Naha Kokusai Dori Shopping Street

This guide to Naha's Kokusai Dori shopping street opens with the death of Ernie Pyle, the celebrated American war correspondent shot by a sniper on nearby Ie Shima in April 1945, weeks before the war he had spent years covering for ordinary soldiers finally ended. He was not a general, but a syndicated columnist who wrote about mud and cigarettes and frightened twenty-year-olds from Ohio, trusted by soldiers because he stood where they stood. Out of the rubble of that same battle, a cinema built here in 1948 gave this scarred, nearly empty road its lasting name.