Naha – Okinawa Highlight Tour

Upon arrival at Naha port, local guide waits with welcome-board, proceed to tour by chartered coach and promptly transfer to Former Japanese Naval Underground Headquarters, the most somber reminder of the bloody Battle of Okinawa. Only 250m of the tunnels are open, but you can be haunting to walk along the cave where so many soldiers died 72 years ago and gloomy when touching the holes made by the shrapnel used for suicide by the commanding officer and 175 of his staff. Walk along the Headquarters, you take a step on the Himeyuri Monument.

Afterward, you head to a must-visiting place when coming to Okinawa, the Peace Memorial Museum which is famous of the heartbreaking story about young high school girls were assigned to work as nursing assistants at the Army hospital – a cave connected by tunnels to smaller caves like a rabbit warren, disposing of soldiers’ amputated limbs and burying the dead during the Battle of Okinawa is sensitively told. Most of the archive films and survivor testimonies are not in English – but a picture “tells a thousand words”.

After having a self-sufficient lunch, you continue your Naha Trip by visiting the Okinawa World where the Gyokusendo Cave – the longest of the many caves in the south of Okinawa Island and the second longest cave in the entire country – is located. Known as a natural museum beautifully carved over 300,000 years, featuring spectacular stalactites and stalagmites, having well maintained and illuminated walking paths, you can freely marvel at the beauty of that gorgeous natural wonder without bringing any protected item.
Then, the Naha trip completes with the return to port for your cruise department.