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Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

Navy underground headquartersBattle of OkinawaOta MinoruTomigusukuwar site

Illustration of Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters, Okinawa — Illustration — not a photograph

Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters is easy to reduce to a photo stop, but the history behind it is what makes the stop worth making.

In 1944 the Imperial Navy dug a command post into a hill in what is now Tomigusuku, using picks and hoes: about four hundred and fifty metres of tunnel at a depth of fifteen metres, with a staff room, a code room, a medical room and sleeping quarters. Around four thousand men were inside it at the end.

On 13 June 1945 the commander, Rear Admiral Ota Minoru, sent a final message to Tokyo asking that the people of Okinawa be given special consideration for what they had endured — it is one of the most quoted documents of the battle — and then he and his staff killed themselves in the tunnels. The scarring from the hand grenades is still on the walls of the staff room. About three hundred metres of the tunnel is open. It is a difficult forty minutes and it is one of the few places on the island where the battle is physically present.

Before you go

Opening hours

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Ticket sales until 4:30 PM

Closed: Open year-round except for occasional temporary closures

Admission

Charged — ¥480 adults and ¥210 children with an Okinawa monorail day pass; confirm the standard rate on arrival

Best time to visit

Year-round | Indoor site

Time to allow

40–60 minutes

How to reach it

Access notes

236 Tomigusuku, Tomigusuku, in Kaigungo Park. Car recommended; from Naha Airport. Admission is charged; a discounted rate of ¥480 for adults and ¥210 for children applies on presentation of an Okinawa monorail day pass. Around 300 m of the tunnel is open to visitors. Phone.

What locals know

**Read Ota's final message.** It is displayed at the site and is the reason this place is remembered rather than one more wartime tunnel. It asks that Okinawans be given special consideration after the war. **The grenade scars are in the staff room.** Visible on the walls where Ota and his officers died. The site does not dramatise it and does not need to. **The tunnel is low, narrow and humid.** Three hundred metres of it, dug by hand. Anyone claustrophobic should know that before buying a ticket. **Twenty minutes from the airport.** Which makes it feasible on an arrival or departure day, though it is not a light way to start or end a trip. **Allow forty minutes and expect it to be heavy.** There is a small museum above ground as well as the tunnel itself.

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