World War Two - as well as cataloguing post-war injustices committed by the U.S. authorities and islanders’ ongoing dedication to nonviolent civil disobedience.
The best place to start a tour of these lesser-known museums is the House of Nuchi du Takara on Iejima Island, the birthplace of Okinawa’s peace movement. Upon entering, visitors are confronted with a small set of bloodstained clothes and the description that they belonged to an Okinawan child stabbed by Japanese troops to silence it when U.S. soldiers were in the vicinity. The museum was founded by Ahagon Shoko - the Gandhi of Okinawa - and other displays record the postwar “Bayonets and Bulldozers” period when, in the 1950s, the Pentagon violently seized farmers’ land to turn the island into a bombing range. Exhibits include photographs of islanders’ homes razed by U.S. troops and several dummy nuclear bombs dropped on the island during Cold War training drills.
Due to the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the storage of nuclear weapons on Okinawa has long been a sore point in Japan - to which the Pentagon responds with blanket neither-confirm-nor-deny statements. The Monument to World Peace in Onna village helps to lift the veil on this secret history. Housed within a former nuclear missile silo built by the U.S. in the early 1960s, the museum details the presence of more than 1200 atomic devices on Okinawa prior to its reversion to Japan in 1972. Among its exhibits is a display based on Jon Mitchell’s interviews with former U.S. nuclear technicians stationed on the island during the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to the veterans, the presence of U.S. weapons of mass destruction turned Okinawa into a target; furthermore, Pentagon plans to launch an atomic attack on China at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis would have plunged the entire region into war.
Further south, Yomitan village is home to Okinawa’s most famous sculptor, Kinjo Minoru, and dotted among the sugarcane fields are many of his statues which deal with historical events that some in the current Japanese government would rather forget. One statue - Han no Hi - depicts the suffering of Korean labourers brought forcibly to Okinawa during the war to work for the Japanese military. Another at Chibichirigama cave commemorates the forced suicide of 83 Okinawans in April 1945; this memorial struck such a nerve with Japanese far-rightists that they attempted to destroy it in 1987. Today it has been rebuilt behind protective bars.
To the east, within the grounds of Miyamori Elementary School in Uruma City, there is a reminder of why many Okinawans protest so strongly against the military presence on their island. On June 30 1959, as the pupils sat down for their daily milk break, an F-100 fighter jet plowed into the school killing 18 children and adults. The American pilot parachuted to safety. A simple stone memorial listing those who died stands at the scene of the crash - permission to visit can be obtained from the school office.
Proof of the ongoing risks of operating military hardware within crowded civilian communities is the charred tree standing on the campus of Okinawa International University, Ginowan City. Damaged in the August 2004 helicopter crash, today it is the scene of annual memorial services in which local residents call for the closure of the adjacent MCAS Futenma base - in 2003 dubbed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the most dangerous in the world.
The Okinawan peace memorial that is most difficult to access is also the most inspirational. Sited a 3-hour drive from Naha in the northern Yambaru jungles, the stone monument in Ada village pays tribute to the hundreds of local villagers who, in 1971, blocked USMC live-fire exercises in the area.20 Following their lengthy sit-in at the heavy gun emplacements and target areas, residents eventually forced the military to abandon its drills. Today a large memorial near the scene immortalizes their victory - Japan’s only monument to the power of people’s protest.
Fortunately for visitors looking for alternative - and less sanitized - memorials, there are over 400 other monuments to war and peace on Okinawa. Many of these pull no punches in chronicling civilians’ suffering during World War Two - as well as cataloguing post-war injustices committed by the U.S. authorities and islanders’ ongoing dedication to nonviolent civil disobedience.
The best place to start a tour of these lesser-known museums is the House of Nuchi du Takara on Iejima Island, the birthplace of Okinawa’s peace movement. Upon entering, visitors are confronted with a small set of bloodstained clothes and the description that they belonged to an Okinawan child stabbed by Japanese troops to silence it when U.S. soldiers were in the vicinity. The museum was founded by Ahagon Shoko - the Gandhi of Okinawa - and other displays record the postwar “Bayonets and Bulldozers” period when, in the 1950s, the Pentagon violently seized farmers’ land to turn the island into a bombing range. Exhibits include photographs of islanders’ homes razed by U.S. troops and several dummy nuclear bombs dropped on the island during Cold War training drills.
Due to the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the storage of nuclear weapons on Okinawa has long been a sore point in Japan - to which the Pentagon responds with blanket neither-confirm-nor-deny statements. The Monument to World Peace in Onna village helps to lift the veil on this secret history. Housed within a former nuclear missile silo built by the U.S. in the early 1960s, the museum details the presence of more than 1200 atomic devices on Okinawa prior to its reversion to Japan in 1972. Among its exhibits is a display based on Jon Mitchell’s interviews with former U.S. nuclear technicians stationed on the island during the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to the veterans, the presence of U.S. weapons of mass destruction turned Okinawa into a target; furthermore, Pentagon plans to launch an atomic attack on China at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis would have plunged the entire region into war.
Further south, Yomitan village is home to Okinawa’s most famous sculptor, Kinjo Minoru, and dotted among the sugarcane fields are many of his statues which deal with historical events that some in the current Japanese government would rather forget. One statue - Han no Hi - depicts the suffering of Korean labourers brought forcibly to Okinawa during the war to work for the Japanese military. Another at Chibichirigama cave commemorates the forced suicide of 83 Okinawans in April 1945; this memorial struck such a nerve with Japanese far-rightists that they attempted to destroy it in 1987. Today it has been rebuilt behind protective bars.
To the east, within the grounds of Miyamori Elementary School in Uruma City, there is a reminder of why many Okinawans protest so strongly against the military presence on their island. On June 30 1959, as the pupils sat down for their daily milk break, an F-100 fighter jet plowed into the school killing 18 children and adults. The American pilot parachuted to safety. A simple stone memorial listing those who died stands at the scene of the crash - permission to visit can be obtained from the school office.
Proof of the ongoing risks of operating military hardware within crowded civilian communities is the charred tree standing on the campus of Okinawa International University, Ginowan City. Damaged in the August 2004 helicopter crash, today it is the scene of annual memorial services in which local residents call for the closure of the adjacent MCAS Futenma base - in 2003 dubbed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the most dangerous in the world.
The Okinawan peace memorial that is most difficult to access is also the most inspirational. Sited a 3-hour drive from Naha in the northern Yambaru jungles, the stone monument in Ada village pays tribute to the hundreds of local villagers who, in 1971, blocked USMC live-fire exercises in the area.20 Following their lengthy sit-in at the heavy gun emplacements and target areas, residents eventually forced the military to abandon its drills. Today a large memorial near the scene immortalizes their victory - Japan’s only monument to the power of people’s protest.
View Okinawan Memorials to War, Peace and Protest in a larger map