Himeyuri Monument & Peace Museum, Okinawa

Himeyuri Monument & Peace Museum - darkometer rating : 6 - Another popular part of the memorial trail on southern Okinawa . This one commemorates in particular the tragic fate of schoolgirls who were mobilized towards the end of WWII to work in a Japanese underground army field hospital. Here their duties included disposing of soldiers' amputated limbs and burying the dead. As US forces pushed southwards in the Battle of Okinawa the Japanese military retreated and the girls were simply abandoned by the Army. So with nowhere to go under US siege, they either committed suicide (as they were instructed to do by Japanese war propaganda – see Okinawa ) or were killed in the battle that was raging around them. Out of 240 in total, only 14 survived. > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations What there is to see: The Himeyuri monument outside the museum isn't that much to look at – a slab with Japanese inscriptions mounted over a gaping hole in the ground – part of the cave the schoolgirls were hiding in at the time, apparently. The museum next door, however, is more captivating. It consists of a series of six exhibition rooms set out around a courtyard. Explanatory texts and exhibit labels are bilingual, in Japanese and English (the quality of which is generally very good, except for the odd glitch here and there). The overall tone of the exhibition is mournful (even when school groups clog up the rooms), and the politics noticeably less slanted compared to parts of the Peace Memorial Museum , let a lone the revisionist, nationalist slant at the infamous Yushukan in Tokyo .