By Ayumi Yoshihama |Staff Writer| The Battle of Okinawa occurred from March 26 to June 22, 1945 during World War II (WWII), in which more than 200,656 people died, including a third of the civilian population of Okinawa, according to Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum. Okinawa is a prefecture in the far south of Japan, consisting of more than three hundred small islands called the Ryukyu Islands, and is also where I was born and raised. Okinawa used to be its own kingdom called the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1429 to 1879 after being unified by three kingdoms. People in this kingdom spoke Ryukyuan, which is an endangered language, according to UNESCO. The Japanese invaded the … [Read more...] about Remembering World War II: The Battle of Okinawa