Okinawa castle on fire

[robkelk]

Reuters is saying the castle was nearly destroyed.

Also, this has happened before, within living memory:

The castle is also a symbol of Okinawa's struggle and effort to recover from the Second World War. Shuri Castle burned down in 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa near the war's end, in which about 200,000 lives were lost on the island, many of them civilians.

The castle was largely restored in 1992 as a national park and was designated as the UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000.

EDIT: Just looked at the recent update to the Wikipedia article.

On the positive side, nobody died.

On the negative side, one of the four buildings that was destroyed was the reception building - the one that housed the castle's museum. I hesitate to speculate on how many artifacts were destroyed.