WWII Japanese Navy Underground Tunnels

Before we begin this week's feature presentation.....

McCall's New Bed

Family Bike Ride

...and now for our feature presentation:

This Saturday we journeyed south to see the WWII underground headquarters of the Japanese Navy on Okinawa. All of the underground tunnels were hand dug and approximately 300 meters of the the tunnel system is open to the public. It was amazing to tour the tunnels and see what can be accomplished with hard work, determination, and a nearly endless supply of expendable labor.

Has Anyone Seen Our Daughter?

There is a museum at the beginning of the tunnels that had some interesting pictures, artifacts, etc. Holly and I were quite interested in everything. We realized that we had been experiencing an unusally relaxing time in the museum and McCall was not around. After a few minutes of searching, we found her in a corner of the museum watching a Japanese language history film on the Battle of Okinawa.

Tunnel Shot




Tunnel Shot 2

McCall wouldn't look at the camera because she was too busy meowing at Holly. By the way, Denver was also with us for this tour, but as usual he was always about a hundred feet ahead of us exploring.

Tunnel Shot 3

On a sad note, the chipped paint in the walls of this room are from grenades used when the soldiers committed suicide rather than surrendering. The remains of over 2,400 soldiers were pulled out of this tunnel system after the Battle of Okinawa.

Lunch Break

Daddy's Dunce Cap

Denver used his awesome origami skills to make me this wonderful dunce cap. The restaraunt had origami paper at each table. The kids were really entertained by this and the workers at the restaraunt kept bringing out these incredible origami creations to give to our kids.

After the tunnel tour and lunch came, what else but... a rollerslide park:

Holly's Spycam Shot of the Week
Japanese Snowcone Shack. The containers on the left table are filled with very thick flavored syrups about the consitency of molasses. You pick a flavor and the worker rolls up a serving of the syrup on the end of a chopstick and sticks this in the middle of your snowcone. After cooling to the temperature of the snowcone, the syrup turns as hard as a candy sucker and you have a flavored sucker to eat after you are done with your snowcone.