Okinawa museum gives historical perspective to U.S. base issue and World War II
Attending a protest is not the only way to gain understanding about the postwar reality of U.S. bases in the southern island prefecture of Okinawa. A museum adjacent to a key U.S. base has become an unlikely place where lessons about the roots of ...
Battle of Okinawa anniversary marked with opposition to U.S. bases, anger over SOFA
Okinawa on Thursday marked 71 years since the end of the battle with opposition to a new U.S. facility and calls to overhaul the SOFA agreement.
Hawaii pig shipment after the war to be memorialized in Okinawa
To remember the story about Japanese immigrants in Hawaii sending a cargo of pigs to Okinawa to help alleviate a food crisis after World War II, a stone monument of porkers will be built in the city of Uruma in March. As Okinawa and Hawaii ...
Prince Akishino, the younger son of Emperor Akihito, attended a gathering with his family in Tokyo on Monday to commemorate the Battle of Okinawa 70 years ago and mourn its victims. His wife, Princess Kiko, and two of their children, Princess Kako and Prince Hisahito, ...
How an old banyan tree kept a WWII soldier alive
The children and grandchildren of a former Imperial Japanese Army soldier visit Ie Island in Okinawa Prefecture by ferry from Okinawa Island every spring.
'Anti-war landowner' stands firm, refuses to sign base lease
Shuden Teruya is known in the city of Okinawa as an "anti-war landowner" and he wouldn't want it any other way. Teruya, 77, owns some 7,000 sq. meters of land within the huge U.S. Kadena Air Base that straddles the city as well as the ...
Elderly Okinawa anti-war storytellers hand over role to younger successors
Yoshiko Shimabukuro ended her career as a storyteller at the Himeyuri Peace Museum in Itoman, Okinawa Prefecture, earlier this year, confident that her younger successors can help visitors understand the misery of war and importance of anti-war efforts. The museum opened in 1989 in dedication ...
Okinawa bears war scars 70 years on
Toshie Asato still regrets that she could not save the life of her 9-month-old baby in the closing days of World War II 70 years ago. The 94-year-old Okinawan left her home in the village of Kitanakagusuku in the central part of Okinawa island in ...
The suffering of Okinawans continues 70 years after the Battle of Okinawa ended.
Wartime Okinawa student nurse recalls terror of battle, urges youth to resist militarism
A former member of an Imperial Japanese Army nursing unit that was made up of female students spoke to school pupils recently about her fears that Japan could again become involved in armed conflict. "If this country starts moving away from peace, I want you ...
Survivor recalls Battle of Okinawa horrors
Eiki Ishikawa was terrified of the heavy U.S. artillery fire whenever he went out to dig for potatoes during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Then in ninth grade, Ishikawa was one of the male students aged 14 to 19 who were mobilized by the ...
