From the Battle of Okinawa to Reversion

In 1945, Okinawa became the site of the largest ground battle fought in Japan during the Pacific War. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications states that the fierce fighting drew in ordinary residents and cost more than 200,000 lives, soldiers and civilians together, along with property and cultural heritage.

This article follows the battle as Okinawa Prefecture and the national government describe it, then the 27 years of US administration and Okinawa's return to Japan on May 15, 1972.

Before the landings

On July 7, 1944, as the war situation worsened, the government decided to evacuate elderly people, women, children and schoolchildren from the Nansei Islands: 80,000 to Kyushu and 20,000 to Taiwan. About 70,000 are said to have actually left.

The sea crossing was dangerous. On August 22, 1944, the evacuation ship Tsushima Maru was torpedoed by the US submarine Bowfin near Akusekijima. According to the ministry, 1,484 people whose names are known died, among them 784 schoolchildren.

In the US air raids of October 10, 1944, about 90 percent of Naha burned, and 668 soldiers and civilians were killed.

The battle

On March 26, 1945, US forces landed on the Kerama Islands. On April 1, according to Okinawa Prefectural Archives, about 1,400 to 1,500 ships and some 183,000 troops began landing on the coast of Okinawa Island between Yomitan and Chatan, and took two airfields that day.

After the Kerama landings, the US Navy military government issued a proclamation in the name of Admiral Nimitz suspending Japan's administrative and judicial powers. The Japanese 32nd Army avoided fighting at the beaches and held out in underground positions in a war of attrition.

On Ie Island, where an airfield had been built, more than 4,700 people died in the fighting of April 16 to 21, including about 1,500 local residents. In the centre of Okinawa Island, the two sides fought back and forth for more than forty days.

The US forces reached the defence line of the army headquarters at Shuri Castle and launched a general attack on May 11. In late May, the 32nd Army headquarters withdrew to the south, and Shuri was occupied.

The south became a battlefield crowded with refugees and retreating Japanese troops. The ministry describes US forces attacking with naval guns, bombs, flamethrowers and other modern weapons, including the shelters where soldiers and residents were hiding.

About 1,500 boys and 500 girls from normal and secondary schools were mobilized to support the army, the boys for construction, transport and signals work and the girls as nurses in army hospitals. About 800 of the boys and 200 of the girls died.

On Miyako and Yaeyama there was no ground fighting, but the ministry says many residents were moved into malarial mountain areas on the instructions and orders of the Japanese army. In the Yaeyama area, 3,647 people died of malaria.

Resistance continued in various places after that, and the surrender document was signed on September 7. The Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum defines the battle as lasting from March 26 to September 7, 1945.

Civilians in the battle

The founding statement of the Peace Memorial Museum says the greatest feature of the battle was that civilian deaths, which it puts at more than 100,000, far exceeded those of soldiers. It says some were blown apart by shells, some were driven into a corner and made to take their own lives, some died of hunger and malaria, and some were sacrificed by their own retreating army.

Okinawa Prefecture has published the wording of the museum's panels. They state that the Japanese army, retreating south from Shuri, seized the shelters and tombs that residents were using as refuges, for use as positions, and that many residents who were driven out died amid the shelling.

During the battle, group deaths occurred in which residents, including family members, killed one another or took their own lives. Sources describe these deaths in different words.

A 2007 report by a subcommittee of the Ministry of Education's textbook council calls them shūdan jiketsu, "group suicide." A panel at the prefectural museum is headed "group deaths forced by the Japanese army," and a history published by the Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau uses kyōsei shūdan shi, "forced group death," together with shūdan jiketsu.

The dead

The ministry gives estimates made by the Government of the Ryukyu Islands around 1957; the Peace Memorial Museum gives the same figures. Of 200,656 dead, 28,228 were soldiers and military employees from Okinawa, 65,908 were soldiers from other prefectures, about 94,000 were Okinawan civilians, and 12,520 were Americans.

The civilian figure was estimated by comparing the population in 1944 with that in 1946. Okinawa Prefectural Archives says that about one in four Okinawans died.

Twenty-seven years of US administration

US forces placed residents in camps surrounded by barbed wire. From the end of October 1945 they were allowed to return home, and about 325,000 are said to have done so by April 1946, though people from areas taken for US bases had to move their whole villages to nearby land.

On January 29, 1946, General MacArthur decided to separate the Nansei Islands south of 30 degrees north from Japan. Okinawa Prefectural Archives notes that democratic reforms carried out in mainland Japan, such as the new constitution, were not applied there. Kagoshima Prefecture dates the Allied headquarters memorandum that separated the Amami Islands from mainland Japan to January 28.

The peace treaty that took effect on April 28, 1952 ended the state of war and recognized Japan's full sovereignty, but under its Article 3 Japan agreed to any US proposal to place the islands under UN trusteeship with the United States as sole administrator. No such proposal was made, and direct US rule continued until May 14, 1972.

In Okinawa, April 28 came to be called the "day of humiliation." The Amami Islands were returned on December 25, 1953, and in Okinawa the Council for the Reversion of Okinawa Prefecture to the Homeland was formed on April 28, 1960.

Reversion

At a Japan–US summit in November 1969, the two governments agreed in principle to return administration of Okinawa during 1972. The reversion agreement was signed in June 1971, and Okinawa returned to Japan when it took effect on May 15, 1972.

Ceremonies were held in Tokyo and Naha at the same time. In Naha, the first governor of Okinawa Prefecture said that, in light of the people's wishes, their earnest hopes had not necessarily been met, pointing first to the question of the form of the US bases. He warned that hardships would continue and that new difficulties might arise.

Okinawa Prefecture's history page for children notes that US bases built during the 27 years of US rule still exist today.

Places to visit

The Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum stands in the Peace Memorial Park at Mabuni in Itoman. Founded by gathering the war experiences of individual Okinawans, it lends audio guides in English and other languages.

In the same park stands the Cornerstone of Peace, built in 1995 for the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Pacific War and the Battle of Okinawa. It bears the names of all who died in the Battle of Okinawa and related events, without distinction of nationality or of soldier and civilian.

As of June 23, 2026, it held 242,659 names; 95 were added that year. Under Okinawa Prefecture's inscription policy, people from Okinawa are also included if they died because of the war, in Okinawa or elsewhere, at any time from the Manchurian Incident of September 18, 1931, until about a year after September 7, 1945.

Okinawa Prefecture observes June 23 as Memorial Day and holds the Okinawa Memorial Service for All War Dead in the park every year on that day. Check the official sites for opening hours before visiting.