CAMP KINSER, Okinawa — After a 10-year-run, the Battle of Okinawa Historical Society’s Museum here is about to close shop.

Thousands of artifacts and other battle memorabilia on display in five rooms on the second floor of Building 107, just inside the base’s main gate, will be moved to an Okinawan museum in Tomogususku Village. It’s near Itoman and the Peace Prayer Park, site of the final stage of the 82-day battle fought 60 years ago in World War II’s closing months.

In a short ceremony at the museum Monday morning, curator Dave Davenport, a retired Air Force master sergeant who began collecting battle memorabilia in 1966, during his first Okinawa tour, gave the items to an Okinawa nonprofit foundation. Davenport, now 60, said he is dying of cancer and wanted to enure the display by his Battle of Okinawa Historical Research Society would preserved and available to the Okinawan people.

“This is the biggest donation our society has ever received,” said Shizuo (Alex) Kishaba, chairman of the not-for-profit Ryukyu America Historical Research Society. “This is a big challenge for us. We must pass down the correct history of Battle of Okinawa to our next generations.”

He said display captions would be bilingual “to help both Japanese and Americans, as well as people from around the world, to share ... the truth of the war.”

Historian George Feifer, in “Tennozan” his account of the U.S. invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, wrote that the battle was history’s largest land-sea-air engagement, ultimately costing almost 300,000 lives — 12,281 U.S. soldiers, 110,000 Japanese soldiers and more than 150,000 Okinawan civilians, almost a third of the island’s population.

The collection — estimated to be several thousand artifacts, from Japanese uniforms and mess kits to rusted weapons, personal diaries and photos — began as a hobby. Davenport and six friends, who dubbed themselves the “Tunnel Rats,” spent years investigating caves and tunnels the Japanese Imperial Army used during the battle. Later, U.S. veterans of the battle heard of the museum and donated battlefield souvenirs they’d collected.

“The most impressive item I have ever found was a Japanese medal of honor,” Davenport said. “I found it in a cave in Mabuni. The medal was the highest decoration in the Japanese military.”

Davenport said when he first arrived on Okinawa in the mid 1960s, U.S. servicemembers there “did not know anything about Okinawa. ... As I got involved, I began to learn more and more about tragedy of the Battle of Okinawa.”

As part of the agreement to transfer the artifacts to the Okinawa museum, Davenport becomes an advisor to the Ryukyu-America Historical Society. In recognition of his contribution, his picture and a statement noting his “vital role in accumulating the items” will be displayed at the society’s museum, according to the contract signed during the ceremony.