Okinawa Day 6: Okinawa Prefecture Peace Memorial Museum

Today is Boys' Day!!!  For the last month or so, we have seen carp flags all over Japan.  We have also seen miniature samurai armor on display in anticipation of this day.  Because of Boys' Day, there were thousands of carp flags all over the lawn of the Peace Museum. 

There was also the largest carp flag we had ever seen being flown from a crane. 

We walked through the park and came to the entrance to the Peace Museum.  I asked Kiyoko san if she had been through the museum and she said that she went through it when she was in school. 

At the entrance, there was a plaque that read:

In late March 1945, a fierce battle such as has rarely been seen in history took place on these islands. The "Typhoon of Steel" that lasted for ninety days disfigured mountains, destroyed much of the cultural legacy, and claimed the precious lives of upward of 200,000 people. The Battle of Okinawa was the only ground fighting fought on Japanese soil and was also the largest-scale campaign of the Asia-Pacific War. Even countless Okinawan civilians were fully mobilized.

A significant aspect of the Battle of Okinawa was the great loss of civilian life. At more than 100,000 civilian losses far outnumbered the military death toll. Some were blown apart by shells, some finding themselves in a hopeless situation were driven to suicide, some died of starvation, some succumbed to malaria, while other fell victim to the retreating Japanese troops. Under the most desperate and unimaginable circumstances, Okinawans directly experienced the absurdity of war and atrocities it inevitably brings about.

This war experience is at the very core of what is popularly called the "Okinawan Heart," a resilient yet strong attitude to life that Okinawan people developed as they struggled against the pressures of many years of U. S. military control.

The "Okinawan Heart" is a human response that respects personal dignity above all else, rejects any acts related to war, and truly cherishes culture, which is a supreme expression of humanity. In order that we may mourn for those who perished during the war, pass on to future generations the historic lessons of the Battle of Okinawa, convey our message to the peoples of the world and thereby established, displaying the whole range of the individual war experiences of the people in this prefecture, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum.

We went inside and hit the gift shop first.  I wanted to purchase a book on the Battle of Okinawa.  Each of the kids also got a pair of shisa dogs. 
Kiyoko san refused to go through the museum with us and seemed upset that we were going to go.  She didn't want Mimi to come with us, either.  We told her that we would be a few hours, and we would meet her outside in the park area.  We tried to explain to her that we wanted to teach our children about her island's history, but she was upset and didn't want to hear our reasons for going through the museum.

At the desk where we paid to go in, there was a glass floor showing some shells that had been discovered during the building of this museum.  They left the bombs exactly where they were discovered and built the glass floor so that they could be displayed.

It was pretty awesome to see.  It was a reminder that what we were about to see was real.  Sometimes when you just see pictures of a war, it almost seems unreal and far removed from your reality.  Seeing these shells brought the battle into a reality that was sobering.
Once we entered the actual museum, we were forbidden from taking pictures.  The following pictures of the museum are from the museum's official website. 



In Room 1, titled "Road to the Battle of Okinawa", we read about the events leading up to the Typhoon of Steel.  During the Meiji period, the Japanese government took over the Ryukyu Kingdom.  Up to this point, the islanders had been a very peaceful people and were not prepared to go to war against Japan.  They became a part of Japan and the government worked rapidly to assimilate the native islanders to the ways of the Japanese.  In the schools, the children were taught the Japanese language and it became forbidden to speak any other language.  They also tried to force their Buddhist religion on the people, but that never really happened like they would have liked.  Many parts of the culture of the Ryukyu Kingdom were lost as Japan forced the islanders to assimilate and be faithful subjects of the Japanese emperor.  (Today, Okinawa still has a king and a queen, but Okinawa is subject to the Japanese government and the emperor.)
At this time, within Japan there was a great rush for modernization.  Remember, Emperor Meiji was the one who opened Japan up once again to the world after centuries of being isolated.  They were stunned at the technology that other countries had, such as guns and cannons, and they were in a hurry to bring the Japanese empire up to speed.  A policy and mindset was adopted to "enrich the country with a strong army" so that Japan could invade its neighboring countries.  The national war effort escalated into the Manchurian Incident, the Shina-Japanese War and the Asia-Pacific War, in which Okinawa became the last battle ground of the so-called "15-Year War" that started in 1931.

As we were making our way through this room, Mimi showed up all by herself.  We didn't know what was going on, but kept her with us for a few minutes.  However, after a few minutes, she wanted to go back to her grandma, so Raymond took her out and found Kiyoko san. 

Room 2, The Progress of the Battle:  Here we watched a short movie that described the Battle of Okinawa from the Okinawan people's perspective.  We also studied really cool 3-D maps that outlined the destruction caused by the battle.  The maps were able to show how the battle changed the island's landscape.  There were also items of wartime objects, such as medicinal items, canteens, and some uniforms. 
The Japanese Army and the U.S. forces threw all their might into the Battle of Okinawa, creating the bloodiest battle of the entire World War II.  The U.S. forces indiscriminately bombed the central and southern parts of the island from the air and the sea.  This "Typhoon of Steel" lasted about 3 months, claiming the lives of more than 200,000 civilians and soldiers.
As we walked from Room 2 to Room 3, we passed an entire wall made of carnage from the battlefield.  Caged within wire, we passed a wall formed from boots, Kevlar helmets, canteens, belts, and other items left behind by both the Japanese and the American soldiers. 

Room 3, Battleground of Hell, was a gut-wrenching room to go through.  This is where most of us cried. 
There were large pictures showing the atrocities with which the Okinawan people were forced to endure during the battle.  We saw pictures of children who were naked, starving, and had wounds from the battle staring back at us with haunting eyes.  Another picture showed a woman trying to cook rice over an open fire with complete destruction all around her.

I did find this picture on the internet, and this was one of the pictures found in this part of the museum.  Wrenches at your heart.
When the Japanese troops were cornered at the southern tip of the island and were wiped out, the area turned into an inferno where the islanders and troops fled from one cave to another in a desperate scramble for their lives.  In some caves, Japanese soldiers slaughtered Okinawans or else forced them to commit mass suicide.  Some residents died of starvation.  In this room, they had built "caves,"  each one showing a different scene of some of the things that happened in the caves during the 3 month battle period.  Some were used as "hospitals" for the Japanese soldiers, another "cave" showed an Okinawan family huddled in sheer terror.  Outside of these caves, hell broke out as artillery fire, mortar shells and flame throwers killed Japanese troops and Okinawans in mass numbers.
This was the hardest room to go through in the entire museum. 

Room 4, Personal Testimonies: In this room were written personal testimonies of what actually happened to the civilian victims during the battle.  There were people who by some miracle survived the Battle of Okinawa, and gradually over time they were able to record their experiences so that their testimonies may be passed onto future generations.  These testimonies speak the very truth of history.  All of the testimonies were written in Japanese, so unfortunately, we were not able to read them.  In the back of this room, however, there were booths where we could listen to some personal testimonies in English.  We crowded into a booth and listened to a few personal stories.  It was sad yet fascinating to listen to the stories of the horrors that the Okinawan people endured. 

Room 5, Okinawa--Keystone of the Pacific: This room showed life on the island in the postwar refugee camps, the 27 year military occupation by the U.S., and Okinawa's struggle for independence and peace.  The refugee camps began in 1945.  A few years later, as Cold War tensions rose between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Okinawa was turned into a military base complex.  Land was confiscated to build the bases.  The resentment by the Okinawans were found in the island-wide movement for reversion.  Even now, with the Cold War ended, regional or ethnic violence continue to occur in many parts of the world.  Because of this, the United States is not leaving Okinawa any time soon.  This reminded us of what we had seen on the island thus far during our stay here.  Many Okinawans want the U.S. military to leave the island.  Others say that without the U.S. military the island's economy would be much more dire than it already is. 
The museum stated that it hopes the lessons learned from the Battle of Okinawa will be dispatched to every corner of the world and create peace.
After we left Room 5, we took an elevator up to an observatory.  We got a 360 degree view of the museum's Peace Park, the beach where the U.S. forces landed, and the surrounding area.  We thought about the battle that took place here both on land and the sea.  We thought about the sheer destruction and the thousands upon thousands of lives that were lost on the land that we could view from this observatory deck. 
We had been in the museum for almost 3 hours.  We found Kiyoko san and Mimi at the end of the museum.  She seemed to be in a better mood.  We then headed outside to explore the Peace Park.

The museum is massive!  We didn't realize how big of a building it was while we were going through it.  The park is huge as well.  We could spend an entire day just exploring this park and all of the memorials.  The park is on the top of what is known as Mabuni Hill, which is where the Battle of Okinawa came to a bitter end and where the most bloodshed took place.

The large stone plaque for the Cornerstone of Peace.

Reminiscent of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C., there were walls containing the names of those who died during the Battle of Okinawa.

They were in alphabetical order and organized by country.

We spent a little bit of  time wandering around the walls of names.

Chris noticed this flag next to an American wall, but it was laying on the ground.  I watched him as he reverently bent over and set it up so that it wouldn't fall over again.  A few minutes later, I noticed both Logan and Christopher walking around picking up American flags and pushing them into the ground a little bit so that they would stay upright. 

 

 This is the Flame of Peace. (It wasn't going today for some reason.  Usually there is a flame at the top of the cone.)  It is surrounded by a shallow circular pond.  The flame is fed by flames from both Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as a flame from Zamami, where U.S. forces first landed on Okinawa in 1945. This flame is where visiting heads of state come to pay their respects to the dead.

The family by the pond and the Flame of Peace.

This is a picture of the U.S. forces landing on the beach of Okinawa during WWII.

This is the view (looking left) of the very same beach that we saw from the overview deck near the Flame of Peace. 

Looking right.

Most of the family standing at the historic beach.

There was a trail that one could go down and walk along the sand of the beach, as well as many more smaller memorials to see.  However, Kiyoko san was anxious and didn't want to be at the park at all.  She told us that she had to get Mimi to a birthday party at 4 p.m., so we had to move on.  I knew that she wasn't telling the truth, but it was past lunchtime and we had been on our feet all day.  The kids were hungry and tired.  Physically, they were tired from our morning hike along the cave trail and standing for almost three hours in the museum.  Emotionally, they were spent from seeing and learning about the bloodiest battle of WWII.  I wanted to spend a lot more time here, but the family's empty stomachs and Kiyoko san's need to leave this "haunted area" won out.  We began to walk back to the van.  (I do regret not putting my foot down and insisting that we spend more time here.  Though it will probably never happen, I hope to have the privilege of someday returning to this park and spending the appropriate time exploring all that there is to see.  It would take the better part of an entire day.)

We passed more walls of names as we made our way to the parking lot.

We also passed a few more monuments.  At this park, there are over 50 memorials or monuments from other prefectures or organizations dedicated to the memory of those lives lost during the 90 day battle.

This is a sign for another one, which is below.

I thought this memorial was very beautiful.  It's very Japanese looking.

We paused to take a picture with the throngs of carp flags hung in honor of Boys' Day.  In the background, you can see a tall white tower.  This is the Okinawa Peace Hall, which houses a 12 meter high statue dedicated to world peace.

Another view of the thousands of carp flags as we headed to the parking lot.

I was irritated with Kiyoko san at this point of our day.  Given the places we were going today, I could sympathize that they might be emotionally uncomfortable for her to visit.  However, Ray and I firmly believe that we need to teach our children the lessons of the past so that they can do whatever is in their power to create a better future.  We felt like visiting the places that teach us about the history of the Battle of Okinawa were the very top places to see on this island out of all of the many places to choose from.  It was a miracle and huge blessing that our family was on this island and I wanted to take the opportunity that we had to learn all that we could during our short time here.  I didn't appreciate Kiyoko san trying to make up a story to move us along and miss out on everything that there was to see and learn. 

After we grabbed some lunch, we told her our last place to see today: the Himeyuri Museum.  She was not happy about it.  Another WWII place.  We told her that we wanted to teach the kids about the Battle of Okinawa and her island's history.  She begrudgingly drove us to our next stop.