The Sad Song of Okinawa: The Cave Diggers' Long Search for the War-Dead, Part I

 They are known as Gama-Fuya. "Gama" is a natural cave in Okinawa's landscape. "Fuya" means "digger". Takamatsu Gushiken is a founding member of the group that explores the Gama of the island in search of the dead of the Battle of Okinawa.

 As the battle raged from April to June, 1945, close to 250,000 lives were lost, some 100,000 of them Japanese occupation troops, and more than 135,000 Okinawan civilians. While a number of the casualties were discovered and given either appropriate burial or repatriation, many thousands, especially of Okinawans, vanished in the conflict. Part of the reason for this might be the sheer magnitude of the war dead, which overwhelmed the survivors in their shock and despondency. They did the best they could to simply survive the aftermath. Another reason is the existence of the Gama.

Not surprisingly, people took shelter wherever they could and the caves made good hiding places. They also became tombs in some cases. Thousands of terror-stricken civilians, told by their Japanese captors that American troops would butcher and mutilate them, had killed themselves or were killed by their relatives. 

Rev. Shigeaki Kinjo as a child lived to beat his mother and siblings to death as the US forces came close to victory in 1945. Haunted by the horrific memories, a profound sense of guilt and shame, and righteous anger at the Imperial Japanese Empire which oppressed the islands, he bluntly stated without the presence of Japanese troops and their brainwashing of the civilian population, the suicides would not have happened. More on this in another posting.

 Cave digging is no easy task: Human bones resemble the native rock of the islands. In the aftermath of the battle, many bodies were left where they fell as entire families were wiped out between Japanese troops using Okinawans as human shields, and inadvertent crossfire as the battle raged. Burial was a mass effort, often without identification of the remains. In the subtropical climate of the area, decomposition was relatively swift--the remains became part of the very soil of southern Okinawa.

Takamatsu Gushiken, born in 1954, remembers finding human bones in a cave he explored as a child. Over the years, he found and heard of others finding more bones, particularly grieving families, veterans groups and others--but not Okinawa`s own government body. Bewildered by the indifference, Gushiken-San tried to interest the politicians, but they were having none of it.