According to the
Chūzan Seikan (1650), the creation goddess,
Amamikyu, built
Chinen Castle soon after forming the
Ryukyu Islands. Chinen was important for later lords and kings because of its many holy sites, most notably
Sefa-utaki. The village of Chinen (pronounced shi-nen) was appropriated by the United States in 1948 for the purpose of building a secret
Central Intelligence Agency operated logistics base, under US Army cover, known as Camp Chinen. Camp Chinen was closed after it was exposed in
The Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers revealed a 1961 memo from General
Edward Lansdale to General
Maxwell Taylor which states that a CIA support base in Okinawa at Camp Chinen housed a
covert prison, in addition to a
paramilitary training, research and logistics facility. Upon its closure as a
CIA station in July 1972, Camp Chinen served as a
US Army Special Forces training center, and as a language school for U.S. soldiers studying Japanese and Korean, and for Japanese forces studying English. Camp Chinen closed in 1975. ==References==