Chibichiri-gama

American forces came ashore on the Yomitan coast on 1 April 1945. About 140 people from the village of Hanza were sheltering in this natural cave, and they had been taught that American soldiers were beasts who would treat them with cruelty. Testimony collected by the village says that just after the landing, three people went out with bamboo spears and two men fell in front of the cave. Panic spread inside, and the deaths began on 2 April.

Survivors described people lighting fires to suffocate themselves, injections of poison and, when the poison ran out, relatives killing one another with sickles and kitchen knives. Eighty-three people died. Yomitan's village history writes the Japanese term for collective suicide in quotation marks and describes a mass death among innocent people. About 50 m south, people sheltering in Ingwee-gama came out when soldiers called to them that they would not be killed, and one of them is said to have gone to Chibichiri-gama to urge those inside to do the same.

People later raised the Statue of Peace Linking Generations at the mouth of the cave to mourn the dead and pray for lasting peace. After the Hinomaru flag was burned at the softball venue of the Kaiho National Sports Festival, the statue was smashed in revenge, and for the bereaved it was as if the dead had been killed again. The statue was rebuilt in April 1995 with a stone memorial, and that same month the families closed the cave for good. Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki painted Chibichiri-gama in a Yomitan triptych that belongs to the Sakima Art Museum.