Japan imperial couple, Princess Aiko to visit Okinawa WWII sites
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako will visit Okinawa next month to pay their respects to the war dead ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, with their only daughter Princess Aiko set to accompany them on her first trip to the prefecture, the Imperial Household Agency said Wednesday.
After arriving in Okinawa from Tokyo's Haneda airport on June 4, the imperial family will lay flowers at the national cemetery for the war dead in Itoman and visit the "Cornerstone of Peace" cenotaph, according to the agency. They also plan to speak with survivors at the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum.
The following day, they will lay flowers at a memorial in Naha for the Tsushima Maru incident, in which about 1,500 people, including hundreds of schoolchildren, were killed in the August 1944 sinking of a Japanese ship in a U.S. submarine torpedo attack.
They will then visit the memorial museum nearby and meet with survivors and bereaved families. While then-Emperor Akihito and then-Empress Michiko visited the memorial in 2014, it marks the first visit by the current emperor and his wife.
Okinawa fell into U.S. hands in the closing months of World War II in 1945 through the Battle of Okinawa, which began in March of that year with the landing of U.S. troops on the Kerama Islands near the main island of Okinawa.
Around 200,000 people -- both Japanese and American -- lost their lives in the ensuing ground battle.
Last month, the emperor and empress visited Iwoto Island, formerly known as Iwojima, the site of a fierce battle in the Pacific between Japan and the United States, to mourn the war dead.
The couple is also scheduled to visit the atomic-bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the coming months as they follow in the footsteps of the trips made by then-Emperor Akihito and then-Empress Michiko to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.
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