RYUKYU ISLANDS

RYUKYU ISLANDS / 琉球

Government Parks.
View from Mabuni Hill (Okinawa).
Stamp issued on 30.07.1971.
Face value: 3 cents of United States dollar.
Printing: Photogravure.

Catalogues
- Michel No. 245.
- Scott No. 217.
- StampWorld No. 252.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 255.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 209.

The Ryūkyū Islands (琉球 諸島), officially, in Japanese, Nansei Islands (南西 諸島) is the southernmost archipelago of Japan, in the southwestern part of the country, in the East China Sea. They have a total area of 4,642.11 km² (1,792.33 sq mi) and their maximum height is Mount Miyanoura, of 1,936 m (6352 ft). The archipelago is made up of 83 islands, 48 of them uninhabited: the largest are Okinawa (沖縄), 1,206.98 km² (466.02 sq mi), and Amami (奄美), 712.35 km² (275.04 sq mi). Part of the archipelago was an independent kingdom between the 14th and 19th centuries: in 1879 it was abolished by the Japanese Meiji government and integrated into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture. After the Second World War, in 1945, the archipelago came under the administration of the United States and the islands were totally returned to Japan on May 15, 1972 (between 1948 and 1972 Ryukyu issued its own stamps). One of the bloodiest battles of the war took place in Okinawa, between American and Japanese troops, from April 1 to June 23, 1945, with a death toll of more than a quarter of a million.

Mabuni Hill, 89 m (292 ft) above sea level, south of the island of Okinawa and on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, was one of the worst hit during the battle that took place in 1945 between US and Japanese troops: there, precisely, the battle finally ended on June 23 of that year after the suicide of two senior Japanese military commanders. A part of the hill is occupied by a Peace Park Memorial consecrated to the memory of the victims of that battle, with a cemetery where the ashes of some 110,000 of them lie and a commemorative museum inaugurated in 1975.