The above photo doesn't look like I'm standing on much of a road, but I can assure you, it was a very nice one.
This spot is not unlike the old roadbed around YONA POINT just north of OKUMA and HENTONA on the other side of the island.
For those who have walked out and around that old section of HIGHWAY 58, you will see the exact same, hand-hewn road bed on natural rock, with the huge slabs of former concrete road surface ripped up by the violence of Typhoon waves --- old road ruins that I advises everyone to see in good weather.
However, the concrete road surface on the much older East Coast road bed where I'm standing in the above photo has long been broken up and carried away by the sea.
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AN ADVENTURE IN HEDO
Had enough of American Village, Rycom Mall, the regular tourist traps, jungle hikes, waterfalls, and endless beach-trekking around the same old rocks and driftwood ?
OK, then. I've got something for you. And, it's NOT FOR THE KIDDIES.
By way of introduction, here are....
THREE PHOTOS FOR DIE-HARD OKINAWA HISTORY EXPLORERS
Back in 1940 --- five years before WW2 came to the island --- the Government of Okinawa began a massive, and very expensive three-year civil engineering project to build a nearly 6-kilometer long automobile road from HEDO POINT to OKU VILLAGE --- along the coast !!!
1000s of people labored over this three year period, cutting back all of the prominent rock bluffs, pouring massive concrete sea walls, and laying down the concrete-coated road beds.
Drilling and blasting went on continually, with large stores of Dynamite being kept in special-purpose buildings along the way.
Where needed, concrete arches, bridges, and standard spans crossed the many streams along the way.
The road was carefully graded, drainage ditches were cut into the rock, and telephone poles were installed and wired along the entire route.
TYPHOONS AND TRIANGLES
Further, the engineers made the only TRIANGULAR ROAD TUNNEL to ever be built on Okinawa. That is, when confronted with a massive pile of huge, fallen boulders, they designed the rock bore to go through the largest boulders by incorporating their tilted layers of sedimentary rock as part of the Tunnel wall.
During the annual Typhoon seasons, they observed where their engineering was not "up to snuff" against the onslaught of monster waves and storm surges, and repaired (or re-designed) such sections to handle it the next time around.
After three hard years of working their way down the coast from HEDO to OKU, they were only a 500 meters short of connecting with the road-building crews working their way up from OKU.
THE JAPANESE MILITARY SCRUBS THE ROAD
With the final gap ready to close, and plans for eventual celebration in the air, something happened to bring it all to a halt --- the Japanese military stepped in, and pulled every last engineer and laborer off the project, sending them all to Southern Okinawa as laboring conscripts, forced to build up the island's military defenses in preparation for WW2.
The Japanese Military struck the civilian records of the road off the maps, intending to use the almost-finished road for secret troop and supply movements in the north, and as a possible "escape route" between villages.
Planners of the 1945 Allied Invasion of Okinawa would not have know about this road, as all published or captured Japanese maps did not show it.
The Japanese Military might also have assumed that little or no Allied Forces attention (or understanding) would have been given to pre-invasion aerial photography of the undeveloped, jungle infested northern part of the island.
AFTER WW2, DID THE OKINAWANS RETURN TO FINISH THE ROAD ?
No.
This once-magnificent civilian road project was stricken from the collective minds and records of the Prefectural Government, and the post-war U.S. Military Government took no action or interest, letting it die.
To this very day, there is no published account of the road in either Japanese or English. Nor are there historical markers to point the way to it.
In one 24-hour period in 1942, this massive engineering project was instantly deserted, and never returned to.
The three-year labor of thousands of Okinawans began its slow destruction at the hands of a violent sea, and no one ever looked back.
A RENEWED INTEREST
However, there is a "living history" of the road held by the old-timers who worked on it --- people now in their 80s, 90s, and some over 100 years old.
In recent years, their brains have been picked of great amounts of information, and local [Kunigami District ] historians and amateur history sleuths have been working hard to compile a clear story about it.
Local history clubs have begun making the three-kilometer "PHANTOM ROAD TREK , shooting endless photos of the "archaeological ruins", and compiling their own "power point" stories to show privately to each other on their computers.
BUDGETS, AND THE POWERS THAT BE
Although the Villages of OKU and HEDO are now connected by HIGHWAY 58 via a post-WW2 project that took the road through the forested center of the island, the NATIONAL GOVERNMENT NORTHERN HIGHWAY OFFICE located in Nago City remains silent about this original section of coastal highway that pre-dates the mid-island cut.
This is unusual, because the same office has published numerous books on the long history of Okinawa's northern road systems --- and they tell about every road that was ever tried or built --- except for this one.
When not even the National and Prefectural Governments can tell you the story of this road, and continue to drop it from all of their glossy histories of road engineering on Okinawa, it can be understood why those in the know call it THE PHANTOM ROAD.
When old Soba asked the powers that be why they don't gather data on this road, do archaeological mapping of the remains, or write about this in their numerous historical periodicals and books, they all reply, "We have no budget ".
OK, then. Forget you Government guys.
For all those living on Okinawa who like this sort of thing, I recommend the exerting trek of many kilometers along the northern coast of Okinawa, climbing over rough and steep piles of old rockfalls on a nearly-gone road bed, to see and photograph the remnants of many years of hard labor against the elements.
The PHANTOM ROAD of Northern Okinawa awaits you.
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Photo by Miyagi Tatsumasa
