TOKYO: Okinawa marked the 80th anniversary of the end of one of the harshest battles of World War II fought on the southern island.
With global tensions escalating, its governor said on Monday it is the Okinawan “mission” to keep telling the tragic history and its impact today.
The Battle of Okinawa killed a quarter of the island’s population, leading to a 27-year US occupation and a heavy American troop presence to date.
Monday’s memorial comes one day after US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, adding to a sense of uncertainty on the island about the heavy American military presence and in its remote islands, already worried about getting embroiled in a potential conflict in Taiwan.
Gov. Denny Tamaki, noting the escalating global conflicts and nuclear threats, made a resolve to contribute to global peace studies, disarmament and the preservation of war remains. “It is our mission, as those living in the present, to preserve and pass on the reality and lessons to future generations.”
Fierce battle and civilian deaths
US troops landed on the main Okinawa island on April 1, 1945, beginning a battle in their push toward mainland Japan.
The Battle of Okinawa lasted nearly three months, killing some 200,000 people — about 12,000 Americans and more than 188,000 Japanese, half of them Okinawan civilians including students and victims forced into mass suicides by Japan’s military.
Okinawa was sacrificed by Japan’s Imperial Army to defend the mainland, historians say. The island group remained under US occupation until its reversion in 1972, two decades longer than most of Japan.
Monday’s memorial was held at the Mabuni Hill in Itoman City, where the remains of most of the war dead reside.
Remembering the tragedy
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was in a hot seat when he attended Monday’s ceremony. Weeks earlier, one of his ruling party lawmakers Shoji Nishida, known for whitewashing Japan’s wartime atrocities, denounced an inscription on a famous cenotaph dedicated to students as “rewriting history” by portraying the Japanese army as having caused their deaths, while Americans liberated Okinawa. Nishida also called Okinawa’s history education “a mess.”
His remark triggered an uproar in Okinawa, forcing Ishiba days later to apologize to the island’s governor, who had criticized the remark as outrageous and distorting history.
The Himeyuri Cenotaph commemorates student nurses who were abandoned near the end of the battle and killed, some in group suicides with teachers. Japan’s wartime military told the people never to surrender to the enemy, or die.
Nishida’s remarks add to concerns about the whitewashing of Japan’s embarrassing wartime past as memories of the tragedy fade and ignorance about the suffering grows.
Ishiba, at Monday’s memorial, said Japan’s peace and prosperity is built on the sacrifices of Okinawa’s history of hardship and that it is the government’s responsibility to “devote ourselves to achieve a peaceful and prosperous Okinawa.”
Postwar years and growing fear
Okinawa remained under US occupation from 1945 until the 1972 reversion to Japan. The US military maintains a heavy presence there due to Okinawa’s strategic importance for security in the Pacific. Their presence serves not only to help defend Japan but also for missions elsewhere, including in the South China Sea and the Middle East.
Private properties were confiscated to build US bases, and the base-dependent economy has hampered the growth of local industry.
Fear of a Taiwan conflict rekindles bitter memories of the Battle of Okinawa. Historians and many residents say Okinawa was used as a pawn to save mainland Japan.
There are also ancient tensions between Okinawa and the Japanese mainland, which annexed the islands, formerly the independent kingdom of the Ryukus, in 1879.
Burden of history
Okinawa remains home to the majority of about 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan under a bilateral security pact. The island, which accounts for only 0.6 percent of Japanese land, hosts 70 percent of US military facilities.
Even 53 years after its reversion to Japan, Okinawa is burdened with the heavy US presence and faces noise, pollution, aircraft accidents and crime related to American troops, the governor said.
Nearly 2,000 tons of unexploded US bombs remain in Okinawa, with some regularly dug up. A recent explosion at a storage site at a US military base caused minor injuries to four Japanese soldiers.
Remains of hundreds of war dead are still unrecovered on Okinawa, as the government’s search and identification effort is slow to make progress.
Okinawa marks 80 years since end of one of harshest WWII battles with pledge to share tragic history
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Okinawa marks 80 years since end of one of harshest WWII battles with pledge to share tragic history
- The Battle of Okinawa killed a quarter of the island’s population, leading to a 27-year US occupation and a heavy American troop presence to date
Ukraine marks four years since Russian invasion
- Tuesday’s anniversary is expected to see the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, in Kyiv to mark the occasion
KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine was on Tuesday marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with a show of solidarity from its staunchest allies and no immediate end in sight to Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
Tens of thousands of lives have been lost since the Kremlin ordered troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, confident of a quick victory but not expecting the fierce resistance that followed.
The worldwide fallout of the war has been immense, with many European countries increasing their own defense spending in anticipation of a possible confrontation of their own with Russia.
But diplomatic talks between the two sides, relaunched last year by the United States, have so far failed to halt the fighting, which has devastated Ukraine and left it facing the mammoth task — and bill — of reconstruction.
Tuesday’s anniversary is expected to see the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, in Kyiv to mark the occasion.
Both said they would take part in a “commemoration ceremony” and visit the site of a Ukrainian energy facility damaged by Russian strikes before attending a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
They are also due to take part in a videoconference meeting with Kyiv’s allies — the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” which includes Britain, France and Germany.
- Impasse -
Russia, which currently occupies nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, bombs civilian areas and infrastructure on a daily basis.
The Russian bombardment has sparked the worst energy crisis since the start of the invasion, during a bitter winter.
Kyiv’s Western allies have slapped heavy sanctions on Moscow, forcing it to redirect its key oil exports toward new markets, particularly in Asia.
Despite heavy losses, Russian troops have in recent months advanced slowly on the frontline, particularly in the eastern Donbas region, which has been the epicenter of the bloody fighting and which Moscow wants to annex.
US-brokered talks are ongoing, with Zelensky unwavering in his demands for security guarantees from Washington before any talk of “compromise,” including on territory, with Russia.
Russia, though, has rejected Ukrainian proposals for the deployment of European troops in Ukraine after any ceasefire deal.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that he will pursue his objectives by force if diplomacy fails.
- Reconstruction -
The grinding four-year war has devastated Ukraine, which even before the fighting was one of the poorest countries in Europe.
According to a joint World Bank, European Union and United Nations report with Kyiv, published on Monday, the cost of post-war reconstruction is estimated at around $558 billion over the next decade.
Russia justified sending troops into Ukraine to prevent Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO, arguing that Kyiv’s membership of the transatlantic alliance would threaten its own security.
On Monday, during a medal ceremony to mark “Defenders of the Fatherland Day,” Putin insisted that his soldiers were defending Russia’s “borders” in Ukraine, to ensure “strategic parity” between powers and fight for the country’s “future.”
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, for its part considers the war to be a resurgence of Russian imperialism aimed at subjugating the Ukrainian people.
In an interview with the BBC broadcast on Sunday, Zelensky said he believed Putin had “already started” World War III.
“Russia wants to impose on the world a different way of life and change the lives people have chosen for themselves,” he told the British public broadcaster.
