80 Years On, Okinawa Fierce Ground Battle Victims Remembered

   Itoman, Okinawa Pref., June 23 (Jiji Press)--A memorial ceremony was held Monday in Okinawa Prefecture to mourn over 200,000 people who lost their lives in a fierce ground battle in the southernmost Japan prefecture 80 years ago in the final phase of the Pacific War, part of World War II.
   In the ceremony, sponsored by the Okinawa prefectural government and held at the Peace Memorial Park in the Mabuni district in Itoman, southern Okinawa, participants renewed their pledge for peace. Mabuni was the last grueling battlefield during the Battle of Okinawa.
   The attendees included bereaved families, Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, the heads of both chambers of the Diet, Japan's parliament, and Izumi Nakamitsu, U.N. undersecretary-general and high representative for disarmament affairs. Shigemitsu Tanaka, co-chair of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, or Nihon Hidankyo, took part in the annual event for the first time.
   In a peace declaration, Tamaki said that it is a "mission for us living today" to pass on the lessons from and the reality of the ground battle in which many civilians were killed.
   "Excessive (U.S.) base-hosting burdens are continuing" in Okinawa, the governor said, citing recent accidents and incidents caused by U.S. military personnel as well as the planned relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma air station within Okinawa.

(2025/06/23-14:23)