INFO Kokusai Street opens for traffic in 1934

[Rob Oechsle]

KOKUSAI STREET OPENS FOR TRAFFIC back in 1934, after TWO YEARS OF CONSTRUCTION --- WITH A COUPLE OF KINKS IN IT !!!

No Problem. The Post-War USCAR Government would get in there and straighten it out during the early 1950s, giving us the basic look it has today, crossing over two low hills and two rivers on its one-mile run from end to end. Of course, it wasn't called "Kokusai Street" back then, as the name change was still (ahem) away down the road.

Enjoy the pics of the beer-drinking politicians, and folks trekking down the carpet of crushed coral.

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The Okinawan members of this forum will have some fun with the old Japanese text in this pre-war Ryukyu Shimpo story from 1934. Cheers!

I feel pretty confident that the larger view was taken looking toward the north (Asato) end, from a now-gone rocky knoll that once was right HERE:

Today, the road would be coming straight at you, and not make that jog to the left.

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Kokusai Street followed this "almost straight" path for about 20 years until USCAR straightened and widened it during the early 1950s, into what we see and enjoy today.

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[David]

This is some really good info, @Rob Oechsle! Know what the name was prior to Kokusai Street?

...and I wonder if the landowners along that strip of Kokusai Street pictured in 1946 were sitting on prime real estate. Of course, they would have never known that at the time, but I wonder of all the parcel owners, how many are still leasing their land out if that was a thing then (99-year leases) through distant relatives today.

 

[Rob Oechsle]

This is some really good info, @Rob Oechsle! Know what the name was prior to Kokusai Street?

...and I wonder if the landowners along that strip of Kokusai Street pictured in 1946 were sitting on prime real estate. Of course, they would have never known that at the time, but I wonder of all the parcel owners, how many are still leasing their land out if that was a thing then (99-year leases) through distant relatives today.

I think it was officially the "Shuri-Naha Road", as it included (and completed" the already existing road that rand from Asato to Shuri. Unofficially, I think folks just called it the "Shin Ken Dou" (New Prefectural Road).

As for the rest, I don't know.