Fire destroys much of Japanese castle
Shuri Castle on Okinawa is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site
TOKYO — A fire broke out early Thursday at the historic Shuri Castle on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, nearly destroying the UNESCO World Heritage site.
Firefighters battled the blaze for about 12 hours before bringing it under control in the afternoon.
The fire in Naha, the prefectural capital of Okinawa, started from the castle’s main wooden structure and quickly jumped to other buildings, in part because of windy weather. Three large halls and four other structures burned down, a fire official said.
No one was injured and the cause was not immediately known. An annual weeklong castle festival that began Sunday was canceled.
Video on NHK public television showed parts of the castle engulfed in flames, then turning into a charred skeleton and collapsing. Many residents watched from a hillside road and took photos to capture what was left of the castle before it was largely lost. Some were crying.
“I feel as if we have lost our symbol,” said Naha Mayor Mikiko Shiroma, who led an emergency response team.
Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki cut short a trip to South Korea to return to Naha. “My heart is broken,” he said. “But I also feel strongly that we must reconstruct Shuri Castle … .”
The castle is a symbol of Okinawa’s cultural heritage from the Ryukyu Kingdom that spanned about 450 years from 1429 until 1879, when the island was annexed by Japan.
It is also a symbol of Okinawa’s efforts to recover from World War II. The castle burned down in 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa, in which about 200,000 lives were lost on the island, many of them civilians.
The castle was largely restored in 1992 as a national park and designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000 as part of a group of ancient ruins, castles and sacred sites that “provide mute testimony to the rare survival of an ancient form of religion into the modern age.”