Shuri Castle

This guide to Shuri Castle in Okinawa opens at dusk on May 27, 1945, as American shelling left the four-century-old royal seat ablaze while nearly a thousand people sheltered in a secret tunnel complex dug thirty meters below. It follows the Japanese Thirty-Second Army headquartered in that tunnel through the final weeks of the battle, then reaches back to 1429, when King Sho Hashi united Okinawa's rival domains and built a court modeled on China's Forbidden City, its halls lacquered red rather than the dark wood of Japan's own castles.