NAHA - As local news coverage continues to expand, offering more practical information closely tied to residents' daily lives, attention turns to a feature marking eighty years since the end of the war. With fewer people remaining who can speak from personal experience about the Battle of Okinawa, the question of how to preserve and pass down these memories has become increasingly urgent.
This report follows high school students conducting peace education and striving to inherit these memories as their own, based on three decades of ongoing youth awareness surveys conducted in Okinawa.
At a peace education workshop held at Haebaru Junior High School, students participated in exercises simulating decisions that Okinawan residents were forced to make during the battle. "American fighter planes are flying overhead. Will you join the group of adults or children?" In one scenario, a student chose the children's group, saying, "I thought it would be harder for the enemy to spot us."
The workshop was led by local high school students themselves, who are deeply aware of the growing gap between younger generations and the fading memory of Okinawa’s wartime experience. "Many students respond that they don't know the answers to basic questions. They learn about peace but struggle to internalize it as something personally relevant," one student observed.
In a survey conducted last year by the Okinawa History Education Research Association targeting roughly 1,600 second-year high school students in the prefecture, only about 60% correctly identified that 2023 marked 78 years since the end of the war. Furthermore, just 48.1% knew the significance of June 23rd as Okinawa’s Memorial Day.
"Students have a strong desire to learn," explained Toshiaki Ara, visiting professor at Okinawa University, who has led the high school surveys for 30 years. "But since they are not taught in school, they lack even these basic facts. Their awareness is high, but their knowledge is low."
Ara has spent decades promoting improved peace education in schools, emphasizing the importance of training teachers who can thoroughly convey Okinawa's history. "Japan’s postwar history isn’t being adequately taught. In particular, if the reversion movement isn’t covered, students won’t understand the fundamental issue of why military bases remain in Okinawa."
Kinjo from Ura High School, who has collaborated on the long-running survey, highlighted the challenges teachers face: "Given heavy workloads and slow progress on work-style reforms, teachers struggle to find time to prepare lesson materials." Peace education is not clearly positioned in school curricula or teaching guidelines, and according to prefectural data, over 80% of schools in Okinawa allocate only one or two days a year to peace education.
Amid these constraints, some high school students have stepped forward to take responsibility for peace education themselves, forming groups to organize and conduct peace-learning activities. "We want younger students to think about how issues of peace are not just matters between nations but exist around them as well," said one student leader.
At Shuri High School, a student-led group supports peace learning for younger students. Ahead of the workshop at Haebaru Junior High, members repeatedly discussed how to help participants see the Battle of Okinawa as a personal issue. "We want them to think about what choices they would make, what their friends would do, and how they might act in that situation," one student explained.
The workshop invited students to step into the shoes of wartime Okinawan residents, making life-and-death decisions such as whether to follow evacuated family members to the north or hide alone in the mountains. Through this simulation, students confronted the unimaginable circumstances faced at the time and reflected deeply on the meaning of peace.
"We've had many peace education classes before, but this was the first time I really thought about what it would have been like to live through the Battle of Okinawa. It was refreshing and meaningful," said one participant. These new forms of peace education, where high school students teach even younger generations, are beginning to spread.
Surveys show that nearly 95% of high school students believe it is extremely important to learn about events from eighty years ago. "There is hope in this," Ara noted. "Since there are fewer adults who can share these experiences, students are starting to think: if no one else will speak, then we must be the ones to tell these stories."
"We don’t want to confine students’ feelings inside themselves. We hope to help them put their thoughts into words so they can pass them on to the next generation," added another educator.
While not everything can be passed down entirely through students alone, eighty years after the war, a strong sense of mission is taking root among Okinawa's youth. "By imagining what they would have done, students wonder what really happened at the time, what followed, and continue learning and reflecting in an ongoing cycle. Watching young people pass these stories to even younger generations offers hope for building a peaceful future," concluded the report.
Source: 沖縄ニュースOTV
