Between late March and June 22, 1945, toward the end of World War II, U.S. and Japanese forces fought a land battle on the islands of Okinawa, at the southern tip of Japan. The U.S. naval gunfire and bombardment, known today as the “Storm of Steel” for its immense volume and intensity, claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Japanese combatants and non-combatants. On the main island of Okinawa, at the time of the battle, there were 21 boys’ and girls’ high schools. At the start of the battle, students from all these schools were mobilized: while the male students worked in the signal corps and other duties, the female students were mainly in charge of caretaking tasks as nurses. At that time Okinawa had two all-girls schools: the Girls’ Division Normal School and the First Girls’ High School, both located in what is now the Asato district of Naha City. After the war, the group of students and teachers from the two girls’ schools that were mobilized became known as the “Himeyuri Student Corps”, himeyuri being a Japanese word for a species of wild lily.

At midnight on March 23, 1945, the day U.S. forces began landing on Okinawa, 222 girls between the ages of 15 to 19 from the Girls’ Normal School and the First Girls’ High School led by 18 female teachers made their way from their schools to the Okinawa Army Field Hospital. This hospital was located on a hill in Haebaru, five kilometers southeast of Naha. There were about forty caves dug into the hillside, and the “hospital wards” consisted simply of rows of poorly constructed bunks set along unprotected mud walls. As the number of wounded soldiers increased, the female students were forced to work day and night with little time for sleep. Not only did they have to care for the sick and wounded with virtually no safety or first aid materials, but also perform the tasks of carrying food and water, sending messages and burying the dead. The students had been led to believe that they would be assigned to the Army Field Hospital, a secure pavilion over which a Red Cross flag was hoisted, to perform nursing work. However, their situation was no different from that at the front: they found themselves on the battlefield under continuous bombardment. There was no legal basis for this mobilization of young students for military purposes: nevertheless, the Japanese army implemented the program.

On May 25, an evacuation order was issued for the Army Field Hospital to head south of the island. Some students tended to patients who could walk, while others carried wounded friends on stretchers or carried medicines and documents in their backpacks; all headed south amid a barrage of howitzers. The teachers and students who had moved from the Army Field Hospital and their separate clinic caves in Haebaru gathered the next day in what is now Ihara, city of Itoman. In this area there were many natural caves -called “gama” in the Okinawan language- and many civilians sought shelter in them. The army forced the civilians who had hidden in the caves to come out, and members of the Army Field Hospital took refuge in six different “gama” caves. The Army Field Hospital had run out of most medical equipment and medicines and had ceased to function as a hospital: there were not even adequate caves to receive wounded soldiers. Still, the students took on the tasks of securing food and water and sending messages in the midst of the shelling.

At midnight on June 18, a deactivation order was issued for students at the Army Field Hospital. U.S. forces were approaching and there was heavy shelling outside. However, the students had to leave the caves and fend for themselves thereafter. At the end of June, the 32nd Army (Okinawa Defense Forces) was destroyed. Commander Ushijima did not allow the surviving soldiers to surrender and, before committing suicide himself, ordered all personnel to fight to the last moment. During the 90 days from the beginning of their mobilization in March until the issuing of the deactivation order, 19 Himeyuri students and teachers were killed; the remaining 117 victims died in the first few days after the corps was deactivated.

The cave over which the cenotaph of the Himeyuri students now stands was called “Cave of the 3rd Ihara Surgical Unit”, as it was the place where the Army Field Hospital’s 3rd Surgical Department moved to after its withdrawal to southern Okinawa. There were about 100 people in this cave, including Himeyuri students and other hospital workers, signal corps members and local residents. Although the Himeyuri students escaped from the cave after their unit was deactivated, they were unable to find any other cave to hide in. They took refuge in cycad or pine bushes during the day, and moved towards the coast at night when the attack subsided. Some of them committed suicide in various ways for fear of being systematically raped by the American soldiers, as the young women had been educated to fear the kichiku beiei (“Anglo-Saxon beasts” in Japanese), so being taken prisoner was the most feared possibility. Before the battle was over, some students threw themselves off the steep cliffs of the Arasaki seashore; others poisoned themselves with cyanide or detonated hand grenades over their bodies.

Finally, the survivors found were taken to U.S. collection centers between June 20 and June 23, while others went into hiding for more than two months without even learning of Japan’s surrender and were not received in refugee camps until August 22. As a total result, of the 240 women and girls mobilized from the Himeyuri establishments, 136 of them died (123 students and 13 teachers). In addition, 91 other women and girls from these schools (88 students and 3 teachers) were not mobilized but died in other circumstances during the Battle of Okinawa.