Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum

Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum - darkometer rating : 8 - The museum is part of the large Okinawa Peace Memorial Park and by far its most worthwhile and informative element. It can rightly be regarded as one of the best war museums in Japan and the whole of the Pacific region – and for the dark tourist it's the main reason for coming to Okinawa in the first place. It is also incredibly popular with tourists generally, though it's probably Japanese school trips that form the largest proportion of the place's clientele. > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos What there is to see: By the ticket counter and museum shop is a display of unexploded bombs and shells in the ground, covered by glass floor plates, which serves as a kind of "taster". Upstairs is the museum's main permanent exhibition. And let me say it straight away: it is excellent, and caters for foreigners exceptionally well too, for Japan ! (Although not as well as the outstanding Peace Museum in Hiroshima ) Audio guides are available (for free) at the ticket counter (in Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean and Spanish). But they are actually quite unnecessary – in fact they could be a hindrance. The exhibition is cutting-edge modern and uses multi-media displays and video footage with English subtitles, plus numerous documents, photos and text panels, in Japanese and almost (though not quite) consistently in English too, the quality of which is mostly good. Thematically, the museum moves more or less chronologically, starting with the build-up of tensions before the war and the rise of fascism ... included are pictures of Hitler and Mussolini .