One Messed Up Island

That's a book, yeah yeah, you good? I'm thinking, don't hurt yourself, come on man, play your card, I'm alone, come on, we're playing or what? Hold on, we're looking at something, just walk past the door, yeah, one of our guys? I don't, I don't know, what do you mean you don't know? It was too tall, what do you mean? The taller than that, like the arch. Okay, I'm calling it, we start seeing shit, I'm not into the cards anymore, let's wrap it up, yeah, yeah. Combat town was supposed to be empty that night, no roleplayers, no op 4, no one was supposed to be walking around the streets, let alone something taller than the 10 foot archway into the church. I'm Luke Lamana, and this is wartime stories. I found this story posted online by marine, writing under the handle, a Kodiaks. He doesn't exactly say where he was stationed on Okinawa, but based on the details he gives, it sounds like at least part of this happened on Camp Hanson, which I happen to be very familiar with. In one of those mock training villages, Marines used for urban combat training a mount town. Combat town, it might be called the name of this actual training area. I train on the ranges and stuff on Hanson, we did a lot of our training in like, for recon, the abandoned housing, down on Camp Foster, or empty barracks buildings on Hanson, I think I might have used the mount town on Hanson once, but take my word on it, all of those places, especially at night, gave me the creeps when I let myself think about it, just something about an empty building, especially on Okinawa. We've touched on it before, but that island saw some of the worst fighting of World War II, thousands of people dying in mass every day, really bloody, really awful. And according to this Marine, the longer he was stationed there, the more he started to understand why so many people come away from that island with odd stories. I think the most interesting thing my guy saw in that mount town was watching a spider, after it got stomped on, crawl back to its web, and then rip its own broken leg off and then it ate it. But this Marine, during a late night fire watch in this combat town, he steps outside, expecting it just to be another, boring couple of hours guarding weapons and gear. Instead, he saw something waving at him from near a parked vehicle. That was only the first thing he saw that night. He writes, "The things I experienced while stationed on Okinawa were what made me a believer in the paranormal. Towards the end of World War II, the entire island was a battlefield, and a lot of horrible things happened there. And honestly I've yet to meet anyone who hasn't had some kind of weird thing happen to them after being stationed there. But despite how creeped out I was when these things happened, I'm actually somewhat honored to have experienced them. If anyone has any theories or debunks for what I saw, then by all means, feel free to share them. Alright, first story. At the time, my platoon was doing some urban warfare training in what we in the military know as a mount town stands for military operations in urban terrain. There are basically these fake villages that are used to simulate operations in urban environments. Some of these things are actually pretty detailed and they'll bring in opposition forces, opt for, and civilian role players to really make things interesting, you know, make it realistic. But in this particular mount town, the buildings were just concrete shells with nothing inside them. In preparation for my turn on the night shift, I had myself a very nice nap before me and a buddy had to stand watch on our weapons in gear while everyone was asleep. Our watch started around 1am. I stepped out of the building that we were racked out in, well-rested by rain standards, and ready for what should have been a boring couple of hours. But as I walked out into the street, I looked towards one of our parked vehicles and saw a shadow. It was tall, skinny, and looked like one of my Marines wearing a booty cover, one of those field hats with the white brim. What's weird was that I could see that his hand was over his head, waving like he was trying to get my attention. So I'm confused because my buddy and I are supposed to be the only ones up on watch, right? Everyone else is supposed to be asleep. So I start walking towards this guy like, "Hey, dude, what are you doing?" And I blanked and he was gone. Just gone. I'm not even going to play tough here. I was very spooked. I checked all around the vehicle, both inside and out, and I saw nothing. And I just could not really explain what had just happened. And again, I felt rested after a short nap. At that point I'm kind of like, "Okay, cool." That happened. But I was still on watch, right? I got to do a job. So I shook this off and I continued my patrol. So I walked down the road and I went around the other side of our building to look down this empty street of concrete buildings. But this time, they weren't as empty as they should have been. I turned the corner and I swear to God. I immediately saw people walking on the street and riding bicycles, like barely a hundred feet in front of me. And so I flipped down my night vision goggles and they are still there. They were translucent. And based on how they were moving, it was almost like they were on some kind of a loop, dude. I was both in some kind of awe at what I was seeing and scared, totally shitless. I just turned around and hauled back to wherever my body was posted up. I think I actually made him roam while I sat down and just tried to rationalize everything. The next morning over breakfast, I told my buddy what went down the previous night and he said that some of the other guys talked about seeing shadows moving in the buildings around sunrise. The next night, so we're sitting guard at one of the entrances to the range that we're on, we're inside of the vehicle with headlights on. And we just keep seeing these skinny dark shadows float out of the jungle and across the road before heading back into the jungle. When we got off post, me and some of the guys are playing spades in the Mt. Town Church, this concrete church. I saw something out of the corner of my eye move past the archway by the entrance. And this thing was big, like it was taller than the archway and that thing was about ten feet tall and the ceiling behind it was much higher. Other Marines said they thought it was like a full humanoid figure. At that point, one of the guys just like I'm calling it and so we packed up the table and we just got the hell out of that church. While none of the previous experiences on this trip left me with an ominous vibe, this one did. Honestly, that whole week we spent in the Mt. Town was weird as hell. These stories are just the ones eyewitnessed, dozens of other guys were evidently seeing and hearing weird stuff as well. My second encounter happened when me and a few buddies went up to Hedo Point, the northern most cliffs on Okinawa. We drove up there to do some sightseeing and as we hiked along some of the trails we came across these shrines that led to the cliffs. We could see that some of the locals had left some yen behind his offerings so we dug into our pockets and we decided we'll just copy and do what the locals do. We left some coins and I think at that point we left and ended up coming back at sunset to take some very beautiful photos over the south trying to see and then when it got dark we make our way back to the empty parking lot and we stop at the restroom. My buddy and I just had to take a piss and we walked out while our other buddy is still in there taking a dump so we're out there waiting for him for like 20 minutes like we're laughing because we're like man this guy's fighting for his life in there or something you know MREs you know, meal refuses to exit but finally we thought we heard him exit the restroom and walk off down the trail so we went to catch up with him but we barely make a 10 yards down the trail when we we saw something white stand up from behind the bushes with eyes that reflected the light of our phone flashlights. Man we didn't even wait around we booked it to the parking lot as fast as we could and practically hurled ourselves into that car and five minutes later our poop buddy runs out of the restroom and hops in the car as well and he told us that he thought we came back to the restroom because he was here in footsteps in movement around the stall but when he came out nobody was in there and who was the guy that we were following down the trail. We just left and tried to rationalize it but we couldn't come up with any kind of reasonable explanation. We drove back into town and saw a bunch of locals partying outside their houses it seemed like the festivities were going on for miles. When we got back to base we asked the gate guard if he knew why everybody's out partying and he did he said that it was something called "obon" which if you think of Hispanic culture is basically like a day of the dead for Okinawa like an Okinawan day of the dead where they celebrate and do these rituals and they invite their ancestors back to the physical realm for a few days. At the end of the day Okinawa is a beautiful place to visit and getting a serve there was really cool. If you ever go please behave yourself and respect the island as well as the locals. The culture is rich so are the experiences, both physical and paranormal. This next story was posted online by a man writing under the handle Gonzo Jeff so I think we can take the liberty of referring to him as Jeff and I'll be upfront I'm not completely sure what his connection to Okinawa was he doesn't say whether he or his wife were military or if they were there for work family something else but what he does say is that he and his family lived on the island for nearly five years just sounded military to me. I've heard this before but according to him anyone who has spent time real time on Okinawa will tell you the same thing the island has a reputation not just because of the war but also because Okinawan culture has deep respect for ancestors spirits and the dead so when Jeff and his family moved into a new house during Obon the time of year when Okinawans believed the spirits of their ancestors returned home they didn't realize how quickly that reputation was going to become personal on their first night in the house Jeff's eight year old stepson said that a little boy came into his room and by the next morning they realized that his son may not have been the only one who heard this child he writes my wife and I lived for nearly five years on the island of Okinawa which anyone who's ever lived there will tell you has a well deserved reputation for being very haunted. Some of the atrocities that took place there during World War II were absolutely horrifying combined that with the native culture that has a strong belief in ancestor worship and it's apparently an ideal recipe for the presence of lots and lots of restless spirits every year Okinawa celebrates the festival of Obon with customs and traditions that are quite different from those on mainland Japan Okinawans with the exception of the integration of Japanese culture they were always a separate class of people a separate people from Japanese or Okinawans but during the war there was a lot of indoctrination and forced integration into Japanese culture and things which are even being lost today the language things like that but the purpose of Obon is to commemorate once ancestors and the belief is that spirits return to this world for three days to visit family the timing of those three days is based on the lunar calendar so the exact date is very from year to year but they usually fall sometime in early August the first day is the welcoming day families visit the tombs where their ancestors were maids are kept and they escort the spirits home where a family altar is set up with offerings of their favorite food and drinks on the second day family members pray to their ancestors at the family altar often traveling from one home to another to pay respects to all their ancestors the final day of Obon is when the family gathers to celebrate with a lavish dinner after which they escort the ancestors back to the spirit room with the help of teams of aisa dancers that parade through every town and village it's an amazing festival and cultural tradition but in Okinawa it's also considered to be the time of year when spirits are most active as luck would have it our family moved into our new house in Okinawa in early August during Obon it was me my wife our dog Sparky and my wife's two sons who were ages eight and 12 at the time let's call the younger one Brian and his older brother Jack the house had three bedrooms arranged side by side on a long hallway Jack's room was at one end of the hallway my wife and I had the room at the other end and Brian's room was the one in the middle between the other two on our second night in the new house we told the kids it was time for them both to go to bed Jack went off to brush his teeth no fuss to sparking it was room with them closed the door went to bed but Brian refused we figured you know he's just kind of tired and jet lagged we were all experiencing you know this after the recent flight from the US to Japan and my wife and I told Brian that you know suddenly you have to go to bed even if he didn't feel tired just so he can get his body clock to reset to the local time he kept resisting though becoming less and less silly about it and more and more agitated and finally he just broke down and started crying and at that point we knew something else was seriously wrong because this was not normal behavior for him we hugged him we got him to calm down and we tried to get him to share no whatever's bothering him it took him a little while for him to open up but when he did the story told us was just amazing Brian said that during the previous nights our first night in the house he couldn't sleep on account of the jet lag and in the middle of the night he heard a noise and he looks up to see the door to his room slowly opening and he said a little boy roughly about his age walked into the room illuminated by the light filtering through the window blinds from the street lamp outside and this boy walks over to the corner and he starts looking at Brian's toys that are sitting on top of the suitcase and after a moment this little boy looks up at Brian and then he just simply disappeared Brian told us that he was me through tears, that he was afraid to sleep in his room because this ghost boy might come back. My wife and I thought it was possible that Brian had dreamed all this. He wasn't the sort of kid who just made up stories like this. Whatever the case, he was legitimately terrified to sleep in his room. So we told Brian that he could come sleep with us in our room for the night, and he did that. The door to our room was shut all night long, and we slept soundly. The next morning, I woke up early to get ready for work. Jack was awake too, and he joined me in the kitchen while I was making breakfast. My wife and Brian were both still sleeping. Now, because Jack had gone to bed before Brian ended up getting upset the night before, Jack would have had no knowledge about Brian's story or the fact that he was sleeping in our room. And out of the blue, Jack says to me, "I'm really worried about Brian." And asked him why, and he said, "I think maybe he's upset about moving here." And get this, Jack said, "I woke up in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom, and I could hear Brian in his room just sobbing." He sounded so sad. Man, when I tell you the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. Brian had spent the whole night with us in our room sound asleep. So, who the hell did Jack hear crying in Brian's bedroom? [music] This next story is a little shorter, but it's stuck out to me because it takes place on cadena, airbase, you know, air force, golf course, apple bees. All the amenities the Marine Corps bases never seem to have. For as many dark stories as I've heard about cadena so far, it feels like some supernatural balancing act, the nicer the base, the more it has to be creepy at night. I had the pleasure of meeting another Marine this past weekend actually, somehow Camp Hansen came up in our chat, and he said he was stationed there in 1969 before they sent him to Vietnam. I asked him to describe the barracks buildings, and he basically described the ones we lived in, so I don't know, maybe they might be the same buildings from 60 years ago. But anyway, cadena is nicer. Cadena is one of those places on Okinawa where the modern military is sitting right on top of a much older, much darker history. During World War II, the airfield originally belonged to the Japanese after they, you know, took over Okinawa. And it was one of the main military objectives when the American forces landed on the island, you take the airbase. There were creepy building stories to go around, but according to this Marine, the strange stuff that he saw wasn't happening in a barracks room or some old house off base, it was happening out in the jungle, in the training areas, near old tunnels, tombs and sacred sites. The kind of place where, if you heard a baby crying in the middle of the night, every normal instinct in your body would tell you that it's not supposed to be out there, not be able to help yourself. You have to go find it. But according to his staff sergeant, it was exactly what you were not supposed to do. You're right. So, I was mainly stationed on Cadena, but I spent a bit of time on Futema as well. I didn't experience anything there, but I heard all kinds of strange stories. There was an altar at the bottom of a hill that a lot of guys talked about in particular, and apparently a female Marine was experiencing all kinds of strange stuff in her room. Not sure what she experienced exactly, but I heard it got so bad that she had to go get a chaplain to come and bless her room. There was also this gate on the flight line side of the base that's now closed. But the legend there goes that the Marines and Japanese troops patrolling at that gate would get terrorized by something or someone. But my own personal experiences happened on Cadena, more specifically in the jungle area of the base. Now, this jungle is huge. I think it's something like 6,300 acres of land that we used for training and munitions storage. And if you know what to look, the area is also filled with old World War II tunnels used by the Japanese, as well as tombs, sacred chinto prayer sites. It was a pretty cool place, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a bit creepy when the sun went down. So one night, around 0100-0200, in the morning, my staff sergeant and I were out deep in the jungle, squaring away one of the 7-ton trucks. It was a pretty chill night until both of us heard what sounded like a baby crying from somewhere out in this jungle. So we both just stopped and were kind of listening. And like, there's nobody around us and all that land is owned by the military. So why the hell is there a baby out here in the dead of night? So I started walking towards the sound, but my staff sergeant calls me back. And at first, I'm like, why? Like, there's a kid out there, we can't just leave him out there. But he just looked at me, cold as ice, and basically said that he'd heard it before, and to just leave it. Essentially, if I went looking for this kid, we wouldn't find it because it just wasn't there. I really didn't know what to do, so I took the path of least resistance and listened to my staff sergeant. The whole thing just felt wrong in so many ways. On another night, we were back out in the jungle and heard what sounded like dozens of footsteps and voices speaking in Japanese. Maybe the ghosts of a Japanese patrol, I don't know, and at the time I honestly didn't want to find out. I think it was on that same night that we were driving out of there and saw what looked like the silhouette of a Japanese soldier staring at the end of the road. But we just drove past him, and he was gone, nothing. So yeah, those jungles, they got a lot of bad juju in them. Before we get to the next story, I also wanted to take a minute to thank someone, the sponsors, who helped make episodes like this possible. I blew a disc in my spine in 2015, and that pretty much ended my military career. It also derailed my fitness. And then over the next 10 years, between managing chronic pain and just building a lot of bad habits, working out consistently has been a roller coaster of tries and fails. One of the hardest parts of getting back into working out after a long time of being out, it is the recovery phase. Now, and I definitely don't bounce back the way I used to, so I started looking at supplements that could support what I'm trying to do, and one of those was creatine. And that's why I've been using Bubs Naturals creatine monohydrate. It's not like I take a scoop and immediately feel some dramatic difference, it doesn't work like that, but creatine, I use it because it's one of the most research supplements in the world, and that research shows that it supports strength, muscle growth, and recovery. Consider throwing Bubs into your routine like I do, one scoop, and whatever, I'm already drinking coffee, protein shake, whatever Bubs uses Creapur, with no fillers, dye, sweeteners, or any unnecessary junk, and it's third party tested. Bubs has also got a lot of other great supplements, collagen peptides, hydrate, or electrolytes, and MCT oil, cremers. And I also really like the mission behind Bubs, the company honors former Navy SEAL Glenn Bubb Doherty, and they donate 10% of their profits to charity. Live better longer for limited time, only our listeners get 20% off at Bubs Naturals by using code wartime stories, checkout, just head to bubsnaturals.com and use code wartime stories. And you're all set. After you purchase, they will ask where you heard about them, please support our show and tell them who sent you. Hey, did you know people are using nicotine pouches before they work out? Okay, so what's the big deal? They's no constriction face up. Am I supposed to know what that means? You think it's in arrows your blood vessels, so if you're trying to get a pump of the gym, it's literally working against you. Okay, well, like I told you last time I don't use it. use nicotine myself, but I do have friends that do, so thank you. I will tell them about this basal construction thing. Cool, cool, but hey, you still use ultra pouches too, right? Yeah, totally. I keep them in my car, I keep them here at the desk. I like using them because I do intermittent fasting and it helps take the edge off my hunger, and it also helps me just stay focused throughout the day, and I don't feel a crash that I get from caffeine That's because ultra has zero nicotine, zero caffeine, just neutropics and adaptogens for smooth energy and focus. Have you decided on a favorite flavor yet? Okay, well you asked me this last time and I told you I like tropical, but I still don't care because they've got five flavors and they're all awesome. Okay, you're not going to get an argument from me there, but can I, can you do your thing and I get back to work? Ultra is the ultimate guilt-free pouch delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. New customers can use code wartime stories to get 15% off and takeultra.com that's takeultra.com for 15% off with code wartime stories. And look, after you purchase, they will ask who sent you, so be sure to tell them it was wartime stories. Next, guys. This next account comes from a former Coast Guardsman writing under the handle CG40 boat, Coast Guard 40 boat. And this one takes us back to the late 60s. He was stationed at a Coast Guard low-ran transmitting site long range, wireless communications radio stuff like that, on the north end of the island of Okinawa. Basically, an isolated navigation station with a small crew of about 25 guys, all of them pulling watches around the clock to keep all this equipment running. So this wasn't a barrack story, it's not another battlefield story that marines out in the jungle, seeing something between the trees. This was just a guy sitting alone on a midnight watch, surrounded by timers, radios, scopes, dials, coffee, paperwork, and the kind of dead quiet you only get in a place where everyone else is asleep. And then, out of nowhere, something on the other side of the room starts throwing things. He writes, I spent over a year 1967-68 on a U.S. Coast Guard low-ran transmitting station on Okinawa. This was an isolated duty station at the north end of the island. There were about 25 crew members and all of us did a one-year tour. I was assigned as a low-ran watchstander doing these eight-hour shifts. I was on a midnight shift when I heard a loud bang on the other side of timers. To give you an idea of the layout, there were eight timers in two rows. The watchstanders desk was directly in the middle with a row of timers, these big machines on either side. The timers were about the size of a refrigerator with scopes and dials on the front. They were used for maintaining a microsecond delay on the navigation signals we received and sent. The noise I heard came from the open work area behind the timers, where the ET's worked on equipment. About 10 to 15 feet directly behind me, the A watchstanders desk was the door to the C timer room. To the right was an open radio area with a TELX and a radio transmitter slash receiver. Then there was a wooden coffee pot stand with a big coffee urn and a small galvanized trash can on it. Next to that was a door that opened to a hall that led to the garage area and further down at the end of the building was where the engineer watchstander was on duty. When I heard the loud bang I jumped and I ran around the eight timers to find that the metal trash can lid had come off the can and somehow sailed across the room. So I pick it up and I walk it back and put it back on the can and I opened the hall door and there's just nobody around. So I rang up the EM3 who was on watch thinking maybe he's bored and playing jokes to liven up the quiet hours. He answered on that first ring so I realized it couldn't have been him. There's no way he could have gotten back to his duty phone that fast. I went back to the desk and sat down pondering what had just happened and within a minute or two, bang! And happened again. I stood up, walked around, there was the lid on the floor in the middle of the workroom area behind the timers. I picked it up, walked it back, put it back on the trash can again and went back to my desk to work. Then it happened a third time. The lid had flown 20 feet across the room and crashed on the floor. I went back around, picked it up, walked back to the coffee area and I was standing in front of the urn when I heard this jangling sound. The spoons in the water glass next to the coffee urn, they were standing up and rattling back and forth in the glass. As I reached out and grabbed them, the salt shaker next to the coffee urn tipped over and as it did so, the lid came unscrewed all by itself. I quite literally saw it slowly rotate until the cap popped off and the salt was pouring out. By now, I was more confused and scared but I figured I should at least let the seawatch standard know what was going on. As I walked past the row of eight timers and had a view of my desk, a small plastic paper tray flew off the desk in the direction of the sea timer room door and scattered papers all over the floor. Didn't just fall off the desk and flew about eight feet as if it were thrown and I'm pretty sure that's when the fear started creeping in. I opened up the sea timer door which we were not supposed to do because of humidity, temperature reasons, and told the seawatch standard that it's like dude, there's stuff flying around all over the A-timer room. He didn't really seem too interested and he said to call the exo the executive officer if I was having trouble. And to shut the damn timer room door. I got on the phone again to the engineer who woke up the exo and told him what had happened. Within a few minutes, the exo shows up just as I finished picking up the paper that had been scattered all over the floor. Exo walks in like moments later. There wasn't much they could do so they hung around for a few minutes looking at me sideways as I was trying to explain what had happened. The EN3 then went back to his watch and the exo you know he goes back to bed. Nothing else happened that night but I was definitely a little shaken up. When I got up the next morning and went to the mess hall at noon for breakfast, the story had gotten around that I was seeing things in the timer room. I was ripped by everyone in the mess for you know having been drunk or smoking the devil's lettuce on watch or many years later I connected with a few guys that were all at the same station and none of them remembers experiencing anything weird. The station was turned over to the Japanese Coast Guard in the 1970s and according to some of the guys I talked to a couple of the new Japanese watchstanders refused to be alone in the timer room on night watch. They were adamant that the place was haunted. I thought that was interesting given my experience. I spent a total of 13 months at the station and nothing like that had ever happened before or again for the rest of my stay. This final story takes us back to Kadina Air Base like I said more than enough good stories to go around there but this one isn't from another marine in the jungle or anything like that it comes from someone who lived on Kadina as a kid. I assume it's a heat but he was only four to seven years old at the time living in base housing with his family and that's what makes this one feel a little bit different because we've had kids talked about but this is him talking about his own experience and when you're that young you don't really have the language to articulate to explain what you're seeing. You just know that something is in your room, something moves when the TV shuts off, something walks across the floor, something stands at the foot of your parents bed after you ran in there for safety and at the time whatever was in that house became familiar enough that they it a name. The seaweed man. He writes. I lived on Okinawa from the age of 4 to 7 more specifically on Kadina Air Base. We bounced around a few apartments but I ended up eventually in military housing. Concrete floors, metal doors, stuff that was great for typhoon season but really didn't make the place feel too homey. Anyway, I had a little TV in my room that I'd often leave on to help me sleep. My mom said a timer that would automatically shut it off and I remember always waking up just moments before the screen goes dark. I must have just been this automatic ritual that my body got used to but suddenly being plunged into darkness was always an eerie feeling. Well one night I woke up just before the timer as always. The TV goes off. Everything is silent and as I'm laying there I see these seven shadow figures walk from the window across my room and out the door. My room was on the second floor so there was no way these were just people's shadows from outside or something weird like that. I remember laying there in bed under the covers terrified of having seen them. They were all different heights. One of them was particularly short to child about my size at the time and she had pigtails as well and I made out the connection of her her head shape to Angelica from the Rugrats cartoon. After being frozen under the covers for God knows how long I would eventually run across the hall into my parents room. I crawled between them and try to get comfy. I never saw the seven shadow figures in their room but there was one. I called him the seaweed man. I called him that because he looked like he was covered in the stuff. It wasn't until many years later that I became more familiar with military stuff and realized that I was seeing what may have been the apparition of a soldier in a gilly suit. Not sure if they had those during World War II but that would explain his appearance. I remember this happening a handful of times but my parents said it was almost every night and I wasn't the only one to see her hear strange stuff in that place. My dad said that he'd often hear toys going off in the middle of the night. He'd get up thinking it was me messing around past my bedtime but I would be sound asleep in my room. He also said that the whole place would just get ice cold from time to time and Okinawa stays pretty tropical for most of the year. That's unusual. I've never doubted what I saw when I was younger. It's just left a mark on me that's lasted to this very day. I struggled so much in high school with philosophy and religion like why are they still stuck here? Are they aware that they're dead or trapped? Do they want to be here? Or is it just residual energy just repeating itself because they felt so much fear and pain at the time of their death? Probably never have that answer but every now and then I'll walk into a new place and feel that same unnerving vibe. The one that radiated from the base housing on Kedina. By this point I don't really know how you're supposed to cleanly separate. The ghost stories of Okinawa from the actual history of the island. Because on one hand yeah you can hear a story about Marines seeing people walking through combat town at night or shadows moving through the jungle or a child seeing figures in base housing on Kedina and you can try to explain that away. Bad light, tired eyes, stress, imagination, stories spreading from one person to the next. The normal weirdness of living on an island where almost every base has some rumor attached to it. But then you look at what happened there and it suddenly doesn't feel quite as easy to laugh it off. In this episode we had a Marine in a mock training village on Camp Hanson see what look like, people walking and riding bikes through empty streets in the middle of the night. We had Marines at head-o-point here footsteps near a restroom and then see something pale stand up from the bushes with eyes reflecting back at them in the dark. We had a family move into a house during Obon only for an eight year old boy to say another little boy came into his room and for his older brother to later hear crying from that same empty bedroom. We had Marines on Kedina hear a baby crying out in the jungle where no baby should have been and then later hear what sounded like Japanese voices and footsteps moving through the trees. We had a coast guardsman alone on Midnight Watch at a Loraan station watching objects fly across the room, spoons rattle, and a salt shaker unscrew itself and finally we had a child in base housing on Kedina watching seven shadow figures cross their room after the TV shut off then running to their parents bed only to find something waiting there to the seaweed man and maybe all of that is just folklore maybe Okinawa has so many ghost stories because people expect Okinawa to have ghost stories maybe the island's reputation does some of the work for you but I think there's a reason that reputation exists because even without ghosts Okinawa is haunted not in the fun way not in the old building making noises at night way I mean haunted by history by what happened there by the number of people who died there by the civilians who were trapped there by the caves tunnels villages ridge lines roads and beaches where the island was torn apart honestly I don't take anything I say and really describe how horrific the fighting was but Eugene sledge in his memoir with the old breed at Pelele and Okinawa probably came as close as anyone could sledge was from mobile Alabama and in his early 20s during the war as far as I could see an area that previously had been a low grassy valley with a picturesque stream meandering through it was a muddy repulsive open sore on the land the place was choked with the beautification of death decay and destruction the whole area was parked with shell craters and churned up by explosions every crater was half full of water and many of them held a marine corpse the bodies lay pathetically just as they had been killed half submerged in muck and water rusting weapons still in hand swarms of big flies hovered about them for several feet around every corpse and there were thousands of those maggots crawled about in the muck and then were washed away by the runoff of the rain the scene was nothing but mud shell fire flooded craters with their silent the fettic rotting occupants knocked out tanks and amtracks and discarded equipment utter desolation the stench of death was overpowering I existed from moment to moment sometimes thinking death would have been preferable we were in the deaths of the abyss the ultimate horror of war men struggled and fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell's own cesspool hell's own cesspool when I first read that I just stop for a minute because it's one thing to say Okinawa was a brutal battle it's another thing to actually sit with with what that means, mud, rain. Caves, bodies, civilians, caught between armies, men fighting over ground that had already been turned into a graveyard. So whether you believe the stories in this episode are genuine, paranormal encounters, the echoes of trauma, or just people trying to make sense of strange things in a place with a terrible past, I think the island itself is the part that matters. Okinawa endured something most places on Earth will never understand. And if there really are places that carry the weight of what happened there, places where the past doesn't feel completely gone, then it's hard to imagine many places carrying that more than Okinawa. War Time Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana, written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio-editing sound design, mixing and mastering by Alex Carpenter, with additional audio work by me. Animation and motion design and production coordination by David Williamson. Research by Jake Howard and myself. Art work by Pekata and Ratomere is Gauravik. Hey guys, thanks for sticking around here for the after-action in the credits. Okinawa. I think the name means little rope, floating rope, something like that. They told us when we did an introductory class, because the island is very skinny, and they said it looks like a piece of rope. Okinawa was one of the first touches we did on the paranormal in the channels early days. And while the story that we covered, the Ketsune story was kind of a blend of real-world events and more fictional elements, which at the time I wasn't really sure what we were doing with the channel. I kind of threw caution to the wind on telling a. I thought it was a great story, and to listen to, but then after I talked to the writer after the episode was launched, he did convey that, yeah, this is kind of based on my dad's experiences. You know, one guy did disappear, but he actually just went AWOL, and the whole box monster thing was kind of an embellishment a little bit. So, yeah, I just. so what's maybe the one episode on the channel where I knew after the fact that the story was not entirely honest. But we'll. I hope you're not bored of the Okinawa, because there are just so many stories to cover from this island. Both during the war, I know there's some stories about some of the stuff that happened as well as just the guys who have been stationed there since. I guess, I don't know how long it's going to take, but one funny story. When I was a team leader, we were doing an interoperability sort of, like, mu-wide marine expeditionary unit-wide exercise. So, everywhere, I'm like, Japan, down to the Philippines, and everywhere in between. We were doing this massive exercise, you know, coordinating with other units, and just practicing working together, I guess. And my team, the mission that we had, my radio recon team, was we were given an objective out in the middle of. just in your camp Schwab, I think, on the northern side of the island. And we were going to insert at night, the helicopter, and then patrol to the location, and then do collections. Other recon teams would be out there with us. So, we're doing all of our prep. The problem was the radios. We could not get the radios. We had to swap out the bomber shard, the ship, with the payload, because the bomber shard was having problems with the flight deck. They needed to resurface it for the aircraft. And we couldn't get the radios to connect to this. The payload, it's antenna. It was something that was going on, but our lieutenant and some of the other officers involved were just real hot to get us out the door. They were, all the coordination been done, the pilots had been briefed, and the helicopters, the rotors, were spinning up, and they were like, "You guys are going." And I communicated to, I said, "Sir, we don't have comms." And, well, they sent us out anyway. Pretty sure I got dropped on my head, doing a fast rope out of a blackhawk with a 70-pound bag on my back. It's like Spider-Man, but not at all agile. And then we patrolled for the next 12 hours through the jungle. And we could not get a radio signal. We could not get comms back to the ship, because we never got a confirmed connection anyway. And what never really occurred to me, because we had communicated this, and I didn't know what the contingency plan was, I just assumed that they know that our radios are having trouble. And we were also trying to connect with other units in the area, but we just could not get in touch with anybody, and we just didn't know why. Finally, we did it, like, early hours of the next morning when lights are already coming up, and we've been patrolling this whole night. And the relayed communication that we got at that point was shocking. Apparently, the entire mu from Japan, all the way down to the Philippines, and everywhere else, was paused. Like, all operations were ceased because of my six-man team. We were missing, and there were literally helicopters flying around looking for us, using infrared, and things like that. And the funny thing was, was we were doing the recon thing the whole night. We heard people looking for us, or, you know, there's guys out in the woods, and we just thought it was role players. So, there's cars driving up and down the roads, there's patrols going back and forth of these other units that are out there clearly looking through the jungle, and we just, we came within feet of being found at times. And we just hid off the sides of roads and stuff like that, and so we did our job, but apparently they were looking for us because they thought we were dead, or in a lot of trouble, because we didn't have any comms. So, they basically just can't the whole exercise on us, and they flew us immediately back to the ship, and boy, did we get our butts chewed? Maybe I have told this story before. But it's, as a team leader who's like watching my team get chewed out, I kind of, that was the first time in my career, where it was one of those moments of like, am I just going to take this, you know, like a good marine, or am I going to actually stick up for myself, and I did. And I went to the respectfully, to the lieutenant, maybe it was a captain, or something, with the recon guys, and I said, sir, with all the witnesses that were standing there, the other officers, and other people, and I said, with all due respect, we asked for permission not to go on this mission because we didn't have comms. But we were told you are going, and it was well established that we didn't have a good radio connection before leaving. So, I'm not sure what anybody expected, but we were sent without communications. And the lieutenant kind of balked, you know, and he could tell that there were other kind of people around that knew that that was the case, but he was trying to, I guess, kind of pin it on me or somebody else. So, he kind of got flustered and just kind of walked away, and well, we didn't get it. We were basically on the verge of getting like NJP'd and punished, and all this kind of crazy stuff, because it was a massive thing to shut down an entire mu for us. But we never got punished for it, we got swept under the rug, so, yeah, I don't know if that was a funny story, but it was funny to us at the time, just not having comms for 12 hours. Anyway, thanks for listening guys, thanks for watching, for subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, anything and everything you guys do to help support this channel. We really appreciate it here at War Time Stories, as always, a huge shout out to both our patrons and our YouTube channel members. For your incredible support, make God be with each and every one of you, no matter what you're dealing with, and I will see you in the next episode.