We slept well & were ready to take off about 10 the next morning. Our Airbnb host, suggested we go to the Shurijo Castle & the Udon Palace gardens. We always like to get recommendations from the locals. The castle had been the home to the reigning kings from the early 1400's until almost 1900's. It had been almost completely destroyed during WWII. It is currently being rebuilt…again. It had been almost done several years ago when it was destroyed by a fire. It was very similar to the castles we've seen in China & VietNam. The gardens that surrounded the very simple & sparse Udon palace were lush. A pond with stone bridges was the centerpiece. I could just picture elegant ladies in bright kimonos crossing the bridges. We still had some sunlight & so we hopped on the monorail to see a bit more of the city of Nana. It is full of tall apartment & office buildings as far as you can see. I'm struck by the simplicity of buildings. Usually cement & boxy with little to no decorative detail. The cars too are simple & boxy and small. Traffic was steady but hardly heavy. Streets were clean but did see some storefronts that were not well kept. It's hard to imagine what this island looked like just 75 years ago. Virtually flattened. We've only seen a small pockets of prewar buildings. A big part of our draw to Okinawa was that my Dad was here during WWII. I thought of him a lot today. Especially when we saw the remains of a dug out tunnel used by the Japs (as he called them). The tunnels were almost impossible to see dug into the roots & plants. It's hard to wrap my head around what my Dad probably experienced here. History books say it was the largest & most deadly in the Pacific front. The castle we visited as tourist was actually the main fortress used by the Japanese in WWII. My dad was also on Iwo Jima…where they famous picture showing the US flag being hoisted happened. So imagine how strange it was to see the US flag flying next to the Japanese flag? It's so difficult to see anything but politeness, kindness & peacefulness in the eyes of the Japanese people that surround us now. How is it possible?
