We started the day bright and early boarding a bus to make our way to the Himeyuri Museum. We rode the bus about 45 minutes south of Naha city through a rural area passing a landscape of fields of sugar cane and banana groves sprinkled with concrete homes. The museum is located at the sight of what was an all-girls Normal school (school for teacher training) and High school. 1,150 girls aged 13-19 studied at this location prior to the war’s entrance in Okinawa. 

Upon arriving at the museum we first paid our respects to the students whose lives were lost in the Battle of Okinawa, laying flowers at the memorial site which is the place of the cave the students sought refuge in during the first firebombings on the island. Upon entering the museum we were gathered in the multipurpose hall where we were shown a short video that told the story of the students and their plight during the Battle of Okinawa.

The first exhibit room displayed student life before the war and before the Battle of Okinawa. The students were trained to become military girls and help the war effort instead of their usual studies, in large part due to the militarization that characterized society and education at the time forming what was called the Himeyuri Student Corps. This was common practice in Japan at the time of the war as students all over the nation were mobilized to the battlefield; boys aged 14-19 served as low-ranking privates and girls for nursing activities. Although there was no legal basis to support mobilizing students to the battlefield it continued throughout the war. For a long time, the students felt that the war was far away from them but on October 10, 1944 firebombs by the Americans brought the war to their doorstep. On January 22, 1945, the school itself was targeted by these bombings and soon on March 23 the principal was given orders to mobilize 240 of the students to serve the country as nursing aids at the Okinawa Army Hospital. This hospital was made of 40 dug-out caves connected by a series of tunnels about 5km from the school's campus. On April 1st, American soldiers made ground further exposing the students to the gruesome realities of the war. Wounded soldiers filled the caves overwhelmingly as the students did all they could to perform surgeries and amputations on begging soldiers in putrid conditions carrying out bodies and body parts from the caves. At first, they did all they could to bury the dead respectfully but soon had to resort to dropping bodies into pits created by the bombs as there were too many deaths. The students did not imagine that the hospital would be a target of the American military but it had soon become a battlefield and the students were at risk every moment.

Moving to the second exhibit room you have to walk through a cave-like hallway where on display are the story and experiences of the students in the hospital caves and the third exhibit room discussed the deactivation order. The students struggled to survive and soon could hardly perform their duties. As the American forces grew closer the girls were ordered to leave on June 18th as a deactivation order was given. They were prompted by their teacher to not rush into suicide, save themselves, and do their best to survive, but there was nowhere for them to go. Still, they were ordered from the caves having to abandon wounded soldiers and friends. They were told they these wounded would be carried out by truck, although this was a lie. The individuals left behind were given poisoned milk, unbeknownst to them, as they were abandoned in the cave to die in agony. As the students fled reluctantly and those left behind suffered poison, the cave itself was bombed. 136 of the 240 students originally mobilized from the Himeyuri girls school had died after the deactivation order was given, along with 91 others, including students and teachers.

Forced suicide and the choice to commit suicide in mass heavily impacted the trauma of the Battle of Okinawa. Soldiers, civilians, and students alike were convinced that surrender was worse than death and that the highest honor was to die in the name of the emperor who was revered as a living god. Military victory was the top priority of the nation and students as young as elementary-aged were taught this through careful control of their education, everyday lives, economic activity, and anti-war repression. Heroic stories of soldiers filled their textbooks and military drills, survival training, and volunteer service to make up for labor shortages filled their days. The Japanese army requested that civilians and students engage in suicide attacks (Tokko) against the American military as well. On June 22, 1945, the Patriotic Corps Law was passed expanding the mobilization of civilians and students. The quote displayed read “Death and no surrender for all Japanese.” The students and civilians were taught that U.S. soldiers would “tear them limb from limb, rape, and kill” them if they surrendered. Those who survived their escape from the hospital and were later captured by American soldiers were shocked to find that this was not the case and they expressed that they wish that their friends had also survived giving the inclination that they had died in some vain.

The Battle of Okinawa lasted 90 days, three whole months. The Japanese strategy of this battle was to buy time to avoid enemy attack on the mainland which the Japanese army did not let civilians of Okinawa know. This made it clear that the people of Okinawa were seen as expendable in their efforts. The people of Okinawa though, were at the time convinced the Japanese army would come to their defense, which they did not. This is extremely recognized in the intentioned prolonged length of the battle where 200,000 civilians, a quarter of the island's population, died.

Many of the survivors of the Himeyumi school still became teachers. With many children who were orphaned after the battle, they saw their duty to help heal the younger generation and encourage future peace and hope. The memorial we paid tribute to upon our entrance to the museum was established a year after the end of the war and on June 23, 1989, the museum opened next to it as a place to visit and pray for peace. Something many wish for as you can see from the thousands of origami cranes strung in colorful groups upon entering the museum. The Japanese belief is that 1,000 folded paper cranes grant a wish. Since the end of the war, it has been a tradition for that wish to be for peace.

Unfortunately, I took too much time in the first three areas of the museum and had to run out passed the last two in order to meet the group for our next destination; The Okinawa Peace Memorial Park and Museum where the theme of war and peace continued.

The exhibits in this museum discussed many more aspects of WWII, prefacing the events leading up to the war that exacerbated the lasting impact on Okinawa, Japan, and the other colonies and countries involved. The exhibits began with the 1879 first Ryukyu Disposition and other Japanese imperialist endeavors including the Manchurian Incident, the China War, the annexation of Korea, impacts of the world economic crisis, the southern expansionist policy, the 1940 Treaty of Commerce, the rise of fascism in Europe, and forced assimilation of Japanese territories. All these combined create a holistic narrative not only of the impact of the war and this history on Okinawa and Japan but all those involved and whose lives were lost. The second exhibit room of the museum was designed in an immersive fashion with broken household items, ruins all around, and broken and busted soldier helmets cracked by bullets and age. Figures that represent the Japanese military and the American military create a daunting presence. As you enter the third area you are met with images of the dead- civilians, women, children and men, soldiers and non-soldier alike. Images of tortured, burned, rotting, mangled, and brutalized bodies, and tattered old clothes, fill the dark space. It was difficult but necessary to see in order to understand the engrained trauma that still impacts generations today. In the next room, you are able to watch and listen to testimonials and eyewitness accounts. This was mostly in Japanese and I could not bare to hear them after the last room myself. Following the testimonials you walk into a green military tent meant to depict the refugee camps many Okinawans found themselves in. The museum moves into the narratives of the military occupation of Okinawa and the restructured American ethnocentric and oppressive changes the people had to face because of this. Surrounded by tall fences with barbed wire you move through a space built for the American occupiers feeling caged. One can’t help but acknowledge that this is how the locals feel as these fenced borders restricted them from their homelands in many obvious and nuanced ways. The strong Westernized influence on the “new” Okinawa very much mimicked 1950s America and was not built for the comfort or familiarity of the locals. The exhibits end in this area as the displays discuss land acquisition and confiscation for the bases which occupy the islands today.

Upon exiting the museum you are met with a beautiful view of the ocean meant to wash you with peace after experiencing the harsh realities of this history. Outside the museum on the park grounds, you see the fountain “The Eternal Flame” and miles of zigzagged walls that seem to go on forever commemorating and memorializing the names of the lives lost during the war including Okinawans, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and American casualties.

After these very sombering museum experiences, we boarded the bus and made our way to lunch at a small cafe on a cliff overlooking the ocean where we enjoyed a delicious salad bar and taco rice.

When we finished lunch we ended our journey at a relaxing beach to play in the sun and observe the tide pools at low tide where we were able to relieve some of our negative, sad, and overwhelming feelings from the day. By the time we made our way back to the hotel where we are staying, we were exhausted, emotionally and physically.