For Veteran's Day, we headed to the south end of the island to visit the Peace Memorial Park. We started out by walking through the museum. It was actually very emotional for me to read the plaques and watch videos standing next to Japanese tourists, seeing how the Americans came in and ravaged their island.
Here is a little information on the park.
The Peace Memorial Museum, south of Naha on the main island of Okinawa is the main memorial to the Battle of Okinawa which took place during World War II on Okinawa's main island.
The Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum's aims are to promote peace through the study and research of the deadly events that took place here and which saw the deaths of 240,000 people both civilian and military in the latter days of the Pacific War in 1945.
The Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum is located on a very large site on Mabuni Hill where the Battle of Okinawa came to a bitter end and where the most bloodshed ensued.
The Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum Peace Zone has a number of separate memorials including the Okinawa Peace Hall, a large tower erected in 1978 which holds a 12m-high statue dedicated to world peace.
Nearby is a memorial to Korean citizens killed during the conflict. The National War Dead Peace Mausoleum built in 1970 holds the ashes of over 180,000 people.
The main Peace Memorial Museum displays photographs and objects relating to the Battle of Okinawa.
The Cornerstone of Peace (Flame of Peace) is fed by flames from both Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as a flame from Zamami, where US forces first landed on Okinawa in 1945. The flame is in the center of a circular pond and is where visiting heads of state come to pay their respects to the dead.
The Cornerstone of Peace is a semi-circular avenue of stones engraved with the names of all the dead in the Battle of Okinawa regardless of nationality.
The Memorial Path includes 32 memorial monuments as well as the place where Lieutenant General Ushima committed suicide.
Shawn found a "Capps" on the wall. He did a little research online, but wasn't able to find any information on him.
After walking through the museum and the wall of names, we found that the park was actually made up of many memorials (Memorial Path as stated above).
It was a beautiful park and was so very peaceful. Each memorial was unique and grand. There were so many, that we didn't even get to see them all.
After visiting the park, we headed to Hacksaw Ridge. We watched a kid friendly video on Hacksaw Ridge and who Desmond Doss was the night before so that the kids would know why this was a place of importance. (If you have never watched the Hacksaw Ridge movie, I would highly suggest it). It is now just a park. If you didn't know it was here or what happened here, you would over look it. It stands above a small castle ruins, with a beautiful view of the city.
We also found out about these tunnels where families fled.
It's very sobering to think about how we got to this beautiful island and to think about how much tragedy and bloodshed took place.
