Japan imperial couple, Princess Aiko honor war dead in Okinawa
NAHA (Kyodo) -- Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako paid their respects to the war dead in Okinawa on Wednesday ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, accompanied by their daughter Princess Aiko on her first trip to the prefecture.
After departing Tokyo in the morning for the two-day visit, the imperial family laid flowers at the national cemetery for the war dead in Itoman.
The couple strongly encouraged their daughter to join them on the trip, a move underscoring the imperial family's desire to remember and pass on the lessons of the war to the next generation.
The emperor has consistently expressed his strong desire for peace, echoing the sentiments of his father, former Emperor Akihito, who has long reflected on Japan's wartime past after the war was fought in the name of his father, Emperor Hirohito.
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.
In July 1975, former Emperor Akihito and former Empress Michiko, then crown prince and princess, became the first imperial family members to visit Okinawa after the war.
But with local sentiment toward the emperor remaining deeply conflicted at the time, the couple had a Molotov cocktail thrown at them by radicals during a visit to the Himeyuri Cenotaph, constructed in remembrance of student nurses and teachers killed in the war.
Still, the former emperor strived to connect with the locals, becoming in April 1993 the first-ever reigning emperor to officially visit Okinawa. Together with his time as crown prince, he visited a total of 11 times by 2018 before abdicating the next year.
In May 2022, Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako remotely attended a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Okinawa's reversion to Japan from U.S. rule and visited the island prefecture the following October for cultural events.
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