“Ryukongou,” a war time fortification in the Shuri Castle Park in Tonokura, Shuri, is going to be preserved, the State-run Okinawa Memory Park Office announced Monday.

The Ryukongou is a trench that male students dug out and finished before the U.S. military landed on Okinawa in May 1945. When the war began the students were sent to fight for the Imperial Army, and part of the trench was used to publish the “Okinawa Shimpo” newspaper at the time.

Currently the site is fenced off, but it is scheduled to open for the public in 2018 after restoration work. “It may be dangerous to actually enter the site at the moment because there’s a chance of the roof falling in, but hopefully the public will be able to observe the structure from the outside,” Shuri Castle Park Manager Hiroshi Chinen said.

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