U.S. military strikes around Japan on Oct. 10, 1944, killed more than 600 people and prompted the evacuation and mobilization of civilians in Okinawa Prefecture.

The attack became known as the “10.10 air raid,” and it clearly showed Japan that tide of the Pacific War had turned against the nation.

With the United States and its allies continuing to approach, the Japanese military started bracing for a possible invasion while civilians tried to seek shelter.

But the going was particularly difficult for people with disabilities. And many of them were left in harm’s way.

On the 80th anniversary of the 10.10 air raid, Shonosuke Uema, 29, a researcher of the Battle of Okinawa, continues to document the experiences of disabled people in Japan near the end of World War II.

Uema, a resident of Haebaru town in the prefecture, has congenital cerebral palsy. As a disabled person himself, he wanted to know what happened to those with disabilities during the war.

DEATH BY POISON

Uema learned that a woman who was born deaf was taken by her father to a shelter in the mountains of Okinawa Prefecture after the 10.10 air raid.

In April 1945, U.S. forces landed on the main island of Okinawa Prefecture, and the fierce ground battle continued until the end of June.

Some Japanese soldiers took food from or even violently attacked Okinawa residents who had fled to the mountains.

The deaf woman had been hiding with a friend who could not walk and then disappeared.

When the woman asked her family about the friend, she was told, “It looked like (the friend) died after taking poison.”

‘DON’T COME’

A man from Naha city in the prefecture who lost the use of his legs fled the danger with his family when he was a child.

“I wanted them to leave me because I would cause them trouble,” he told Uema.

At times of peace, the boy would hide in a closet when the family entertained guests. During the wartime evacuation, neighbors told the boy’s family, “Don’t come with us.”

INDISCRIMINATE BOMBING

Uema has been interested in the Battle of Okinawa since he was an elementary school student living with his grandfather.

His grandfather, who lost seven siblings to malaria on Ishigakijima island during the war, never talked about the conflict, saying, “I don’t want to remember.”

At night, the grandfather would sob while drinking.

When Uema was a third-year university student, he decided to write his graduation thesis on the conditions of disabled people during the Battle of Okinawa.

After the fall of Saipan in July 1944, the landing of U.S. forces on Okinawa became a reality. But the evacuation of residents from the prefecture did not proceed as planned.

In October that year, the U.S. military carried out its first full-scale indiscriminate bombing of Japan.

According to Okinawa prefectural records, 1,396 U.S. aircraft, including ship-borne fighters and bombers, attacked various locations in the Nansei Islands south of Amami-Oshima island.

Japanese airfields, port facilities and the center of Naha were attacked, resulting in 668 military and civilian deaths.

About 90 percent of Naha’s city center was destroyed by fire, forcing about 50,000 people to flee.

The 10.10 air raid was the precursor to the Battle of Okinawa and bombings on the Japanese mainland the following year.

‘FIRST TO BE SACRIFICED’

According to Uema, the number of evacuees increased after the 10.10 air raid. The situation became more severe for disabled people and elderly people, and some of them gave up on their lives or were left behind as the fighting intensified.

“In a society where the execution of war came first, a person’s value was determined by whether or not he or she was useful to the country,” Uema said. “Disabled people’s lives are better when they have someone to protect them, but if they don’t, they are the first to be sacrificed.”

After graduating from university, Uema continued his research.

In May this year, he participated in the writing of an encyclopedia about the Battle of Okinawa, published by a group of young researchers.

There are only fragmentary records of disabled people during the war, and little is known about their actual conditions. Uema has been able to obtain the testimonies of only six people so far.

It has been 80 years since the 10.10 air raid.

After the end of the war, societal conditions improved for disabled people, but acts of discrimination continue to this day.

Uema said he thinks it is important to keep asking, “Is our society a place where people with disabilities are not excluded as a ‘liability’?”