Though it can be read as a standalone article, this is the second in a series on the Himeyuri Student Corps where we follow their story to the place they first went to war, the Haebaru Okinawa Army Hospital.

A bloodied half-conscious soldier is lowered onto a table where he is looked over by an army surgeon. Shrapnel from an American grenade has shredded his body, especially his arm and he’s been taken to the Okinawa Army Hospital in Haebaru Village. It’s called a hospital but the Second Surgical Department’s Tunnel No. 20 under Koganemori hill isn’t in a sterile building or commandeered school but a man-made tunnel little different than the mines his father worked back home in Kumamoto. Its bare hand-cut rock walls are supported by timber framing, the only fragile light in the darkness comes from small candles in wall nooks.

Reviewing his injuries the surgeon decides that with the supplies on hand the arm is too far gone and will have to be removed. A teenage girl helps hold down the limb as the doctor prepares to get to work. He has no anesthesia, an air raid took out nearly half their medical supplies before the battle even began and the rest ran out long ago. All he can offer is a whiff of ether to take the edge off and the girl holding his soon to be detached limb a few quiet encouraging words.

She reminds him of his younger sister still in Kumamoto, except this isn’t Kumamoto. It’s Okinawa and the island is a battlefield. Unlike the doctor she wears no military uniform but homemade monpe work pants and air raid hood, her clothing is civilian and she wears her hair in a school-regulated style but she and her classmates have all been conscripted to serve the army until victory is secured. The nurse is 17; her youngest schoolmates in the tunnels are 15 and the oldest 19.

The compact tunnel is roughly square, 1.8 meters high and wide, which is enough room for the doctor and his diminutive assistants but traps in and concentrates the humid air heavy with flies and a potent combination of the foulest odors of uncontrolled bodily fluids, blood, bugs and decay.

The lack of ventilation combined with overcrowding fills the tunnel with carbon dioxide. This causes those inside, including the young nurses to suffer from bouts of high “cave fever” they have to power through. On top of that they are sleep deprived and suffering from malnutrition and hygiene-related ailments; many have stopped menstruating. There’s not enough potable water to maintain cleanliness so “bathing” is getting soaked in the rain.¹

The “operating room” sits on an intersection between Tunnel No. 20 and a lateral connecting it to No. 19 and No. 21. A few yard away from where the surgeon works are the under-sized bunk beds loaded with diseased and wounded men. A few of them are likely dead and will have to be disposed of later, another task the student nurses will handle, which will free up a bunk for him to recover in.

Originally this was an internal medicine department tunnel but when the casualties began rolling in the internal medicine and infectious disease departments became the second and third surgery departments. The doctors were now suddenly surgeons and never mind if his professional background was being a pediatrician. The patients lining the tunnel wall were a mix of wounded, sick and shell shocked with no way to separate them.

Recreated hospital tunnel at Haebaru Cultural Center; the real tunnels were roughly 5’9″ high and wide. The beds were also shorter than standard.

On the lateral some of the schoolgirl nurses are taking a few moments to prepare before getting back to their patients. Some are decent but others are unappeasable and ill-tempered toward the girls. Lack of bandages means they can’t be changed often enough and it’s impossible to get all the maggots from the wounds, so they fester. Everyone has lice.

The brown rice balls² they craft by hand for the patients have steadily decreased in size from tennis ball to ping-pong ball. There’s no meat or vegetables for the patients; sometimes the girls find edible grass or wild vegetables to supplement their diets. Going out to empty bedpans and urine cups (before the head cases try to drink out of them) or, looking at the soldier as the doctor begins his unpleasant task, disposing of amputated limbs means a good chance they’ll be strafed or bombed by American aircraft. Just this morning the pair that went out over the hill to collect the unappreciated rice was nearly killed. The aircraft circle overhead like sharks and when they see movement over this known Japanese army position strike. No Red Cross marks the underground hospital.

A student runs from strafing aircraft on the Meshiaba no Michi. She is NOT a depiction of Sakugawa Yoneko, none of these illustrations depict real Himeyuri but were created for illustrative purposes.

Despite this, some of the patients hold open contempt for these cowards who hide in tunnels far behind the lines while they’re out losing comrades and limbs in defense of the girl’s home island.³

Walking through the dark and barren tunnel today, almost all traces of that horrific scene, one which played out countless time over the course of two excruciating months 75 years ago, have vanished but the mute rock walls remain. The odor that once permeated the air is gone but it’s still humid and the cavern wet with moisture. Tour guides with flashlights take groups through and explain the tunnel’s history to guests, like some Americans who are too tall and have to stoop the entire 15 minute tour as they traverse the 70 meter tunnel and he points out the areas of interest and shares small bits of the tunnel’s history.

Stripped clean of any useful building material and slightly blackened from possibly a flamethrower, No. 20 is the only preserved tunnel from the Haebaru Okinawa Army Hospital tunnel complex and in 1995 the tunnels became the first World War II-related site to be designated a Cultural Property. Most of its artifacts have been removed and are on display at the Haebaru Cultural Center just over Koganemori.

The walk over to the museum follows the Meshiaba no Michi food supply path taken by those student nurses, with two path options to get up hill. One is paved for convenience; the other is the original dirt path winding between trees and over roots that is left as it was in their day though the museum side of the hill path has been entirely paved. It’s easy to imagine the difficulty expressed by student nurses who had to lug heavy, handle-less buckets of rice up and down this path when it was muddy and knowing that as far as their patients were concerned being shot at was never an excuse to duck for cover and dump their precious cargo.
Haebaru Cultural Center shares two intertwined stories, that of their town and its cultural, and that of the Okinawa Army Hospital.

Meshiaba no Michi

Unit 18803-Tama, the 32nd Army hospital and later Okinawa Army Hospital was established in May 1944 and moved to Naha, Okinawa in June, taking over the Kainan Middle School. It moved to Haebaru after an Oct. 10, 1944 air raid destroyed the school-hospital. Initially the Haebaru National (Elementary) School was commandeered to be the new hospital building but it too was destroyed in a pre-invasion bombardment along with a great amount of medical supplies.

A series of 30 tunnels being dug in two local hills to support the hospital became the new hospital. The staff was composed of 350 regular doctors and medical personnel and on Mar. 23, 1945 was supplemented by an additional 222 high school students and their 18 teachers from the Himeyuri Gakutotai (Himeyuri Student Corps).⁴The students had begun their nurse training in November 1944.

They were from Okinawa’s top two girls’ high school, the Okinawa First Girls’ High School and the Okinawa Women’s Normal School. These sister schools taught students ages 13-19 and today would be a cross between a high school and a junior college. Students at the schools were nicknamed Himeyuri, a combination of the two school newspapers’ names and can be translated “Princess Lily.”⁵ Both schools’ insignia was a white lily.

The Battle of Okinawa began Apr. 1, 1945 and before the month was out casualties became more than the Haebaru hospital could bear. Several clinics were set up in natural limestone caves which medical personnel were dispersed to though it didn’t alleviate the acute supply shortages. Finally, in the face of advancing American forces the 32nd Army moved its headquarters from Shuri Castle (Naha) to Mabuni Hill and the hospital evacuated to a series of limestone caves behind the newly drawn battle line in the south as well. The exodus began on May 25.

Staff and patients that could walk left with the remaining medical supplies. Those left behind, patients that were immobile or written off by the army as beyond help were instead informed that “trucks would be coming for them” and that they should wait. In the meantime, drink this milk.
The medical staff, not the Himeyuri to be clear, had given them milk laced with potassium cyanide to kill the wounded soldiers and prevent their capture. Upon realizing he’d drank poison one soldier induced vomiting and suddenly found the strength to run like hell. Seeing the fleeing patient a medic fired upon him several times with a pistol inside the cave but missed.

Artifacts found in the tunnels

This dark chapter brought to an end the short history of the Okinawa Army Hospital at Haebaru.
Museum visitors begin their journey through Haebaru’s history in a recreated hospital tunnel that shows a sanitary (and higher ceiling) version of what the real tunnel was like in service. Little signs by patients and nurses dole out tidbits of information and stories to flesh out the scene. Sconces in the wall hold artifacts dug up from the tunnels.

From there I was treated to the story of a small Japanese town and its part in a war, showing how children were indoctrinated to be loyal and unquestioning imperial subjects, local customs replaced with emperor worship and how the war began to make demands on their resources as well as taking their fathers and sons. A map shows the location of every Haebaru service member killed on battlefields across the Pacific and China. It doesn’t glorify or ask for sympathy but gives perspective to their end of the conflict.

It also goes into how the army moved into Haebaru and doesn’t shy away from the unsavory aspects. A hand-drawn style map denotes the location of every military unit that moved into town, these are soldiers, artillery, student nurses and a few of them depict a woman sitting on a futon. These are the comfort stations which used ianfu (comfort women) and explain the use of sex slaves within the military, how they were coerced and where these women came from.

The museum’s narrative nicely transitions from wartime to the post-war via a recreated POW camp tent. The post-war room is built around a very nostalgic ‘storefront’ with vintage goods sure to make any old-timers nod their heads and say ‘nasukashii’ repeatedly. The Japanese 1950s and 60s products are similar yet different than the U.S. and I always have to stop and just look at everything in these places.

It also covers the larger Okinawa story on the bases and the fight for reversion to Japanese control. Until 1972 the island was a virtual U.S. military colony, neither American nor Japanese but existing in an unpleasant place in between.

The final space covers local culture and customs, sharing the pre-Japanese Okinawan lifestyle and their beliefs. After the heavy history that precedes it, this area feels light and a wonderful way to end the story of Haebaru. It recreates a traditional Okinawan home and children’s play area so the kids of today can play as the children of Haebaru did decades ago.

Translation in the museum are minimal, but the museum also loaned me their guide book which helped fill in details. I also was able to use Google Translate to good effect.
I recommend visiting the museum before heading to Tunnel No. 20, they have an English language video about the hospital that is very informative and helped me understand what I saw. I was supposed to have an English speaking tour guide but somehow that didn’t happen and without the video I would have been at a loss on my tour. Its advised to schedule a tour before visiting.

For those with children this can be a good place to learn about Okinawan culture and war in a way that isn’t too graphic.

The museum and tunnel are separate entities and cost 300 yen each (600 yen total) to visit.
Less than 15 minutes down the road from Haebaru is Abuchiragama, a limestone cave that was set up to support the Haebaru hospital when it was overwhelmed with patients though its war story would continue long after the hospital left.

Opening narrative based on the accounts of Himeyuri student nurses Furugen Haru (now Tokuyama Haru), Kishimoto Hisa (now Tsuhako Hisa) and Tsuhako Sumiko (now Arakaki Sumiko)

ADDRESS
Haebaru Cultural Center
257 Kyan, Haebaru, Shimajiri District, Okinawa 901-1113
098-889-7399
http://www.town.haebaru.lg.jp.e.ih.hp.transer.com/kankou/docs-kankou/2015012200193/

¹Descriptions are from Himeyuri Peace Museum Guidebook, Haebaru Town Museum Guidebook and an interview with Ishikawa Sachiko from the Chicago Tribune’s “Terror in the Caves.”

² According to patient Kuniyoshi Noboru in Descent into Hell: Civilian Memories of the Battle of Okinawa the two brown rice balls a day was his only source of enjoyment.

³Despite this impression by patients, several student nurses were killed inside Tunnel No. 14 when it took a direct hit from artillery.

⁴ Himeyuri Gakutotai was a name given to the student group post-war and not an official war-time designation.

⁵ It is also sometimes translated as “Star Lily” though “Princess Lily” seems preferred.