Todoroki Cave

This is the cave where the Okinawa prefectural government came to an end, on 15 June 1945.

One hundred metres of limestone cave with a stream inside, at the bottom of a collapsed sinkhole. In June 1945 Governor Shimada Akira took refuge here with the prefecture's officials: on 15 June he ordered administrative activity to be suspended, and since then the place has been called ‘the prefecture's last cave’. From about 18 June the Americans began throwing drums of petrol and explosives in through the entrance; around the 24th, between five hundred and six hundred evacuees came out, persuaded to surrender by Okinawan prisoners who spoke their language.

A natural cave about one hundred metres long running east–west, with a watercourse flowing through it, in the Ishiki district of Itoman. It is also known as Todoroki-no-gō and by the local name Kābuyā-gama. In 2024 the municipality made a laser survey and 360-degree footage of it, publishing a virtual tour, because the interior is eroding.

ℹ️ ⚠️ This is not a place you can visit. The guides of the prefecture's volunteer association stopped taking people there in April 2023 because of the risk of falling rocks, and the municipality warns that the site contains dangerous areas, that you should not go alone or with only children, and that there are habu in the grass. The municipality has published a 360-degree virtual tour that you can watch from home.

🚉 Nambu Hospital · 9 min walk

Sources: city.itoman.lg.jp · city.itoman.lg.jp

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