At the end of the Pacific War, Japanese orphans who had lost or been abandoned by their parents during the Battle of Okinawa on August 4th, 1945, shared the meager rations they had been given at the Koza Orphanage, an orphanage in the central part of Okinawa Island that had been set up by the American military.

    At the end of the Pacific War, Japanese orphans who had lost their parents or been abandoned during the Battle of Okinawa on August 4th 1945 shared the meager rations they had been given at the Koza Orphanage, an orphanage in the center of Okinawa Island that had been set up by the American military. The Koza Orphanage was filled with naked, emaciated orphans.

   After the US forces landed on Okinawa on April 1st, they began to build shelters for the orphans left behind on the battlefield, and set up 11 orphanages and 9 old people's homes in each of the refugee camps. It is thought that there were at least 1000 orphans, but the exact number is not known. The women among the evacuees looked after them as nursery school teachers, but among the younger children who did not have much strength, there were a succession of deaths from malnutrition. The US military set up a maximum of 14 orphanages on the main island of Okinawa. Many children died from malnutrition, but the overall picture was unclear. As the fighting in southern Okinawa came to an end in late June, the wounded and residents were brought in from the south one after another, and many children were among them. The Koza Orphanage was established within the Koza Camp. The Koza Orphanage was open from June 1945 to November 1949, a total of four years and five months, and it is recorded that the number of people accommodated exceeded 600 as of July 1945.

   After April 1945, the American military government set up orphanages in evacuation areas all over Okinawa Island as a stopgap measure for the orphans wandering the battlefields. The orphanages were simple structures made from private houses and tents. The Himeyuri Students, educators, karate practitioners and “comfort women” looked after the orphans. There are very few documents relating to the orphanages of the time, so the full picture is not clear. Many children died of exhaustion and weakness at the Koza Orphanage and the Tai Orphanage in the former Haneji Village (now Nago City). The lives and human rights of the orphans were not protected.

    The Battle of Okinawa, which centered on the Okinawa Islands, lasted for 82 days from April 1 to June 22, 1945. The Battle of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War, due to the intensity of the fighting, the kamikaze suicide attacks by the Japanese garrison, and the huge number of Allied warships and armored vehicles that landed in Okinawa . According to the 1948 National Orphan Survey, there were 120,000 war orphans in Japan. According to a 1950s survey by the Ryukyu Government, there were approximately 3,000 orphans in Okinawa. The figures vary depending on the survey, and it is thought that the actual number is much higher.