Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum

This guide to the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum begins at the cave mouth on Mabuni Hill where General Ushijima Mitsuru ended organized Japanese resistance on Okinawa on the morning of June twenty-third, nineteen forty-five. It follows the tens of thousands of civilians driven south into the hillside's gama caves alongside the retreating army, with nowhere left to go as the fighting both sides came to call the Typhoon of Steel closed in. More than one hundred thousand Okinawan civilians died before it stopped, families sheltering in caves originally dug for farming and typhoon shelter.