Ha! I knew it!

During one of my deployments to Okinawa around the late '80s or early '90s, my platoon was out practicing patrol techniques in the jungle just north of Camp Hansen when we came across a clearing.  In the center was a small hardened concrete building with a single steel door.  It was inside a razor wire-topped fence marked "Property of the United States Air Force" with deadly force warning signs hanging all over it.  There was also a big round double-hinged door in the ground near the building.  I told the guys in the patrol that it looked a lot like a nuclear missile site.  They laughed and called me an idiot.  Well, lookee at what I found.

During the 1960s there was indeed a nuclear missile site located "in Kin Okinawa just north of Camp Hansen."  There were, in fact, several Mace and later Pershing nuclear missiles deployed on Okinawa, operating out of permanent semi-hardened sites.  The Wikipedia article says that the 498th Tactical Missile Group was inactivated in 1969.  However, the site that I saw 20 years later was clearly well-maintained and was designed for a vertical launch missile rather than a MGM-style cruise missile. 

The program was created as a strictly "need to know" operation by Robert McNamara.  This was partly due to communist protesters on Okinawa, and partly because of the commie-infested American press who were constantly whining about nukes abroad and legitimizing the seemingly endless stream of Soviet straw man arguments.

While I obviously have no proof to provide, I strongly suspect that the Pershing missiles which were removed in 1969 were quietly replaced with silo-launched ballistic missiles.  They may very well still be there to this day.

So, to my patrol mates of 30 years ago:  Pffffffffth!