Chatan Park Sunset Beach

This guide to Chatan Park Sunset Beach in Okinawa starts with a 2022 resurfacing that trucked in thousands of cubic meters of sand, then works backward to explain why the ground here needed rebuilding at all. You'll hear about Hamby Airfield, the US Army base that once occupied this coast before being handed back in 1981, and about the years engineers spent pushing the shoreline outward to create the district of Mihama from open water. It follows the netting, lifeguards and daily raking that keep a manufactured beach looking natural. Best heard standing at the waterline as the sun drops toward the East China Sea.