Sakishima Islands
- Japanese: 先島諸島 (Sakishima shotô)
The Sakishima Islands are a group of islands comprising the southern half of the Ryûkyû Island chain. They consist of the Miyako Islands (to the south of Okinawa Island), the Yaeyama Islands (to the south of the Miyakos), and Yonaguni Island (the westernmost of the Ryûkyû Islands, just east of Taiwan).
The islands are home to roughly 45,000[1] of the 1.45 million people in Okinawa prefecture, the remaining 1.4 million of whom live on Okinawa Island or on other islands closely nearby to Okinawa.
Though the Sakishimas saw no land fighting during World War II, they did house a number of Japanese military bases and suffered Allied naval bombardment as a result.[2]
