Tourists visit Peleliu to explore World War Two battle remnants
Updated
Updated · CNN · Apr 30
Tourists visit Peleliu to explore World War Two battle remnants
12 articles · Updated · CNN · Apr 30
Visitors from the US, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan tour the Palau island’s caves, airfield ruins and a rusting Japanese tank.
The 1944 battle, intended to last days, dragged on for months and killed about 14,000 Japanese and 10,000 Americans in extreme heat and underground fighting.
Peleliu now draws remembrance travellers and gamers, while historians say the battle was likely unnecessary and urge greater attention to Palauan memories of a landscape permanently altered by war.
Why do tourists and gamers now flock to a battle site that historians have called a pointless 'horror show'?
As its war scars are reclaimed by jungle, is Peleliu's complex history being rewritten or simply forgotten again?
How has a forgotten WWII battlefield become a frontline in the modern US-China strategic rivalry?