7. Travel (D)

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By Graham Noble

Miyagi got back to Okinawa in early 1935 and later in the year he was back in Japan. In 1936 he was again in Japan and that was also the year he travelled to Shanghai. But then, apart from his last trip to Japan in 1942, he seemed to have given up on travelling and he stayed in Okinawa, leading his steady, even life as a teacher of karate. There is really not much information about this period of his life. According to Eichi Miyazato, Miyagi left his position as instructor to the police in 1941; Miyazato doesn’t give a reason. December 1941, of course, saw the start of the Great Pacific War, and although karate instruction may have continued, it was in a much reduced way. In the later part of the war Miyagi didn’t teach, and with thousands of others he and his family moved to the Northern part of the island to try and escape the fighting.

And then the War truly came to Okinawa when the American forces invaded in April 1945. The island was only secured in June after the deaths of over 100,000 Japanese troops. The number of Okinawan civilians killed is unknown, but estimates again run up to 100,000. Miyagi himself lost his third son Jun, who had been drafted into the army and was killed in the fighting on the South of the island, and two daughters, who were killed when the ship they were travelling on was sunk on its way to mainland Japan. Jinan Shinzato, his favourite pupil, was also killed in the fighting, blown up in an American air strike. It was a terrible time.

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