Stunning Photos Show Everyday Life Of Okinawa, Japan in the 1950s

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1. I heard that Okinawa has some cool castles, but couldn’t see any in these photos.

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   • Only one castle, Shuri-jo Castle, in Naha’s capital, has been restored. Although it served as a fortification during the Battle of Okinawa in WWII, today it’s better thought of as a restored palace. During the history of Okinawa, it served as the King’s residence and was (along with the surrounding Shuri district containing nobility and the Kume community of Chinese scholars) the center for business and government administration until 1872, when the Ryukyu Kingdom was abolished and incorporated into the Japanese Empire as a Domain. This palace is a blend of Chinese and Japanese styles, with a lot of red. There are two floors in the main palace hall, and the whole compound is quite a bit smaller than, say, Gyeongbokgung Palace in Korea. A interesting note is that many of the Chinese-style dragons adorning the palace areas have four talons rather than the traditional five to avoid obscuring the authority of the Chinese emperor, to whom the Ryukyu Kingdom paid tribute under suzerainty until it was forced to stop when the Kingdom was abolished.

     Many other castles, called gusuku, exist on the islands, all of which (to my knowledge) are stone ruins. If any buildings stood there in 1945, you can be sure they were blown up pretty badly. In general, you can tour these grounds and see pretty large limestone walls and not much else. My favorite is Kitanakagusuku Castle Ruins, which sits on top of a giant ridge dividing the island in half. It is possible to see both sides of the ocean from the highest point on the walls. It was actually used as city hall for a while in the modern era despite being difficult to get to by design.

     During Okinawa’s pre-unified era of warring principalities, most of these castles served as homes and fortifications for local warlords, their soldiers, and their people. They were clearly built with military purposes in mind, with looping-back open staircases leading up to the main gates. During the 15th century, after the kingdom was unified, such projects ceased to be necessary, and public works projects often took the form of elaborate and well-constructed bridges, most of which were destroyed by bombing during World War II.

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2. My mother is from Okinawa, and the story of her family is a bit vague and mysterious. My grandfather (an American soldier) was stationed in Okinawa during the 1950s. My grandfather met my grandmother and they got married (I won’t speculate on whether it was because they loved each other or because he got her pregnant). According to my mother, her family was extremely traditional, and they feared actual violence from my grandmother’s family – so much so that they moved back to the United States.

   The first year of my mother’s life were spent in Okinawa. At that point, they returned to the states, and six years later, her mother passed away. My mother’s knowledge of the whole event is questionable at best. Since she didn’t know her mother long enough to get the full story, and her father “never talked about it”, she didn’t get the full story from her mother. Unfortunately, he has also passed away, so I cannot ask him. Please shed some light on the plausibility of her story if someone can. Perhaps she exaggerated the whole “we fled Japan in fear” element when she was younger, then just stuck to the story later in life because she couldn’t find anything else to believe, so it’s more likely he simply returned to the U.S. after his time in Japan had expired. In Okinawa at the time, were there really traditional families who would turn murderous if their daughter married an American and had his child?

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