Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines the religious nature of the Tower of Himeyuri. By focusing on how Okinawan Christians sought to redefine the nature of the monument, this presentation aims to clarify the complicated background of the way Okinawans commemorated the war dead after the defeat.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation examines the religious nature of the Tower of Himeyuri. The Tower of Himeyuri is the historical monument which commemorates the Himeyuri Student Corps, who were female Okinawan students working as assistant nurses on the battlefields of Okinawa during the Asia-Pacific War. Because of the number of casualties and their uniqueness as female students on the battlefields, the Himeyuri Student Corps gradually gained status and popularity as the ultimate symbol of the tragedy of the Battle of Okinawa in postwar Japan.

Those who initially wrote about the Battle of Okinawa in the late 1940s were Japanese soldiers from outside of Okinawa, and the Himeyuri Student Corps were described as patriotic martyrs who willingly sacrificed their lives for the nation. In 1948, however, a Christian Okinawan author objected to such portrayal of the Himeyuri Student Corps. From the later 1940s to the early 1950s, the narratives about the Battle of Okinawa entered a new stage, in which Okinawans began narrating their own views and experiences themselves. What characterized this new stage was its relationship to the construction, on the site of the Tower of Himeyuri, of a charnel chapel with a Christian cross. Consequently, the Tower of Himeyuri gradually became a site of struggle between the competing religious and political narratives of Okinawan Christians, the U.S. occupying forces, and the bereaved family of the Himeyuri Student Corps.

This presentation focuses primarily on the intersection of war memories and postwar realities by examining three Okinawans - Yonashiro Isamu, Hiyane Antei, and Ishino Keiichiro - all of whom served a crucial role in disseminating the image of the Tower of Himeyuri as a Christian monument. In doing so, this presentation ultimately aims to illustrate the complex nature of Okinawan writers' portrayal of the Battle of Okinawa, at the intersection of war memories and postwar realities.