Chatan (Mihama) about 50 years ago and today

History of Chatan (Mihama)

Mihama in Chatan Town was made by filling in a shallow sea facing the East China Sea. Just west of the location, in the 1974-78 aerial photograph, is sea with sandy beaches and coral reefs; land was built there, and it was at the end of the 1980s that an athletics stadium and other facilities began to sit on it. Next door to the south, an airfield ran a single runway along the coast. There are only two photographs, one from the 1970s and one from today, but between them lies the whole process of the sea and the airfield being replaced by a town.

The landing beach and the base village

Chatan was originally a farming village made up of coastal lowland and a plateau to the east. Chatan Town relates that the rice paddies spreading around the Chatan district (aza) were fine fields known throughout the prefecture. The life of that farming village was cut off by the Battle of Okinawa. The Chatan coast became a point where US forces landed on Okinawa Island, the whole village became occupied territory, and the fields turned into barracks and airfields. After the war the bases continued to take up most of the village's land, and Chatan Town's materials updated in 2023 also record that US military bases take up about 51.6% of the town's area.

To rebuild life on the land left between the bases, the village laid out trunk roads and pushed ahead with filling in the sea and developing housing land in the hills. In 1980, the year after its population passed 15,000, it became a town. The next year, 1981, Hamby Airfield and the Meimosukara Firing Range were returned. With the military land along the coast returned to the town, town building on the west coast got going in earnest.

The 1974-78 shoreline

The left half of the frame in the 1974-78 photograph is taken up by the color of the sea. White, bright sand lies near the shore, pale blue-green shallows spread offshore, and here and there deep blue depths reach in like streaks. On the coast just west of the location, a sandy beach draws a semicircle bulging slightly into the sea, and inside it there is only grassland dotted with small roofs. Most of the place that would later become the Mihama reclaimed land is still sea at this point. The black gap at the left edge lies outside the area covered by the photographs, and part of the sea is not shown.

If you move your eye to the south, a thin white runway extends straight north-south, parallel to the coast. White circles are drawn at both ends, and the surroundings are covered by dry grassland. This is Hamby Airfield, and Chatan Town's materials put the area of the returned site at 42.5 hectares. Just east of the runway a wide road runs parallel, and a base section packed with square-roofed buildings, the diamond of a baseball field, an oval track and a blue pool continues east of that.

Just south of the center there is a corner where small white squares line up neatly in many rows. It looks like an area where vehicles or materials were set out in lines, and the rules of the arrangement differ from those of house roofs. On the north side, between the trunk road coming down diagonally and the coast, there is a residential area where roofs of the same shape repeat along curved roads. The right half of the frame is densely green hills, and in their valleys and on their ridges too, several sections with houses of the same shape lined up along curved roads can be seen. The spacing between buildings is wider than in the rows of houses of a Japanese town, and lawns surround the buildings.

The 49 hectares of reclaimed land and the returned sites

The Mihama reclamation was planned with the aims of using the sites of returned military land efficiently and securing land for a sports park, housing and industry. According to Chatan Town's records, the work of filling in the public waters off Kuwae began in April 1986, was finished in September 1987 and was formally completed in 1988. The area is 49 hectares of reclaimed land. On and around it, a softball field, Sunset Beach, an athletics stadium and a pool were laid out in turn from 1986 to 1992. Work on the athletics stadium took from October 1988 to September 1990.

On the reclaimed land, the commercial and tourist blocks the town named "Mihama Town Resort American Village" opened in turn from the end of the 1990s. In the Kitamae district to the south, land readjustment was carried out on the airfield site, and in March 2003 the northern part of Camp Kuwae was returned, where town building on the former site also began. Return, reclamation and land readjustment advanced as if in a chain running north and south along the coast.

Where there was sea in 1974-78, in today's photograph land edged by straight seawalls juts out, and within it the red oval of the athletics stadium and the baseball field next to it stand side by side. Toward the north, commercial facilities with large roofs and wide parking lots continue, and a bowed white sandy beach was made on the coast. Along the southern edge of the reclaimed land, a channel runs from the east out to the sea, and the long, narrow band south of it where the runway was is completely filled with fine roofs. The line of the runway itself has vanished from the photograph, but the width of the band between the coast and the wide road to the east remains as the width of the blocks.

The jutting out of land does not end with Mihama. In the upper left of the frame too, in 1974-78 there was only a white sandy beach continuing north in an arc, but in today's photograph another tier of land has been built on the sea side, with a boat basin enclosed by breakwaters and a row of tall buildings along the shoreline. Chatan Town records that, following the reclamation off Kuwae, it went on to fill in the waters of Hamagawa Fishing Port and develop the Fisherina district, and that a new townscape was born on the west coast. Taking the 1974-78 shoreline as the baseline, you can see that every building standing on the sea side of that line sits on land built over the sea after this photograph was taken. The athletics stadium, the boat basin and the row of tall buildings are all outside the former water's edge.

The hills in the right half and the sections of same-shaped houses along curved roads have not changed much in today's photograph either. The diamond of the baseball field that was east of the runway can also be seen in the same position. Between the two photographs, the land that changed greatly on the sea side and the hill side that hardly moved are sharply divided.

Both the reclaimed land and the former airfield are low land facing the sea, with an elevation of only 4 m at the center and 2 m at the southern measurement point. For the expected tsunami and storm surges, the only way is to enter an address in the hazard maps of Chatan Town or Okinawa Prefecture.