CAMP KINSER, Okinawa — Despite reports to the contrary, the Battle of Okinawa Historical Society’s Museum here isn’t closing.

However, fifty percent of the thousands of items on display in the museum were donated Monday to an Okinawan museum near Tomogususku village by the museum’s curator, Dave Davenport, a retired Air Force master sergeant who began gathering battle memorabilia in 1966.

The museum, on the second floor of Building 107 on Camp Kinser, near the main gate, will remain open, said Chris Majewski, the museum’s director.

“We made a promise to the American veterans who donated items that they would remain on display in our guardianship,” Majewski said Wednesday.

“The only things we donated to the Ryukyu America Historical Research Society, was stuff we found or excavated on the island,” Davenport said. “The American stuff will stay on Camp Kinser.”

The confusion in news reports on the donation came after a ceremony at the museum on Monday marking the transfer of the items Davenport and a group of friends, who had dubbed themselves the “Tunnel Rats,” had collected on Okinawa.

A transfer contract stipulated that Davenport “will relinquish control of all of the items on display, including the display cases … except for those items deemed to have been donated or loaned solely to the museum by veteran groups or individuals.”