Query: Why the "Big Apple" Peak on Okinawa?

[Benjamin Barrett]

I don't have an answer to you, but I did look around a bit.

I found 小禄 for Oroku easily, but Yaeju-dake is more difficult.

I found an English reference listing Yaesu-dake along with Yaeju-dake (http://www.geonames.org/maps/google_26.131_127.721.html
). It seems that 八重瀬岳 (Yaesu-dake) must have an older or
alternate reading of Yaeju-dake that became common in English. Another
possibility is the misreading of the characters.

The location seems to match the ibilio map location as well as the
Wikimedia Commons map of Yaese (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Yaese_in_Okinawa_Map.gif
).

Contradicting evidence is that the Japanese article for Yaese-cho (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/八
重瀬町) gives the height of Yaese-dake as 163 m, which far exceeds
the citation of "290 feet above the adjoining valley floor" unless
that doesn't refer to the actual altitude.

HTH
BB

On Jul 20, 2008, at 10:53 AM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:

> An unusual attestation of "The Big Apple" is the nickname given by
> WWII US soldiers to the Yaeju-Dake-Peak on Okinawa. The 1948 book by
> Appleman et al. says about the name: 'Because of its shape the
> tooops who fought up its slopes named it the "Big Apple."'
>
> But is it really shaped like a big apple?  I checked Google for a
> map, and the only one I can find is a map of two peaks (Oroku and
> Yaeju-Dake), and I can't tell which peak is which.  In any case, as
> far as I can tell, nothing on the map resembles a big apple.  The
> link is:
>
> http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Okinawa/maps/USA-P-Okinawa-51.jpg
>
> Would anyone perhaps see something in this subject that I'm missing?
>
> Perhaps the reference was not to the shape but to the "Big Apple" as
> "the big time,"  i.e., "the big time" in the fighting on Okinawa.
> But this is only a guess.
>
>    Below my signoff is the Appleman et al. bibliographic entry and
> two relevant quotes.
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
>
> Appleman, Roy E., James M. Burns, Russell A. Gugeler, John Stevens
> 1948.
>         Okinawa: The Last Battle. Washington, D.C.: Historical
> Division,
> Department of the Army. ---
>         pp. 455-456: 'A few coral bulges were large and prominent
> enough to
> afford the Japanese strong positions.  The largest of these were the
> Big
> Apple and Yuza-Dake Peaks at the north end of the 96th Division's
> sector.'
>         p. 434: 'The highest point of this 4-mile-long cliff was the
> Yaeju-Dake-Peak, which rose 290 feet above the adjoining valley floor.
> Because of  its shape the troops who fought up its slopes named it
> the "Big Apple."'
>

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