Okinawa’s Sugar Loaf Hill a New Battleground Over Military Monument : World War II: Naha resident is determined to erect a ‘peace marker’ in tribute to those who died. He faces the opposition of bureaucrats, who are content to allow the site to remain lost in obscurity.

Seicoh Gushken plucks a jagged chunk of metal from the newly disturbed earth of an all-but-forgotten hillside. Turning the rusty object over in nicotine-stained fingers, he identifies it as shrapnel, most likely from a hand grenade.

“This kind of thing can be found all around,” he said, tossing it aside. “Military guys still go exploring in the caves and find whole skeletons and dog tags.”

Gushken, an Okinawan painter and teacher, is standing at the base of Sugar Loaf Hill, scene of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the Pacific. He is determined to create a monument here--against the wishes of nearby Naha City Hall bureaucrats, who are content to allow the site to remain cloaked in obscurity.

Even as the 50th anniversary of the fight for Okinawa--the last battle of the war--neared, the local government opted to erect a water tower on the hill to serve a new housing development it has planned for the surrounding area.

“This will be a completely new section of town where 20,000 people will live,” said City Manager Tamaki Seiichi. “There will be schools, parks and an art museum. We have to put a water tower somewhere.”

By some estimates, as many as 2,500 Japanese soldiers died defending Sugar Loaf, which was so small that it didn’t appear on some American topographical maps. U.S. Marine combat deaths totaled more than 2,600, including three battalion commanders and 11 company commanders.

“The cost of Sugar Loaf was high,” said Benis M. Frank, the chief Marine historian, who was among the troops who landed on Okinawa, April 1, Easter Sunday, 1945.

The ferocity of the Japanese defense of the hill--named by Americans for its rectangular shape--surprised the lead elements of the 6th Marine Division that stumbled on it the afternoon of May 12.

What the Marines didn’t know was that Sugar Loaf was the western anchor of the defense of Shuri Castle, a medieval fortress that served as headquarters for Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima, commander of the Japanese 32nd Army, the officer in charge of defending Okinawa.

American strategy called for using Okinawa as an “unsinkable battleship” from which to stage the final assault on the Japanese home islands, the southernmost of which is only 360 miles from Okinawa’s northern tip.

Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo had determined to make a heroic stand, hoping to slow the American advance and allow the Japanese more time to fortify for a final defense of their heartland.

Japanese naval and army forces were dug into extensive networks of caves and tunnels--a key to their defense of Sugar Loaf.

At first, the Marines advancing on Shuri Castle didn’t know that they were taking on three hills, not one. Nearby Horseshoe and Half Moon hills were the other corners of a deadly triangle of firepower, interconnected by underground passages.

For a week, the Marines repeatedly charged Sugar Loaf and gained the summit, only to be driven back by withering fire from Horseshoe and Half Moon. Within minutes each time, Japanese soldiers poured through the tunnels and reoccupied Sugar Loaf.

Maj. Henry A. Courtney Jr., a Marine battalion executive officer, led a charge May 14. He made it to the crest, but he was cut down by a mortar shell and his men were driven back. His bravery won him a posthumous Medal of Honor.

Well after midnight, on the seventh day, after hours of hand-to-hand fighting in the dark, the Marines finally succeeded in pushing the Japanese off Sugar Loaf for good.

But the story of Sugar Loaf was far from over.

After the Japanese surrender, Okinawa became an American possession. In 1972, the United States returned the island to Japan, with the understanding that certain areas, including Sugar Loaf, would be used as U.S. military bases. Sugar Loaf Hill and its environs became a U.S. military housing development.

Before the war, Sugar Loaf had been a popular picnic spot. As generations of Okinawans grew up after its occupation by Americans, recollections of the place and the terrible battle faded.

In 1986 the United States ceded the area back to Okinawa.

Today, Sugar Loaf Hill looks nothing like it did in 1945. In preparation for the new housing development, expected to be completed in 1998, its summit has been sheared off to accommodate the water tower, creating a plateau about the size of a football field. Turf grows on its sides, and the entire hill is enclosed by a high concrete retaining wall.

Seicoh Gushken mounted his campaign to erect a monument after he saw bulldozers leveling parts of the site. His efforts have attracted considerable attention from the local press. But city officials have been largely unsympathetic.

“I don’t want to sound mean, but the Battle of Okinawa was everywhere, not just here,” said Senri Miyazato, a Naha city official. “It was a terrible hardship on both Americans and Japanese. Many Okinawans suffered all over the island. We don’t just think of this spot.”

Okinawa’s government is building a wall in the southern part of the island that will contain more than 200,000 names of World War II casualties.

Miyazato says a modest marker of some kind will be erected on Sugar Loaf Hill--but not the elaborate “peace monument” Gushken envisions.

Gushken says he believes the water tower and his monument can exist side by side.

As a child, he escaped the worst devastation of the battle when his parents evacuated him to an outlying island. Today, he says that the memory of Sugar Loaf should be preserved.

“Until they put something up to commemorate what happened here, more than just a plaque,” said Gushken, “I’m not going to let up.”