It is the 75^th Okinawa Memorial Day, the day to console the dead, on June 23, 2020. The anniversary ceremony will be held in a far smaller scale due to the epidemic. Let’s think over responsibility of the post-war generations as well as ‘succession of memories’, given that people who experienced the war are obliged to recede from the stage of history.

SUCCESSION OF MEMORIES AND RESPONSIBILITY OF POST-WAR GENERATIONS

The Okinawa government originally mapped out to hold the official service this year at the National Cemetery of War Victims with participation of 16 people due to the outbreak of infectious disease.

Many opinions and criticisms were presented from citizens as well as researchers; ‘the plan does not go along with feeling of Okinawa people who suffer from cruel demise of family members who were caught by the state-led war’, ‘the deaths may be regarded as those of martyrs who contributed to the national cause, with hiding the disastrous costs inflicted on residents’, and etc. Governor of Okinawa Tamaki, who made a self-criticism saying about ‘lack of studying’, and the prefecture authorities decided to have the ceremony as usual in the square of the Peace Memorial Park with participation of some 200 people.

In the vicinity of the National Cemetery of War Victims there erected are many monuments to honor soldiers coming to Okinawa from various prefectures of the country. The epitaphs represent a prevailing version of the August 15 1945 memory seen in the rest of Japan.

After long silence

When we hear of stories from the people who experienced the war, we are overwhelmed by their grief of ‘long years of silence’.

Ms Uehara Tomiko, who was a high school student mobilized by the Himeyuri Troop, said it had took her 30 years to make testimonies. She lost many of her friends on the ruthless trail toward south to seek for refuge. She was unable to visit families of her friends soon after the war, as she was annoyed by feeling of self-responsibility and fear of accusation.

It was 38 years after the war that people could know about mass suicides that had happened in the Chibichiri-gama cave. Though surviving residents are victims they feel in some way they are responsible for the deaths of blood kin and friends, and thus, the post-war era began for them with nothing but being silent.

Mr Komine Masao, who had experienced mass suicides in the Tokashiki Island, decided to testify in 2007 when the Ministry of Education of Japan demanded the school textbook panel to erase a description on the complicity of Japanese military in the mass suicides. He told he had felt that his life had been deleted. Every time before and after he testifies he is unable to sleep and suffers from a feeling of fatigue.

Ms Miyazato Yoko, who survived the mass suicides in the Zamami Island, talks that she has not traveled for a few days with her good friends, for she jumps out of bed, crying out, as she has a nightmare of the battlefield.

Battle of Okinawa from a viewpoint of residents

A narrative of a war front becomes a story of war only when people sincerely listen to and identify it. What is important is literacy of the generations who have not experienced wars to interpret and memorize the historic facts. In Okinawa Prefecture official, broader investigative efforts have been made to compile the post-war history of Okinawa and to inscribe names of the dead on the monument, the Foundation of Peace. What had happened in the war zones has been studied from a perspective of inhabitants.

The greatest lesson has been gained by these enormous labors from the Battle of Okinawa; ‘the military does not defend residents’.

June 23, 2020