80 years after World War II, Okinawa’s battle sites are still giving up bones and bombs
Itoman, Japan — In the Okinawan bush, the “bone digger” slides into a narrow crack in a slope. He is a small man who skillfully maneuvers his body through the cave entrance, dodging the jagged limestone roof and negotiating the dirt and crumbling stone of the cave floor.
In an attempt to uncover the remains of those who sheltered in caves like this one during the Battle of Okinawa in World War II, he crouches while the lamp on his forehead shines on the dirt at his feet and scrapes the ground with a gardening tool.
Takamatsu Gushiken is a bone digger, and this is his life’s work. In an effort to put an end to one of the bloodiest and most intense conflicts of the Pacific War, he spends a large portion of his free time in caverns like this one in Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan.
I question him about his motivation. He shrugs after pausing.
He looks down and adds softly, “They are human, and I am human too,” his voice cracking with sorrow.
Gushiken shows me what he has discovered thus far in this location, including pieces of a skull from the ear region, smaller bones, presumably from a foot, and even smaller ones, possibly from a child or infant.
In addition to discovering a bullet, he speculates about what might have happened here eight decades ago: a woman and kid hid while the conflict raged outside. Like many others on Okinawa, the two civilians were caught in the gunfire as US troops attempted to clear caverns of concealed Japanese defenders.
Between the US invasion force’s landing on April 1, 1945, and the Americans’ declaration of victory on June 22, 240,000 persons are thought to have died or gone missing in the Battle of Okinawa.
According to the National World War II Museum in Louisiana, that figure comprises up to 100,000 civilians, 110,000 Japanese soldiers and Okinawa conscripts, and more than 12,000 American and allied personnel.
In a hellish landscape of overwhelming American firepower, those lives were lost. According to the museum, US soldiers fired almost 16 million machine gun rounds, 9 million rifle bullets, 1.1 million 105-millimeter howitzer rounds, and over 500,000 mortar rounds on the island.
Touching history
The scars are still visible eighty years later, giving tourists a close-up look at history.
The shell of a pawn store still survives on the outlying island of Ie Shima. On the 23-square-kilometer island that served as a crucial airport throughout the conflict, it is the sole building that has survived the battle.
A mass suicide is evident in the shrapnel-scarred walls of the former Japanese Navy underground headquarters at Tomigusuku. “Vice Admiral Minoru Ota and his 4,000 men… committed suicide in this underground headquarters on June 18, 1945,” reads a plaque outside.
An unexploded grenade lies next to the entrance of an unmarked cave outside the Sefa Utaki Sacred Site in Nanjo, just off a major road. The cave’s inside still has smooth pickaxe scars from its construction, leading to a dugout machine gun emplacement.
As US troops approached from below on June 22, 1945, Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima, the commander of the Japanese garrison on Okinawa, committed suicide by walking up a trail from the Okinawa Peace Park on the southern side of the island and standing next to the cave opening.
Additionally, Gushiken the bone hunter highlights the marks made by machine gun and rifle fire on a rock close to a jungle cave.
Matching 1945 and 2025
You can view exactly what that area of land would have looked like during or after the fight by placing a pin on the map app on your phone at any of these locations and driving to the Okinawa Prefectural Archives.
The contemporary environment and US military surveillance and reconnaissance images have been compared by archivists. Maybe nothing better captures that hellish landscape.
In an effort to tell the tale of the war years and beyond, Kazuhiko Nakamoto is the driving force behind the archives’ collection.
He describes how his mother, who was six years old in 1945, survived the conflict while being cared for by her grandmother, who traveled the southern portion of the island in search of safe havens.
He adds that his family was among the fortunate ones on Okinawa, saying, “It was like a miracle that she survived.
Okinawans were victims of a conflict they did not start, according to Nakamoto and fellow archivists Akira Yoshimine and Eriko Nishiyama. Many believed that the Japanese troops were there to protect them rather than to enlist them in the impending battle when the Tokyo government garrisoned the island.
However, they claim that militarism was promoted even in elementary schools, citing a textbook that used images of tanks and warplanes to teach kids how to count.
Schoolgirls plunged into war
The Himeyuri Peace Museum, which recounts the tale of the Himeyuri Student Corps—teenage girls forced to serve in the Japanese military throughout the conflict—is the only location on Okinawa that makes that tragedy more relatable.
The Okinawa Shihan Women’s School and Okinawa Daiichi Women’s High School girls assisted in caring for wounded Japanese soldiers in caves such as the Ihara Third Surgical Cave, a hole in the rock that was part of the Okinawa Army Hospital during the war.
“The Himeyuri students were mobilized shortly after the battle began,” according to the museum. “Real war turned out to be unlike anything they had anticipated.
In footage displayed at the museum, surviving students describe the atrocities they endured.
They discuss assisting in the amputation of injured people’s limbs without the use of anesthesia. They describe extracting maggots from wounds, attempting to soothe delirious people suffering from “brain fever,” and witnessing their fellow pupils perish under US gunfire at cave entrances or while doing resupply trips.
They also describe a stench that filled the surgical tunnels and never left the unventilated passageways. It was a mixture of blood, perspiration, human excrement, and flesh rot. (At another location, the Haebaru War Museum’s Army Hospital Depot Number 20, employees have replicated the stench in a vial and give guests a whiff at the conclusion of the tour. It’s terrible even outside.)
For a tourist, the video testimonies are unvarnished, colorful, and difficult to see.
Following the videos, a vast room’s walls are covered with portraits of the 227 Himeyuri who were killed or reported missing on Okinawa. Each has a message detailing their fate, with some stating that it is unknown what happened to the females and when they were last seen alive.
Those struck me the most and bring back recollections of those bones Gushiken had found in the cave I was in only hours ago. Could any of these youthful faces have them?
We probably won’t be able to find out the answer to that query. Only six of the 1,400 sets of remains found in caverns and battlegrounds have ever been identified, according to Gushiken.
He claims that he gives the authorities anything he discovers, but it is up to them to decide whether DNA testing is feasible.
According to him, there is frequently simply insufficient bone material to obtain a DNA match.
According to him, if artifacts like as pens or notebooks bearing names are discovered alongside bones, they may offer a clue. However, relics that lack this kind of identifying information are left in their original locations.
Nevertheless, he wants more to be done by the administration.
“I hope the authorities will improve their technology, identify the bones more proactively, and return as many bones to their families as possible,” he says.
The Americans
Steph Pawelski may be the American counterpart to Gushiken on Okinawa. The Okinawa Battle Sites Facebook page is curated by a Pennsylvania native, US military spouse, and US Department of Defense school teacher.
Her Subaru station wagon’s back is a combination of a hiking and cave supply barn and a library dedicated to war history. Her familiarity with the island appears to be extensive.
I propose having lunch at the Hyatt hotel in metropolitan Naha on an early March day. Pawelski advises us to be there early so we can explore a cave in a park across from the hotel’s parking area.
While Gushiken’s team is exploring a hillside battle site, Pawelski rushes ahead of them to identify potential cave entrances the Japanese guy was searching for.
Pawelski claims that both of her grandfathers served on Okinawa, which is why she is interested in the battlegrounds.
She is attempting to place herself in the exact locations her maternal grandfather stood decades ago using photos he shot while working in the Asian theater.
In a way I never would have imagined, I was able to walk in Grandpop’s shoes, see through his eyes, and sense his presence. According to Pawelski, “it was as though the past and present had come together, creating a snapshot of history in a way that words would never capture.
Shortly before starting that trek through the jungle with Gushiken, she is on a Facetime call to Florida with Neal McCallum, an Okinawa veteran. Neal McCallum is a Marine who arrived on the island on April 1, 1945, and 49 days later sustained a hole in his leg from a Japanese bullet. He refers to this wound as a “million-dollar wound” because it allowed him to leave the island alive.
McCallum, who is now 98 years old, is returning to Okinawa for the 80th anniversary of the conflict, and Pawelski is assisting him in making sure he sees the locations he claims will provide him with a last sense of “closure.
The majority of that, according to McCallum, came during his first post-war visit in 2000.
Then, he continues, “I think any dark corners in my mind were eliminated.”
However, it was during a trip to Osaka 19 years prior that he truly had a change of heart about history.
He claims, “Until 1981, I detested the Japanese.” While spending a few days in the second-biggest city in Japan, he encountered some students who were keen to work on their English.
“They were calling me names like ‘Hello, sir,’ ‘I love you,’ or something like.
McCallum remarks, “And I thought what a fool I am for… hating them,” adding that people who harbor hatred are “not going to lead a good, healthy life.
Additionally, he states that he hopes his visit would serve as a reminder to the present generation of the sacrifices made by the so-called “greatest generation,” those who served in World War II, and the legacy of the Marines’ achievements on Okinawa.
Gushiken says he hopes his painting conveys a message as well, back at the cave site.
“There will be no more conflicts. He asserts that there ought to be no more conflicts.