Our next stop was Saipan another war torn island in the Mariana's group.  Not much evidence of any war now.  A very nice and well taken care of island, lots of Japanese tourists who come here to enjoy the warm water recreation.

    First photo is of an old Japanese jail which they tried to tell us that Amelia Earhart spent some time at.  A Japanese tank.

    Then a couple of pictures of the landing beaches and one of the many relics still visible after some fifty-eight years.

    Last a view of the port where our ship was docked and as you can see it was all very clean.

    Then on to Iwo Jima, again we were not able to go ashore, not because of any threat but because there wasn't really any place to go except maybe the air field.  There wasn't any kind of transportation on the island either, just a weather station and a military airport belonging to the Japanese.  So we sailed up and down the coast for several hours.  It was a marvelous experience.

    Mt. Suribachi with the island trailing of to the east. It was very volcanically active and smelled very strongly of sulfur even a mile off shore where we were.

   The second picture shows, by the little white dot on top of the mountain, just to the right of center, the famous flag raising memorial. You can just make it out in the photo.

   Below is some more volcanic activity on the eastern side of the island.  The landing beaches are shown here just to the right of the mountain.  Shirley standing on our balcony outside our stateroom.

The next stop on our very long trip was the delightful Island of Okinawa.  A wonderful place, I really enjoyed it there. It was really crowded, lots of hustle and bustle, but I liked it nonetheless.

Our tour was only to the city of Naha, the main city of Okinawa. Some of the other tours took people who were interested in the war aspects of the island to other places, like the war memorials and battle grounds. Our tour was of the Shurijo Castle and then the town for some shopping.

First photo shows the port where we docked. And then a street scene, very typical.

Below: Tourists at the Castle, there were a lot of tourists, mostly Asians. Overall city view.

All these tourists wanted there picture taken with the Geisha girls. There were about ten girls standing there ready to have a picture taken with you for a price.

Starbucks, Okinawa.

Shirley in her favorite shop The Tee Shirt Emporium. And the ever-present McDonald's.

They told us there were ten thousand shops in this shopping center and I really believed them after looking around a bit.  Everything from these strange food products to clothing, rugs, and souvenirs.  Noticeably absent were the electronic shops with all the latest gadgets which I was looking forward to seeing.