Falsely briefed of working in Red Cross hospitals away from the fighting,[1][2] the Himeyuri students were instead positioned on the front lines performing crude surgery and amputations, burying the dead, transporting ammunition and supplies to front-line troops, and other life-threatening duties under continuous fire throughout the nearly three-month battle.[3] Near the end of the Okinawan battle, those still alive endured disease and malnutrition in dark caves filled with countless gravely injured and dead civilians, soldiers, and co-students.[4]

Up until the Himeyuri unit was dissolved, 19 students had been killed. On June 18, 1945, a rough dissolution order was given to the unit. Told simply to “go home” amidst total war, the schoolgirls suffered a high casualty rate in the crossfire of Japanese and American forces.[4][5] In the early hours of the next day (June 19), 5 teachers and 46 students hiding inside the Ihara third surgery shelter were killed by white phosphorus munitions during an attack by US forces.[6]

In the week following the dissolution order, approximately 80% of the girls and their teachers remaining on Okinawa Island died. 136 of the Himeyuri unit mobilised into the Haebaru Army Field Hospital were killed, 123 of the students and 13 teachers. Overall, 211 students and 16 teachers were killed, including those not mobilised.[5]

Some committed suicide in various ways because of fear of systematic rape by US soldiers. Before the fighting could end, some students threw themselves off the jagged cliffs of the Arasaki seashore or poisoned themselves with cyanide (earlier administered to soldiers in terminal condition), while others killed themselves with hand grenades given to them by Japanese soldiers.[7]