Itoman

Itoman sits at the southern tip of Okinawa’s main island, and the ground here holds a particular gravity. This is where the Battle of Okinawa ended in June 1945 — where the civilian population, driven to the cliffs by the fighting, faced impossible choices. The Peace Memorial Park spreads across Mabuni Hill, a large green space above the East China Sea that holds the names of every person who died in the battle: 240,000 names carved into black granite walls arranged in semicircles across the hillside. Okinawan civilians, Japanese soldiers, American soldiers — everyone is here, listed without hierarchy.

I visited the Peace Memorial Museum before anything else, following advice I’d encountered in my reading and deciding to take it seriously. The museum tells the battle from the ground level — from the perspective of Okinawan civilians who were caught between two armies and given no good options. The exhibits include personal testimony, photographs, recovered objects. There is a room with accounts from survivors. I was in the museum for three hours and I was not the only person crying. This is not a triumphant museum. It is an accounting, and the best museums about war are always accountings rather than celebrations.

After the museum I walked down to the cliffs at Himeyuri Monument — dedicated to the schoolgirls who served as nurses during the battle and died here, many choosing the cliff over surrender. Below the monument, the East China Sea was a breathtaking blue, the kind of blue that seems unconscionable under the circumstances but is simply what the water does in this part of the world regardless of what happened above it.

Itoman is also a working fishing town — one of the main fishing ports on the island, with a morning market that sells the catch direct. The local specialty is itoman fish soup eaten by fishermen at dawn. I bought sea bream from a vendor at five-thirty in the morning, watched him clean it with the practiced speed of someone who’s done it ten thousand times, and ate it later in a car park feeling obscurely grateful for something I couldn’t name.

When to go: Year-round — the Peace Memorial Park and Museum are accessible regardless of season, though a morning visit is cooler and quieter. The museum is closed on certain national holidays; check the schedule. Come in the morning, allow a full day, and don’t plan anything ambitious for the afternoon. You won’t feel like it.