During World War II Japan expected everyone to do their part in securing the nation’s unquestionable ultimate victory and this included teenagers. On the mainland high school students were drafted en masse to work in munitions factories turning out weapons to supply the war fighters. But on Okinawa, they were conscripted into the army to participate in a battle that was nothing but front lines. Among them were the student nurses of the Himeyuri (ひめゆり) Corps.

In the far south of Okinawa the Himeyuri Peace Museum, founded and headed by survivors, keeps their story alive. The museum follows this group of 240 students and teachers from their halcyon pre-war years to the chaotic spring and summer of 1945.

The Himeyuri Gakutotai (Himeyuri Student Corps) began with two Asato (part of Naha) girl’s high schools, Okinawa First Girls High School and 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 “Star or Princess Lily.” Both schools’ insignia was a white lily.

These were the top girls’ school in Okinawa and brought in some of the brightest students from across the island, many from upper class families though not exclusively. They were taught the usual high school subjects as well as more advanced classes and because the Normal School was for training future teachers they also taught education-related courses. School and dorm life was militarily regimented and even their mandatory hairstyles were dictated by grade. It was still not that far off from a regular high school or college experience today with clubs, physical activities and special events like contests and festivals.

Militarism began creeping in during the war in China. Students played the role of “special war correspondent” to update their classes on Japan’s endless victories. Marksmanship was added to the curriculum until ammunition could no longer be spared. They drilled like soldiers, conducted air raid drills, practiced with bamboo spear and naginata pole arms, and marching became part of life. Testing their endurance they had to perform a grueling 68 kilometer one-day round trip march from Asato to Katsuren Castle and back that began at 2 a.m. and ended in the evening.¹ They were being molded and indoctrinated into ideal gunkoku shojo, the patriotic military-country girls who would be as loyal and unswerving in their dedication to the Empire as any soldier.

As the war progressed not in Japan’s favor and Allied forces came steadily closer to Okinawa, students began spending less time in class and more time in the field conducting manual labor and construction work for the military. Finally in November 1944 the Himeyuri students aged 15-19 were pulled for nurse training by the army to augment the Okinawa Army Hospital. By the time the campus was destroyed in a January air raid classes had ceased entirely so students could focus on preparing for the coming battle.

When the Allies began hitting Okinawa on Mar. 23 with air raids and naval gunfire 222 student nurses and 18 teachers  from the school were mobilized. They marched through the night to the Okinawa Army Hospital in Haebaru and to a rude discovery.

They had assumed the field hospital would be a hospital building with sterile wards and protected under the flag of the Red Cross. Anticipating their work in a safe rear unit they even brought school supplies to continue what learning they could when not tending the wounded.

Instead they found themselves in a series of 30 muddy tunnels and caves. Beds for patients, little more than pallets, lined the raw cavern walls and there was no Red Cross to mark their position. From the outside it was just another Japanese fighting hole, like all the other ones full of soldiers and weapons.

They weren’t the only ones in a situation like this either. Students and faculty from all 21 Okinawa junior high schools and high schools had been conscripted to provide service to the military. While girls nursed, the boys (14-19) were split between two units. The younger boys were sent to the Signal Corps and the older ones were part of the Blood and Iron for the Emperor Corps (Tekketsu Kinnotai), which performed labor tasks such as digging tunnels and moving supplies, though later in the battle many boys would be issued explosives to make suicide attacks against American tanks. Despite this, the conscription of children into military service had no legal basis in Japanese law.

These were also just a few thousand among the tens of thousands of Okinawans forced to serve the military. The mission of the army on Okinawa wasn’t to defend the island or its people, but to make taking it as costly as possible and to delay the invasion of mainland Japan. The Okinawans would be more convenient fuel for that fire.

American troops landed on Okinawa Apr. 1 and soon casualties began clogging the lightless tunnels. The nurses were worked to the bone taking care of patients’ unending needs and assisting the doctors as they patched up or hacked off battlefield injuries often without the aid of anesthesia. The tunnels were unsanitary and the fly-filled stagnant humid air was heavy with the odors of the dead and dying along with their many bodily fluids. No matter how many maggots were removed, wounds always had more and bandages couldn’t be changed often enough. Everyone had lice.

Assisting doctors was not simply handing him a tool when he says “scalpel” like in the movies. Kishimoto Hisa had to hold down a patient’s limb while the doctor amputated it. Encouraging words and a whiff of ether was all they could provide to take the edge off. Holding a soldier’s hand as it was detached she realized the still-warm fingers were gripping her after it was no longer part of his body and she pulled it off.

The patients took out their frustration and anger on the student nurses, berating their performance as care givers and   suggesting the teenage girls were cowards for hiding in the hospital caves instead of being out fighting. Men mentally broken by the battle were also in the caves and if the overworked staff did not constantly supervise them they would do things like drink urine from makeshift tin can bedpans or trample the injured.

In addition to their medical duties the Himeyuri were also responsible for burying the dead, collecting food and water and acting as messengers, all duties which exposed them to air attacks and artillery. Sakugawa Yoneko became the first Himeyuri to die when she was strafed by aircraft on Apr. 26.²

The allies landed on a kink in the island’s center and pushed north then south toward Okinawa’s capital of Naha, grinding through defenses, taking airfields, unpassable hilltop fortresses and clearing or blocking the network of defensive tunnels and caves that dotted the scorched landscape. Japan was losing the war of attrition which kept Haebaru and other military hospitals packed and on May 25, the 55^th day of battle, the order was given to evacuate Haebaru.

The hospital staff fell back to the south with any patient that could still walk or was worth saving. Anyone too injured to leave was given a hand grenade to commit suicide with or were told that trucks would come for them later… but for now they could wait and drink milk. Not everyone knew it was laced with cyanide and some cursed the inhuman bastards who did this to them as the staff began the long trek south; their school days had prepared them for the marching at least.

Taking up residence in new caves around southern Okinawa the Himeyuri continued nursing duties, now with nearly no medical supplies. The Allies had taken Okinawa’s center and the defenders had reformed a defensive line across the southern end of the island. By mid-June the Americans were on the brink of fully encircling the final Japanese positions.

It had been 79 days since the Americans landed, but so far only 19 Himeyuri had perished. The battle would officially end on Jun. 22 with the annihilation of the last organized military forces and the suicide of the army’s senior leadership as they pushed their forces to die gloriously. These last days of battle would be the deadliest for the Himeyuri.

On Jun. 18 they were informed that, “your devotion until today is well appreciated. From now on go your own way.” They were abruptly deactivated, no longer part of the army and required to vacate the military caves immediately before the American military came crashing down on them. They were cut loose to take their chances on a battlefield.

It’s hard to say why this choice was made, possibly because the army had no need of nurses in the end game of a battle to the death or possibly to provide the slimmest chance of survival by getting them out of caves in which they were sure to die alongside the rest of the soldiers fulfilling their duty to the Emperor. For those in the Third Surgical Cave it was already too late to evacuate as the Americans had arrived.

Morishita Ruri and the other Himeyuri in the Third Surgical Cave were debating how and when to best make their move when someone said they heard footsteps outside and everyone fell silent. There were about 100 people in the cave, 50 of them Himeyuri and the rest a mix of medical personnel, patients and soldiers. Students huddled around the sick to muffle the sound of their coughing. A Signal Corps soldier set up a machine gun in the cave, ready to open fire as soon as the enemy approached.

A voice called down in Japanese, “Are there any civilians in this cave? Any soldiers? If you are in the cave, come out! Otherwise we’ll blast the cave!”

Realizing the machine gunner would get them all killed she grabbed a friend and they went deeper into the cave. The machine gunner never got a chance to fight back. White Phosphorous grenades were chucked into the cave. When they exploded the space filled with white smoke and people began choking to death. A soldier yelled to urinate into a rag and cover their mouths with it, which Ruri believes saved her life as she crawled on the ground listening to classmates cry and scream, calling out for their mothers, their friends, for water.

One of them begged for a grenade to kill herself but their teacher had confiscated them all, saying he’d give them back when the time was right to die together. Another teacher began to sing a patriotic song before setting off a grenade and killing himself.

She passed out after that and was discovered somehow alive three days later. Of the roughly 100 in the cave on Jun. 19, about 80 had died including 42 Himeyuri students and a teacher.

The battlefield of Okinawa was the one of the most unpredictable one American forces had ever set foot on. Since the day it began the Japanese military had made great use of local civilians in supporting their forces. These laborers and non-combatants over time were often armed and pressed into service to fight alongside the military. As the battle moved toward its conclusion people fled in every direction it became an inseparable mix of displaced civilian non-combatants or refugees, military and ‘non-military participants,’ who were potentially armed and willing to kill. Among the Himeyuri a group of students led by a teacher decided to use grenades they’d been given to commit suicide, to instead attack U.S. troops and another group joined army soldiers on a night raid.

From the Japanese perspective, they had been told all Americans were devils who would let no one live and rape their women. As loyal Japanese citizens they were to never entertain a thought of surrender. Those that tried to surrender were as likely to be killed by their own as an American.

For the most part it seems the surviving Himeyuri fled looking for safety wherever they could while evading shells, gunfire and air attacks. Even without the Americans, this also had its hazards as Japanese soldiers would steal their food and kick civilians out of caves forcing them back into the open and on the move again under fire. For others they fled until hitting the southern coast and cliffs and had to choose between capture or suicide. Some lingered on, hiding in the medical caves among the dead and living off food scraps until after the war ended in late August.

The U.S lost about 12,000 troops on Okinawa. According to the Himeyuri Peace Museum, the Japanese lost 188,000 people in total. Of those, only 65,000 were mainland Japanese troops, the rest were Okinawans. That breaks down into 28,000 military, 57,000 non-military participants and 37,000 civilians, amounting to the loss of a quarter of the island’s population.

Among the students and teachers of the 21 high schools conscripted into the battle, 2,049 were killed.

A total of 136 conscripted Himeyuri students and teachers died during the battle. 91other students and staff, not conscripted into service, died of war-related causes as well bringing the total loss of life for the school to 227. The total school population was around 300.³

The Himeyuri Peace Museum and Cenotaph were established beside the Third Surgical Cave where the single largest Himeyuri loss of life occurred.

The museum tells this tragic story with a well-laid out timeline that both shows what the students were doing and the bigger picture which drove the events that affected them. Artifacts are few, but they have all that’s needed to support their story. Most are medical supplies and personal items used by the students. These are mundane, everyday things like a hair comb, toiletry kit and even a school uniform one girl carried through the battle because she couldn’t bear to part with the treasure. It says a lot about the mind set of young people sent in to do something they couldn’t fully understand and despite being in over their heads performed their jobs to the best of their abilities.

A tunnel entrance is recreated inside the room about the battle itself. It’s in a dark room, but if you let your eyes adjust you can pick out the details of garbage and discarded items on the faux-muddy ground beside the rickety beds.

The museum displays are almost all completely bilingual including survivor videos, which are worth watching. One is 16 minutes of 1-2 minute interviews about life during the battle, the other is in a sit-down theater with an hour of similar interviews about those last few days attempting to get away. They show an image of the now elderly survivor from her school days before she, now at the site of her ordeal, talks about what happened and as she mentions schoolmates and friends, their school photos also appear on screen to add faces to names. It’s quite powerful to see.

The written testimonies in the requiem room were all also translated into English. Going through the museum is in a way just preparation to hear the survivor’s stories and get to that room to understand what hell is like from the perspective of a teenager. The requiem room has photos of all the Himeyuri that were lost lining the walls, arranged around tables with survivor testimonies and a side open to a replica of the Third Surgical Cave. Soft choral music enhanced the somber dark room; lights are strategically placed to allow reading and to keep the faces all visible. The pictures appear to contain name, age at death and time/cause of death in Japanese but only the name is in English.

Taking time I went through all the testimonies, two of which I shared in this story, and it was on the second or third one I read that I had to abruptly stop and go back over to the wall of photographs.

Uechi Momoko described the aftermath of an explosion that collapsed the entrance of Cave No. 14. Crawling inside through the rubble she found the eviscerated bodies of patients and nurses, including her fellow Himeyuri. One of them was Uechi Sadako slammed against a cave wall with her brains coming out through a gash in her skull.

There she was on the wall. Bottom left corner. Uechi Sadako. Hair bobbed and bangs parted, the mandatory 2^nd year student hair style, so the photo was likely taken at age 16 the year before. And now there was a face, this girl’s face, merged into Momoko’s story.

A visit to the museum can take half an hour for a casual visit, but if you’re coming to learn I’d set aside at least an hour to read every panel, story and side-note. Despite its size the museum is rather liberal with the way it uses its space, likely to help facilitate the movement of larger groups, so it’s information-wise smaller than it looks but I left feeling that I’d learned a lot about a story that shouldn’t be forgotten.

I spent about three hours at the museum reading and taking notes because of the strict no photo policy, I usually shoot all the museum panels for future reference. I had tried to get permission ahead of time like usual but had been declined because I don’t work for a media agency. That’s also partially why this story is illustrated, to compensate for the lack of museum or wartime photography. I haven’t seen any photos of them from during the battle either.

As I left I found an English museum guidebook in the gift shop that recreates almost every single English language panel and personal story told inside the museum including the survivor testimonies in the requiem room rendering most of the note writing unnecessary but I don’t regret the time I spent doing so.

It’s been hard finding many other detailed sources on Himeyuri so almost everything I’ve written here is based on information from my notes, a few longer survivor testimonies in other books and that guide book. (After writing I found a bunch of news articles as well, but these tend to contain short survivor interviews.) If you visit I highly recommend picking it up for 1100 yen.

To see an unaltered cave, the First Surgical Cave is a five minute walk down the road from the museum. When exiting the museum grounds turn right and walk until you see a cement post on the left side of the road by a dirt road (second left). Go down this dirt road until you see a conspicuous copse of trees on the left side. It’s in the trees. You can walk up to the mouth of this cave where a small stand has been set up to leave gifts but I do not recommend going inside. It’s marked on Google Maps as “First Surgical Trench.”

Either before entering the museum or before leaving, flowers can be purchased for 200 yen in front of the park to place on the table before the cenotaph and cave to pay respects to the dead.

Admission is 450 yen. Parking is available across the street and beside the museum.

If you’re hungry I recommend driving to a residential neighborhood five minutes away and having Okinawa soba at Makabe Chinaa (Café Makabechina). This café not only has good food at reasonable prices but is a house built in 1891 that has bullet holes from the battle.

Next we’re going to revisit where the Himeyuri Corps were first brought into service, Haebaru.

Since this is the beginning of a five part series and each part is also going to be written in a way that new readers can start with any of them there will be some repetition in information for which I apologize in advance.

(UPDATED Apr. 25, 2021 after the museum’s renovation to continue reflecting it’s current state; previously the survivor videos had no subtitles and admission was 310 yen.)

ADDRESS
Himeyuri Peace Museum
671-1 Ihara, Itoman, Okinawa Prefecture 901-0344
98-997-2100
http://www.himeyuri.or.jp/EN/info.html

Café Makabechina
223 Makabe, Itoman, Okinawa 901-0336

¹The museum describes the regimentation of school life during the war, but Jo Nobuko Martin goes into detail about it in A Princess Lily of the Ryukyus. Her description was very boot camp-like. She also said someone died after completing the 68-kilometer march but it was shrugged off by the principal. The book itself is fiction, but its a firsthand account of Himeyuri by a Himeyuri student nurse.

²On a personal note, when I was in Iraq someone took a shot at one of our guys while he was taking out the trash. It got me thinking, how do you explain that to someone’s parents or spouse? “Smith died serving his country, he was shot handling garbage.” This story made me think of that. It didn’t say what she was doing when she was killed, but it doesn’t really matter. None of those sound like great reasons to die.

³ The 300 student and staff figure is from Himeyuri student Miyagi Kikuko’s (then Kaneshiro Kikuko) longer recollection in Japan at War by Haruka Taya Cook and Theodore Cook. A much shorter version of her story is also recounted in the Himeyuri Museum Guidebook.

Himeyuri references

Dark caverns entomb bitter memories, bodies of Okinawan ‘Lily Girls’ by Donald Smith (Miyara Ruri Interview)
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-06-04-mn-9231-story.html

Descent Into Hell: Civilian Testimonies from the Battle of Okinawa (Miyagi Kikuko Interview)

Ex-nurse Recalls Battle of Okinawa, aims to share misery of war by Tomomi Tomita (Nashiro Fumiko Interview)
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/04/21/national/history/ex-nurse-recalls-battle-okinawa-aims-share-misery-war/#.XpuIV5lS9hF

Japan at War by Haruko Taya Cook and Donald F. Cook (Miyagi Kikuko Interview)

Himeyuri Museum Guide (English & Japanese Versions)

Haebaru Town Museum Guide Book

Himeyuri: A Story of War, Life, Death and Peace by Jodi Chiemi Ching (Janice Suetomi Interview)
https://www.zentokufoundation.org/himeyuri

Itokazu Abuchiragama (Itokazu Trench)
http://abuchiragama.com/en/

Okinawans look back and call war futile by Nichols D. Kristof (Shimabukuro Yoshiko and Miyagi Kikuko Interviews)
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/22/world/okinawans-look-back-and-call-war-futile.html

A Princess Lily of the Ryukyus by Jo Nobuko Martin
(This is a first-hand fictional account written by an actual Himeyuri about the Himeyuri)

Spirit and Spine: Yoshiko Shimabukuro by Gaku Okubo
http://spiritandspine.com/backnumber/shimabukuro_yoshiko.html

Student Nurse recalls horror of Okinawa fighting by Setsuko Kamiya (Yoshimura Hideko Interview)
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2007/12/28/national/student-nurse-recalls-horror-of-okinawa-fighting/#.XpuHoZlS9hF

Terror in the caves by Abbie Jones (Ishikawa Sachiko and Miyara Ruri Interviews)
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-08-13-9508130378-story.html