true to his word, johnny left a car for us in the middle of the night. having a car is so much easier! okinawa is like LA, you HAVE to have a car to really see anything. i got up later this morning as i stayed up reading until about 1:40am. i did my morning routine: got up, shower, greet dogs as comb hair. when i went to the living room, jun and his family were already there. i ate vegetables and tofu. riku ate "my" bread again. he asked for 1 roll the night they brought it for me. i guess he eats that at home a lot.

my mom drove and i was navigator. she bought a map earlier this week. we drove south to itoman to visit some war memorial sites. the first place we went to was the himeyuri site, where many high school girls died in a cave. they have a museum there now and it has the information translated in english so it was very helpful for me. i would have never understood all that in japanese. i would have given up on reading and just stared at the pictures. the walls had photos and information. it was very interesting. the books they were selling didn't quite cover it like the walls did. otherwise i might have bought a book in english. the military times were very interesting. the students ended up learning more about military things than regular school work! when okinawa was finally invaded, they basically let go of all the students and told them to kill themselves. actually, kill 10 soldiers and 1 tank. the teachers told the students to run and save themselves. many of them ended up in a cave that had about 100 people, half of which were students/teachers. the rest were japanese soldiers, nurses, and other civilians. the americans bombed the cave. everyone was too scared by propaganda to come out and give up and probably the japanese soldiers would not have allowed this. anyway, it was a very informative visit. i learned that even the hairstyles of the students were dictated by militarization. you could tell what year a student was by her haircut! i failed to mention that this high school was 2 girls schools in 1.

entrance to the cave

one of the girls that died has the last name of chibana and i saw this in the engraved memorial outside the museum. you are not allowed to take pictures or video tape but the sign was very small and i missed it when i first walked in. i had taken photos and videotaped the first exhibit room. in the second room, a worker told me photography is not allowed. in the third room, there were photographs of the girls. no employee was in there and i searched for the chibana girl and took her picture.

after himeyuri, we went across the street to eat lunch. i had okinawa soba. japanese always put some sort of meat on top of noodles so i gave it to my mom. i saw a guy with tattoos and piercings. i saw people with them in naha too. but just men i think. i wonder how much they cost in japan. just when i was getting the nerve to ask him (he was with a woman and was eating and i didn't want to bother their lunch, he left. maybe my cousin jun knows. maybe i can find out on the internet.

then we went to a peace memorial museum. i was trying to figure out how to get there by the map and when we got close, my mom decided to drive as she pleased. we drove by memorials for all the people that died according to prefecture (state or province) but we couldn't find the entrance for where we wanted to go. my mom wanted to ask some young men who were having what looked like an alcohol picnic but i made my mom keep driving back to the road we originally came in from and we found the place by looking at the map. :p

in the parking lot, i decided to take a picture to show how small japanese cars are, even the vans. i also noticed the 'baby on board' fad has finally hit japan.

i'm bigger than japanese cars

oh, a baby's in the car, in that case i won't rearend you!

the peace place has a set of engraved stones as a memorial and a museum. we decided to walk by the memorials first but took a side trip to overlook the ocean first. it was really hot and we rested in the shade for a little bit, then proceeded to look at the wall memorials. they have the names of everyone that died in the battle of okinawa on them, foreigners too. we tried to find our relatives' names. we found my mom's older half-brother who died when he was 19 as a kamikaze pilot, or so she had believed all these years--more on that later. my mom's mom also had 2 relatives that died but there were so many of the same last name that died and she didn't know their first names. the names had a geographical order to them. first by prefecture. for okinawa, they were by city, then district. she had an idea which city/district they were from and we took photos of several chibana names (her father's side) and machida names (her mother's side). the foreigners were by country only. i looked at america out of curiosity and found someone with my same last name so i took a picture. there's no way he's a relative, maybe during the time of noah or something!

peace memorial walls and museum in background

after that we walked to the museum and decided not to go in because we were tired from the heat. it was a very good thing for me to bring a bandana. i had my digital camera in a pouch and put that in my pants pocket. i sweat so much that my camera had moisture on it! after that i started to wrap the pouch in the bandana. that did the trick. in the museum lobby they had stamps and ink so that you could stamp your pamphlet or paper if you have it, as a souvenir. i stamped my little notepad. then i noticed there was a touch screen computer that let's you find names and prints out a map to their location. that would have been helpful! there were only about 5 chibanas but 177 machidas! we printed out the sheet for my mom's brother. it had his birthdate, death date, and location of death! amazing. it said he died around the area the museum is in. it really made me think. earlier we were out by the engraved stones, which remind me of the vietnam wall as they are black, it was on cliffs very close to the water. it made me think of all the people who fled troops until they came to the very edge and choice suicide over capture. my mom asked a guide walking by which one is the infamous "suicide cliff". i was walking around when she asked this but apparently he got really pissed off that she asked. he said it's so painful that he will not say. we happened to be visiting on the anniversary of the end of the war. perhaps not the best day to be there but it wasn't crowded at all. good for us but sad because it means the youth probably don't care about war because they know nothing about it, even though everyone in okinawa lost someone. i told my mom she should have asked him in hogen, the okinawan dialect. he probably thought she was some mainland tourist, not a native who is curious and wants to pay their respects.

peace memorial overlooks this cliff and ocean

my mom thought we should go back to k1's house to visit with jun since he wanted to show me the vegetarian/macrobiotic side of okinawa. i told her he probably went home and since he lives closer to where we are now, she better call. she called and we decided to meet them at a hospital, close to where they live. it took about 1 hour to get there. we picked a way by map but somewhere along the way, my mom took the wrong street, which i was able to quickly correct using the map. when we met with them, we all got into their car and went to higa natural foods store. (higa is the most common last name in okinawa.) everything is healthy there, but not vegan. i guess it's an organic store. we bought some things. they have books so my mom bought a macrobiotic recipe book to get an idea of what that kind of food is like and what she can make for me. she keeps joking that since i lost weight, she's going to eat like me but i know she won't.

inside higa health food store

after the store, we drove to erika's parents house, which was very close by. only her father was home. there was a barber pole outside so i asked and yes, he is a barber. they have a fairly good size house, in a nice part of a big city, with a garden so i thought they must have money or had money at some point in their lives. we were there for extremely small talk and then drove home. or at least so we thought. we made several stops along the way.

okinawan monorail--only 1 year old

we decided to stop at the christian school my brother and i attended. it's a church and now they only have a pre-school it seems. they used to have all the way up until 11th grade when i was a student and during my last year or the year after i left, it was granted the ability to issue diplomas and became a complete school all the way 'til 12th grade. the school is on a hill and also on the hill is an a&w restaurant. okinawa is full of them. i don't think any of my friends remember a&w in america. they're all gone. a&w has amazing french fries. i found one in a mall in america and the food just wasn't the same. they had plain mcdonald's style french fries. for old times' sake, we ate at a&w. my mom had chicken and i had french fries and ice tea. the french fries are as good as i remembered.

a&w restaurant and neighborhood assembly of god church above)

japanese a&w fries rock!

after that, we drove a short distance to plaza house shopping center. my how it's grown. it now has a 3 story building of stores. i asked my cousin johnny where might there be a bigger music store that takes credit cards and he said he shops at a music store at plaza house because they get new albums before the base does. i only knew of 1 plaza house from my childhood and didn't think it could be the same one. at plaza house there is a book store called tuttle and they sell many books and magazines from the usa and uk. they were closed but looking through the window, they were the same as i remembered. on the side of the old plaza house is the new 3 story building. the inside of it reminded me of american shopping centers. the music store there is called spin city. they didn't have the visa mark but my mom asked and they do take visa. she bought cds of newer okinawan groups and a couple cds for me. if i had known they take visa, i would have bought more and paid for it myself. i guess i have to go back.

inside of plaza house

after that, we went straight home. it was about 9:30pm or maybe even later and yoshie was worried. she said she talked to jun at 6:30pm and he said we were on our way home. she was so worried that she was about to call the police. actually, we were going to phone from plaza house but couldn't find a phone! we stayed up talking about relatives and they opened up the shrine for dead relatives (butsudan). this shrine is a japanese thing that has names on pieces of wood and i never knew you could open it up. my mom didn't know either. it was a bit tricky but yoshie pulled out the wood pieces so we could read the information written on the back. it had the death date and age at death. we saw that my mom's brother was 19 years old by okinawan counting method, which is chinese in origin (lunar calendar, et cetera). actually, by standard counting methods, he was 18. the death date was the same as the museum print out. however, it records nothing about the birthdate.

butsudan

yoshie said that my mom's brother's information on the sheet from the museum is wrong. she said he died somewhere else and that they probably put the same spot for everyone. (actually, they don't.) my mom's memory is wrong and she said he was a foot soldier, not a kamikaze. my mom said when she was young she asked her dad if her brother was a kamikaze and he just said "un" which is the japanese grunt for yes. maybe he wasn't really listening or maybe he didn't know. we'll never know. yoshie said my mom's brother was too young to have flown a plane. there's no way he could be a pilot because they must be trained. i didn't say this to her but i told my mom to think about it. it was the very end of the war. japan was extremely desperate at that point. they enlisted very old men and young boys to fight. they ran out of weapons and created kamikazes. maybe they weren't training people for a long time anymore. maybe they were desperate enough to use 18 year olds as kamikaze. they were disposable after all so they wouldn't need much training.

looking at the information for other family memories, my mother realized other memories must be wrong too. she said her father always said that his parents died when he was 3 years old and he worked his way up from nothing. looking at the death dates, he was 15 years old when his father died. something is fishy but no one is alive to straighten it out. earlier k1 told us what year their father was born: 1894. i had always grown up thinking he was born in 1896 according to what my mother said. damn, he was old! it's so bizarre to think that my grandfather is born in the 1800s. i double-checked and asked my mom if my grandparents ever got married. i thought they did! i thought my grandfather had 2 wives like old times. she said they never got married, which is why my grandmother still goes by her maiden name. there's a lot of family trouble because of the 2 women situation. hmmm, many problems about okinawa. the military presence, the loss of land because of it, family troubles, the poor economy, etc. too much of a burden. too much to solve.