Peace Prayer Park

After resting from Friday's adventure of babysitting 7 kids for 13 hours - a long story which is best not told in detail, the picture speaks a thousand words...

Emmy and London's room at the end of the day...

Anyways, we took it easy Saturday morning, but were ready for adventure in the afternoon so Stevie suggested going to the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum - otherwise known as Peace Prayer Park.  This is a museum and memorial set up on the southern end of the island and dedicated to those involved in the Battle of Okinawa during World War II.  I've learned a lot about that battle since living here, mainly because it is why the US military has so many bases here.  It was a horrendous battle, the only battle fought on Japanese soil, and what prompted the US to ultimately drop the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There was a tremendous number of lives lost during the battle including many, many civilians.  If you ever want to read an interesting book, I suggest reading The Girl with the White Flag by Tomika Higa.  She was an Okinawan girl who went through the Battle of Okinawa and it is a powerful, informative and moving story.

So the Peace Prayer Park is a memorial to this battle and also is meant to be a statement for peace.  It's idyllically situated on the side of a cliff with rows and rows of black granite tablets, similar to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, etched with the names of those who lost their lives in the battle including Okinawan civilians, Japanese soldiers, and American soldiers. 

At the far end of the walk lies an eternal flame in the center of a fountain. 

Emmy and her friend Lydia who went with us.

Beyond the flame are the cliffs and ocean.

There is also a museum divided into four rooms.  The first room chronicles the events leading up to the battle (with a slight Okinawan-bend to the facts).  The second has reconstructed houses and castle walls  destroyed by the fire fight along with movies of footage shot during and after the battle.  The third wall had some pretty graphic photographs of the atrocities of the war (Cannon told me he thought there were some inappropriate pictures for he and London to see) and included a mock cave with refugees hiding inside.  Because of the geological formation of this island, there are lots and lots of natural caves which the Okinawans and Japanese used for shelter.  The fourth room showed post-war life, which of course highlighted the presence of the US military.  I found it funny that there were pictures of military housing proving that the places we live in look the same in 2010 as they did in 1945!

Was this our house in 1945?

Mock military gate - keeping the Japanese out of their own land.

While Stevie and I had the boys in the museum, Emmy stayed downstairs with our neighbor, Liz and her little girl, Lydia.  Here's Emmy standing next to the chains of origami cranes.  I believe each chain has 1,000 origami birds which are supposed to stand for peace.

A rare family photo!