A short walk from Peace Memorial Park in Itoman, which is well worth a day of your time to explore the museum and memorials is an area around the cliffs of Giza Banta that will take your breath away with the amazing scenery yet leave you pondering the dark history where some of the most haunting and desperate fighting at the end of the 2nd World War took place.
Firstly on the walk up from Peace Memorial park you will walk uphill and pass through an area known as Mabuni Hill. This area contains many beautiful memorials with different monuments linked to different prefectures of Japan or different groups of people. There are many and each one is a poignant reminder of the thousands of sacrifices that those memorials represent.
After taking time to view and consider the sacrifices of the people and their spirits the monuments entomb and honor, walk to the top of the hill for one of the most amazing views in Okinawa and also one of the saddest. Giza Banta is where at the end of the war many thousands jumped to their deaths dreading the alternative of capture or being killed by allied forces. The beauty and calm that we can experience today is in stark contrast to the terrible end that many suffered in that same place.
After spending some time on the top of Giza Banta it’s worth descending the stairs around the cliff where you can take a circular route past the entrance to one of the tunnel complexes where commanders retreated to in the final days of the war before taking time to view further memorials set into the path along the cliff.
In contrast to the museum, which can sometimes get busy, the open areas and more peaceful pathways of Mabuni Hill and Giza Banta can really bring home the scale of loss experienced in Okinawa in quiet contemplation.
