I went to Okinawa with my class (2ねんせい…junior class) for 4 days in November. It was so amazing, but also very expensive! We left bright and early(7 am!) on the FREEZING morning of November 10. Everyone met at the train station, then we loaded onto 6 buses(one for each homeroom) and drove 1 hour to Fukushima Airport. From Fukushima, we flew to Naha, the “capital” of the Okinawan islands.
From the airport in Naha, we went to the Okinawa Prefecture Peace Memorial Museum. It’s a memorial/museum about WWII and the battles fought in Okinawa. It was an incredibly emotional place….there were videos, amazing exhibits and poems/calligraphy made by survivors/victims of the war. The loss of life, land and resources was incredible….I didn’t stand a chance of making it through that museum without crying. After the museum, we went outside and took homeroom pictures. Then we walked through the memorial. It’s somewhat like the Vietnam War memorial…there are monuments for soldiers of every nationality who died in the war in Okinawa. Japanese, British, American, German…there were so many. Rows and rows of monuments…oh, it was so sad!!
After the Peace Museum, we went to the Okinawa Himeyuri Peace Prayer Memorial Park (woah, that’s a mouthful! It’s simply Okinawa-no-to in Japanese). It’s devoted to the girls/women of the Himeyuri troop who served in WWII in Okinawa. 219 of those who served from the Himeyuri troop died. Please go read the story, I can do it no justice. It’s such a beautiful, terribly tragic story. That museum was so sad….I don’t think anyone left with dry eyes. I was okay until I saw one of the boys from my homeroom crying, then I lost it. It was so sad. I’m actually crying just thinking about it.
We went back to Naha and had a few minutes to buy some souveniors, then we went to our hotel. We checked into the rooms and had dinner, then they let us wander around 国際通り (International Street), the main street in Naha, for a few hours. I walked around with my roommates and we went to a few shops, I bought a lot of souveniors! Then we went back to the hotel and went to sleep. I’m so grateful that I got to go to Okinawa, because many Japanese never even have the chance to go there! It’s so expensive to fly from the main islands of Japan, because Okinawa is actually closer to Taiwan than Japan… so I am very happy that I had this opportunity!!
It looks like a beautiful place.