Emperor Makes Memorial Visit to Okinawa

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako visited Okinawa on June 4th for the third time since they took throne in 2019. Princess Aiko accompanied her parents for her first visit to the island. Giving memorial service to the victims in the Battle of Okinawa, the only ground battle in Japan during the World War II, and hearing about their hardship from the survivors, the royal family reconfirmed history of devastative sacrifice in Okinawa. 

Okinawa lost a quarter of its population in the Battle of Okinawa. In Chibichiri-gama cave in Yomitan village in April 1945, about 140 residents hid themselves in the cave from the United States force invaded on the island. As the people in Okinawa was instructed to kill themselves, rather than being in custody, to serve for maintaining imperial system of Japan, the Okinawans in the cave killed each other. Over the half of 83 victims were children. Those tragic events generated negative sentiment against the Emperor among the people in Okinawa.

 

When retired Emperor Akihito visited Okinawa for the first time as a member of royal family in 1975, members of leftist sect hurled a Molotov cocktail to Akihito when he visited Himeyuri Tower Memorial. In the opening ceremony of National Sports Festival in Okinawa in 1987, an Okinawan pulled down national flag of Japan from a baseball stadium and burnt it down. With memory of post-war occupation by the U.S., those incidents represented disappointment of Okinawa being abandoned by Japan.

 

June has special meaning for Okinawa. It holds annual memorial ceremony on in June 23rd, commemorating the end of major battle in Okinawa in 1945. Naruhito chose this month to have a memorial visit in the year of 80th anniversary from the end of war. They offered flower to the victims in national cemetery, then visited monument of epitaph and museum.

 

The royal family listened to the stories of victim’s families in Okinawa. Not only Naruhito and Masako, but Aiko heard details about the victims, with wishes not to repeat devastating war again. One of the reasons why Naruhito brought Aiko to Okinawa was let her know about history and succeed royal activity to pray for war victims. “I felt preciousness of peace,” said Aiko to a survivor of raid of U.S. force.

 

It was Akihito who built up a concept that praying would be one of the major functions of the Emperor of Japan. Throughout his reign, Akihito continued his journey of comforting lost soul in old battlefield in Japan and some Pacific islands. That tradition was succeeded to Naruhito, who visited Okinawa for seven times since he was called Hironomiya.

 

One of the revisionists in the Liberal Democratic Party, Shoji Nishida, argued in May that Himeyuri Tower Memorial rewrote history. In the time when some conservatives in Japan still try to justify the war effort by imperial Japan, the Emperor’s effort to succeed prayers for war victims may offer Japanese people an opportunity of remembering cruel facts in the war.

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