Little did I know that in order to understand Ryukyuan culture today, you can’t not learn about WWII and its effect on this little island. This reality hit me smack in the face when, after about an hour on the island, my new friend and cultural guide Tsugiko informed me that her mother had been a victim and castaway as a consequence of a US ship bombing a boat full of kids. Floored as I was by this information (”Um. I’m sorry… nice to meet you?”) it became a familiar story as I spent more and more time with Tsugiko, and asked her to elaborate on the details.

Just before the invasion of Okinawa, in 1944, it was decided to… export?… school children and old people who were too young or infirm to fight. These people were sent off in boats destined for somewhere safe, like mainland Japan. Tsugiko’s mother was a 9 year old schoolgirl on one of these boats, the Tsushima-maru.

Very few survived the sinking of the boat, but Tsugiko’s mother was one of the lucky few who found something to cling to on the rough seas (there was also a typhoon passing through; had I mentioned that?). She and her raftmates floated on the open sea for a week before drifting to one of the many uninhabited islands in the Okinawan archipelago. Once on land again, the castaways had trouble finding fresh water on such a small island. Tsugiko’s mother, who had grown up in a sparsely populated part of the island, knew how and where to find water by digging under the sand.

After flagging down a passing fisherman, these survivors were able to return to Okinawa, only to go into hiding as the American invasion began. Because more boats were leaving with other evacuees, the survivors were forbidden to share their story as a matter of national security.

Wow.

These days Okinawa is pretty distinctly demarcated. The war memorials tend to be in the south, where a majority of the Ryukyuan populace live. The center of the island is filled with Americans as this is where a majority of the US military bases are located. And the northern part of the island is mountainous and wild with greenery. Life up there is rugged, rural, and sparsely populated.

Tsugiko described how the populated south and the sparsely populated north played out during the war. Japanese soldiers from the mainland concentrated their numbers in Southern Okinawa, as this is where they expected US soldiers to land. They were wrong. American soldiers came from the middle of this long thin island, and sent separate forces north and south to conquer the island. The American soldiers who went to the north found mostly farm folk and secured that land quickly and with relatively little bloodshed. But to the south… here there was a dangerous concentration of Japanese soldiers, as well as Ryukyuan civilians. The Japanese war ethic is to never give up, never surrender, and the native Ryukyuan populace were browbeaten with this ideology as well. This led to an extensive and bloody battle, as both Japanese soldiers and Ryukyuan civilians were driven farther and farther south. People jumped off the cliffs on the southern edge of the island, because they had nowhere else to go, and they believed surrender to be inexcusable. Tsugiko says that accounts of the battle describe so many ships on the sea, that it seemed possible to walk across from boat deck to boat deck all the way to China. Think about that image for a second.

Chris and I found ourselves in southern Okinawa after this history lesson, and we decided to check out the peace park on the cliffs that memorializes all who died as a consequence of that battle.

The most publicized aspect of the park is a huge memorial, the Cornerstone of Peace, which strives to list and acknowledge everyone who died in the Battle of Okinawa, regardless of country of origin or status (soldier or civilian). Reflective black stones swimming in kanji stair-step across a large field, order in tribute to chaos. Another section of the park contains memorials from every prefecture in Japan and then some. Over 50 monuments form a huge graveyard of sorts, a testimonial to the loss of battle.

We wandered over to the cliffs. I imagined people throwing themselves off these cliffs, onto the jagged rocks below, into the waves dashing themselves against the rough stone.

We found an unpublicized fissure in the rock, huge, several stories tall, several feet wide. Whether this was done naturally, through the force of an explosion, or the force of tourism, I don’t know. We progressed through the overgrowth, amongst roughly shattered rocks down to the coast below. The water, while crystalline and blue around other parts of the island, was stagnant here in parts, slimy and green in others. As if this place itself has a rotten memory that it’s still trying to purge.

Or perhaps that’s just my imagination.

As Tsugiko drove us around Okinawa, a flood of stories continued to issue forth from her, as every cave and boulder seemed to have a story behind it.

Here is a cave where Ryukyuan people collected together, hid in fear. These people were convinced that they had to kill themselves if the American army drew near. One man among them, however, had studied abroad in Hawaii, had met Americans, and could personally testify that Americans were not unknowable demons, but were people who would understand their humanitarian plight. He went out to negotiate with the soldiers when they came, with the English he had procured during his studies in Hawaii. That was a lucky group, a group who lived.

Very nearby was another cave, in similar circumstances, with civilians huddled, ready to kill themselves as soldiers approached. This group did not contain a world traveler with stories of understanding abroad. This group died.

You know, sometimes we JETs, we pooh-pooh the internationalization aspect of our job. How important is it really that I brought enchiladas or Ghanaian dance to the people of Noshiro? And then I hear a story like this. I can only hope one day to be that foreigner that some random person met, that person who, through personal experience, demonstrates that Foreign isn’t scary or evil or inaccessible. Foreign is closer and more knowable than any of us realize.

That’s my purpose. That’s why I’m here.

Of course, there’s all the uniquely Okinawan things you’ll find there: umibudou, awamori, chanpuru, gusuku, ryukyu, utaki, tebichi, habu, togyu, sanshin, bashofu, bingata, mozuku, rafute, beniimo, eisa and shisa.

But several other general-use words adhered themselves to my long-term memory as a consequence of the trip, including: hade (gaudy), kaesu (to return, as in a car), yakeshimashita (sunburned), kokusai (international), suizokukan (aquarium), yatai (a food stall without walls), yakimono (pottery), ei (ray), haka (grave) and jietai (soldier in Japan’s self-defense force).

Create a mosaic in your mind’s eye with that vocabulary (and these pictures), and we’ll return soon to provide the narrative.