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Tribute to Himeyuri no To
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RMLCF-@aol.com
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Apr 23, 2006 09:03 PDT
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Haisai, Jeff -
I have been traveling and just now am able to respond to your excellent
and quite poignant tribute to the student nurses and teachers now memorialized
in the "Himeyuri no To" shrine. Thanks for sharing your talent with us.
On June 18, 1945, our machine gun platoon of E-2-29 in the 6th Marine
Division was crossing the Kuwanga Ridge (just west of Makabe), heading for Kiyama
Gusuku Ridge and Arasaki as this was almost the end of the battle. We did
not know that the colonel of our 22nd Regiment (Harold Roberts) and 10th Army
Commander General Simon Bolivar Buckner were both killed on that day and we
most certainly did not know about the "Himeyuri girls." Our division was
always on the left (west) side of Okinawa and the 1st Division was next to us,
and on their left, the 7th Army, most likely the troops who first found the
cave.
I visited the memorial in 2001 and saw a detailed map of the area, noting
exactly the trail (not even a road then) where our
unit was near the Kiyama Ridge. Yet to think that these girls were being
killed or killing themselves during this period of time is haunting in many
ways to me.
All U.S. Army and Marine infantrymen feared caves as they were actual and
potential hiding places for Japanese soldiers..especially with Nambu machine
guns. No one walked in front of a cave without adequate coverage and usually
throwing grenades, using flame throwers or calling for demolition squads
became standard procedures in 'knocking out'
caves. Also, the Japanese were well known for either emptying the caves of
Okinawans and sending them to our lines
(especially at night!) or having them in the cave and as they would be
leaving, their Nambu guns would start firing.
Small wonder the leaflet given at the Himeyuri shrine says,"The young,
defenseless nurses, thrown out of their caves but
not allowed to surrender, now had to fend for themselves in the hellish
storm of fire and steel as the U.S. forces quickly
tightened their strangle-hold on the Japanese Army on the peninsula. This
aggravated the sacrifice of the student corps,
eventually claiming the lives of the students and teachers..... We still
cannot forget the indescribable tragedy we witnessed and experienced, nor can
we condone the crimes of the educational system of that age that denied us
even the right to think and judge as individuals, and denied us even the right
to live as decent human beings, finally herding us like animals into the
battlefield of certain death." (From the Himeyuri Alumni Association, 1989).
Thanks again for your poem.
Robert Martin
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