Ghosts Crowd Okinawa

Reportedly haunted sites can be found around almost any corner on and off Okinawa bases.

So many ghost stories abound that Marine Corps Community Services and 18th Services Squadron on Kadena Air Base both run special Halloween spooky sites tours that sell out weeks in advance.

Web sites and a book on the subject — Jayne A. Hitchcock’s “The Ghosts of Okinawa” — celebrate the local haunts.

A World War II soldier is said to roam Gate 3 on Camp Hansen in blood-splattered fatigues asking sentries to light his cigarette.

Marines refused to stand guard due to the haunting, and the gate was eventually closed, according to Hitchcock.

Camp Foster is said to be the home of a ghostly samurai warrior who eternally travels from Stillwell Drive uphill toward Futenma Housing.

Kadena Air Base also has its ghost stories.

A small house behind the Kadena United Services Organization, numbered 2283, is now used for storage because, it is said, no one willingly lives in it for long.

Some say the house remains haunted after a man murdered his family there. Others say the house rests on an ancient burial site, and the souls of the dead beneath are restless.

Kadena’s golf course might be the site where in 1945 a group of high-school girls pressed into service in the Japanese Imperial Army committed suicide, according to another yarn.

The spirits of the dead girls are said to still haunt the land.

Off-base, half-finished buildings are abandoned due to reports of ghostly visitors.

Construction of the Royal Hotel off Route 329, near the Nakagusuku Castle ruins, was begun some three decades ago — possibly on a sacred site.

Mysterious accidents and deaths drove workers to abandon construction.

Meanwhile, at Maeda Point, there is rumored to be a prophet-of-death ghost.

The elderly Okinawan apparition is said to appear at a tomb that can be seen only from the water, and within days of a sighting, a body is found on a nearby beach.

Stars and Stripes reporters Travis Tritten, Jimmy Norris, Vince Little and Cindy Fisher contributed to this story.