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Vdoc - Pub Rethinking Postwar Okinawa Beyond American Occupation
Vdoc - Pub Rethinking Postwar Okinawa Beyond American Occupation
Vdoc - Pub Rethinking Postwar Okinawa Beyond American Occupation
Postwar Okinawa
Rethinking
Postwar Okinawa
Beyond American Occupation
Edited by
Pedro Iacobelli and Hiroko Matsuda
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Published by Lexington Books
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v
vi Contents
vii
viii Introduction
The U.S.-Japan security treaty, a result of Cold War era strategic consid-
erations, has overwhelmingly framed the narrative of Okinawa. Nevertheless
the phrase “Cold War Island” also carries the adverse effect of blurring or
ignoring the human dimension found within Okinawa prefecture beyond the
security treaty. While we agree that the rape of a schoolgirl by American
military servicemen, followed by the huge anti-base demonstration of over
Introduction ix
85,000 people in 1995, marks one of the turning points of postwar Okinawan
history, this book argues that some of the consequences of the long-standing
U.S. military base presence in the islands go much deeper than the military-
civilian cleavage and have had a transnational impact greater than universally
imagined.
In short, this volume features a selection of studies that examine social and
cultural transformations in Okinawa and the Asia-Pacific region in the face
of the ongoing presence of American military bases. The title of Rethinking
Postwar Okinawa: Beyond American Occupation has a twofold meaning.
First, the book explores how people have struggled and envisioned the future
of Okinawa beyond American occupation, and elaborates on how these poli-
tics have been formed by multiple agential forces beyond the territory of Oki-
nawa. Secondly, the book examines how the establishment of foreign military
bases brought about unintended consequences that moved beyond the geo-
graphical limits of the Okinawa prefecture. It also implies that the American
military presence in Okinawa should not be simply taken as a legacy of the
Cold War; rather the book illuminates how the U.S. occupation in Okinawa
has been associated with the colonial legacies of American domination in the
Philippines and Hawaii.
The conceptualization of Okinawa’s identity, race, culture and political
community has been studied recently from a similar prism to the one that this
volume uses. Wendy Matsumura’s The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capital-
ism, Living Labor and Theorizations of Community (2015) provides a model
for this trend inasmuch as Matsumura’s understanding of Okinawa—since
the late nineteenth century up to the 1930s—is based on internal political and
economic spheres within the islands linked to the region’s transformation
“into distinct social spaces” (Matsumura 2015, 2). The violent confronta-
tions between indigenous and non-indigenous political and economic power
holders are considered intrinsic to the process of disposition of Okinawa. The
identification of Okinawa as a unified concept is problematized and contex-
tualized within the multiple local ramifications of the economic sphere bring-
ing about the collective differences in cultural, racial, or ethnic senses. The
community is seen from the prism of the hierarchies and class relation. This
perspective contributes to the understanding of how “new social categories
and relations between colonizer and colonized were formed and transformed”
(Matsumura 2015, 8). In other words, this work go often beyond what is seen
in studies on Okinawa by stressing the elements of conflict and change within
the micro-economies found in the region.
Indeed, instead of simply presenting the important past events which oc-
curred in Okinawa over the past few decades, Rethinking Postwar Okinawa:
Beyond American Occupation attempts to take up the historiography of post-
x Introduction
war Okinawa for discussion. Thus, the opening chapter by Sensui Hidekazu
provides a good conceptual introduction to this volume. The chapter takes a
fresh look into George Kerr’s best seller and extremely influential Okinawa:
The History of an Island People (1958) by illuminating how Okinawan
historians influenced Kerr’s historical views of the Ryukyu Islands. Sensui
pays particular attention to three renowned Okinawan scholars—Iha Fuyū,
Higashionna Kanjun, and Shimabukuro Zenpatsu—and examines their inter-
pretations of the Ryukyuan historical figures Sai On and Shoˉ Joˉken.
The Ryukyu Kingdom emerged as a result of the unification of three king-
doms circa 1430 and it was embedded from its birth in a political and cultural
system dominated by China. Moreover, Okinawan social space was expanded
by the wealth of connections and trade between the Ryukyu Kingdom and
other East Asian states. However, Ryukyuan trade and inter-state activities
began to fade from the mid-sixteenth century on. The resulting situation, as
analyzed by Takara Kurayoshi, meant the incorporation of the Ryukyu King-
dom as a foreign state (ikoku) into the administrative system for domains
within Japan (bakuhan taisei) (Takara 1989a, 392). To this end, Shuri was al-
lowed to rule the territory and to keep their customs and language; they were
not, however, permitted to mention their relation with the Satsuma daimyo to
others. This relationship formed a political triangle (Japan, Ryukyu, China)
that lasted from 1609 to 1879. Under the dual influences of China and Japan,
Sai On (1682–1761) served the king Shō Kei as a scholar-official, and he has
been popularly remembered as a model political figure of Ryukyuan history.
Sensui carefully examines how Iha, Higashionna and Shimabukuro evaluate
Sai On differently. To conclude, he contends:
Like many contemporary scholars on American Empire and East Asian Stud-
ies, the authors of Rethinking Postwar Okinawa: Beyond American Occupa-
tion are concerned with the current political and social situations that are un-
deniably related to the U.S. military bases located on the island of Okinawa.
Yet, we do not interpret Okinawa’s current situation simply as a consequence
of triangular politics between Okinawan residents, the Japanese government
and the U.S. authorities as is often done. Rather, this book demonstrates how
contemporary Okinawa has been built by multiple agencies, not just by lo-
cal Okinawans, the Japanese and Americans. This volume studies Okinawa
beyond Okinawa, providing an alternative view of post-World War II Oki-
Introduction xi
The legacy of the Ryukyu Kingdom supported the aspiration for greater in-
dependence and higher interaction within the Asia-Pacific region, as a way
to carve out a substantial degree of autonomy for itself from the dominant
regional powers. The limited autonomy that the Ryukyu Kingdom enjoyed
from 1609 was greatly destroyed by the Meiji government in the 1870s and
with it Ryukyuan statehood was dismantled. Following the intervention of
Western powers in Japanese politics, the Japanese government sought to ad-
just its territoriality to align with international law. This shift meant that the
southern border of Japan had to be clarified in terms of Westphalian based
international law and not in the Asian style international order (Camacho
and Ueunten 2010, 94; Iacobelli 2017, chap. 6). The Japanese annexation
of the Ryukyu Islands, euphemistically known as “the disposal of the King-
dom of Ryuˉkyuˉ” (Ryukyu shobun), concluded after a seven-year process.
The annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom and the establishment of Okinawa
Prefecture was followed by a set of thorough assimilation policies, includ-
ing Japanese-style school education, which was swiftly introduced in 1881,
and the first physical examination for conscription, which was introduced in
1898. The history and culture of Okinawa under full mainland Japanese rule
was reduced and diminished. Their past as a social and cultural vortex in a
maritime region was erased by the Japanese imperial authorities.
The ruthless face of Japanese semi-colonial rule became particularly evi-
dent in the Battle of Okinawa (1945) where over 200,000 people died and
many more were injured (Feifer 1992; Yahara 1995). It was the culmination
of the contested nature of nation-building and discontinuities in Okinawa
since the “disposition of the Ryukyus” over 60 years prior. The end of the war
and subsequent direct domination by the U.S. military until 1972 constitutes
in itself another chapter in Okinawa’s history. Due to strategic considerations
at the time with China’s civil war and the conflict in the Korean peninsula,
the American view of retaining control of the whole of Okinawa, and not only
of the bases located there, slowly began to gain force from late 1947 to 1948.
xii Introduction
Okinawa was one of many insular Pacific territories occupied by the U.S. in
the wake of World War II, and an important part of the U.S. defense line in
the Pacific (Morris-Suzuki 2010, chap. 5). Indeed, the American retention of
Okinawa became one of the main issues during the peace treaty negotiations.
John Foster Dulles decided to obtain an option to seek trusteeship if desired
by the U.S. in the peace treaty with Japan but in the meantime the U.S. would
retain full control of Okinawa. That is, Dulles created a legal void, a loophole,
whereby the U.S. could remain in control of the islands. The San Francisco
Peace Treaty in Article 3 granted the U.S. the right to “the exercise all and
any power of administration, legislation and jurisdiction over the territory and
inhabitants” in the Ryukyu Islands.1 As a result, Japan’s role in the new Oki-
nawan political structure was almost completely superseded. Consequently,
Okinawa was left in a position of ambiguity and open to abuse.2
Because of Okinawa’s ambiguous and marginalized status in the course
of Japanese nation-building, “nation” and “nationalism” have occupied the
central position in the discourses of modern Okinawan history writing. Some
aspired after Okinawa’s full and equal membership to Japanese nation-state
status, and others, such as hanfukkiron-sha (proponents of opposition to re-
version), severely criticized the logic of national integration itself. Nonethe-
less, instead of highlighting Okinawa’s marginalized position in the Japanese
nation-state framework, Rethinking Postwar Okinawa illuminates another
face of postwar Okinawa that has been overshadowed by anti-/nationalists’
discourses. Indeed, another trait in the American occupation was the transna-
tional movement of people and ideas both toward and out of the Okinawan
archipelago. A growing number of scholars have been paying attention to
new dynamics of people’s movements created within the U.S. military base
system—including not just regular soldiers, but also military families, con-
struction workers, sex workers, and other types of laborers whose work is
closely associated to the military bases.
Chapter 3 by Johanna O. Zulueta highlights how the presence of the U.S.
military bases brought over not only American soldiers from the homeland,
but also male and female laborers from a former U.S. colony, the Philippines,
who worked inside and outside the bases. Initially brought over by the U.S.
administration to work in the construction sector and in the base-building
projects, the Filipino community grew bigger, forming a community closely
connected with the local Okinawan population. As argued, postcolonial re-
lationships as well as other structural factors are significant when looking at
the Filipino migration project. This specific migration case is a window into
the complex and intertwined racial and colonial implications of the growing
U.S. military system in the Asia Pacific region.
Chapter 4 by Ryan Masaaki Yokota intervenes in studies of the reversion
era by illuminating lesser-known debates regarding “local autonomy” that
Introduction xiii
RETHINKING CONSEQUENCES
OF THE LONG STANDING BASES
There has been a growing interest in the ways in which the long-standing U.S.
military bases have had a social and cultural impact on different host com-
munities in East Asia. Much earlier than the post 9/11 debate on “American
Empire” Cynthia Enloe (1990; 1993; 2000) began her research on the gen-
dered impacts of the U.S. military presence on local people. More recently,
Seungsook Moon pointed out that “studies of the role of the U.S. military
around the world have been dominated by strategic studies” and stresses the
significance of studies that unveil the “cultural consequences of the long-term
U.S. military presence in difference host societies” (2016, 32). Similarly, De
Matos and Ward (2012) have explored the gendered consequences of military
occupation—both on the occupier and the occupied—in various parts of the
world, including North and South East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and
the Pacific Islands. With a particular emphasis on women’s experiences in
South Korea, Germany, Japan and Okinawa, Hӧrn and Moon (2010) eluci-
date the unevenly imposed social costs of U.S. military expansion.
Voluminous past studies have already unveiled in what ways the US mili-
tary bases gravely impacted people’s lives in the Ryukyu Islands, and how
people resisted against brutal military rule. Recent scholars have further in-
vestigated the broader and deeper cultural consequences of U.S. military rule
xiv Introduction
and have revealed how local people not only resisted the military, but also
played active roles in military rule on the Islands. For instance, Mire Koikari
(2015) examined how domestic life in Okinawa changed under American
cultural hegemony, illustrating the role American women, including military
wives and teachers, played in promoting domestic education movements
in Okinawa. In this volume, chapter 2 by Masubuchi explores the case of
Okinawan “public health nurses,” and elucidates a compelling story of U.S.
ideological influences on the health system in Okinawa. Although there was
a tendency of portraying Okinawan women as either victims or resisters,
Masubuchi challenges the binary framework of the “American occupiers”
versus “victims/resisters of Okinawan women,” and demonstrates Okinawan
women’s agency in working closely with USCAR officials as public health
nurses.
Each of the last three chapters explores the consequences of the long-stand-
ing U.S. bases and reconsiders the notion of local people’s agency. Chapter
6 by Ayako Takamori examines the experiences of mixed-race Okinawans
which are “often regarded as embodying the condition of a militarized ‘post’-
coloniality in contemporary Okinawa.” She presents a critical review of the
concept of “hybridity” in connections to “mixed-race” Japanese (haˉfu) in
Japan and Okinawa. She goes beyond the traditional narratives on the theo-
retical implications of the concept and elaborates a gloomy picture of the
personal and communal dislocations of those typically identified as “half.”
Ariko S. Ikehara’s study looks into the legacies of long-standing U.S.
bases inscribed into spoken and written words. Through the literary works of
three Okinawan writers, Sakiyama Tami, Yoshihara Komachi, and Nakada
Tsuyoshi, the author offers “champurū text” as an interpretative tool that il-
luminates the performative space between fiction and life. Life in this context
is mixed and non-binary that hails the “American” element in the category
of Okinawan or Asian in the context of postwar culture, history, and society,
unsettling the idea of Asia as foreign, the “Other,” and non-western.
Finally Laura Kina closes this volume with a study on Okinawan photog-
rapher Mao Ishikawa.3 Kina examines Mao Ishikawa´s “Hot Days in Camp
Hansen!!”—an artistic project on Okinawa women (Mao´s friends) engaged
as hostesses in the service industry and their G.I. boyfriends—and “Life in
Philly,” an exploration of the everyday life of African American servicemen
in the U.S. after their time in Okinawa. In exploring Ishikawa’s challenge in
presenting an alternative image of “Okinawan women,” the chapter demon-
strates the agency of Okinawan women, who tend to be portrayed as either
“victims” or “resisters.” Furthermore, the author elucidates on how Ishikawa
fought against and examines the transnational framing of Okinawan and Af-
rican American bodies, displayed in Ishikawa’s works.
Introduction xv
NOTES
1. “Treaty of Peace with Japan” in UCLA East Asia Studies Documents at http://
www.international.ucla.edu/eas/documents/peace1951.htm accessed 7 April 2010.
This arrangement is what John Dower and many others have called the most inequi-
table bilateral agreement the U.S. had entered into after the war (Dower 1993). For
a study on Article 3 and its consequences within and outside Okinawa see Iacobelli
2013.
2. This can be seen in Okinawa’s postwar migration policies. See Iacobelli 2017.
3. For chapter 8, Japanese personal names are presented in the American manner
with the first name followed by the surname. For the rest of this volume, Japanese
personal names are given in the text in the customary order, family name first. Works
published in English by Japanese authors are given in Western order, surname last.
Chapter One
The last line refers to the names of three Okinawan scholars renowned in the
field of Ryukyuan history: Iha Fuyū (1876–1947), Shimabukuro Zenpatsu
(1888–1953), and Higashionna Kanjun (1882–1963).2 Kerr depended on their
works, though not exclusively, and he received direct guidance from two of
them.
Analyses of wartime and postwar American discourse on the Ryukyus
have exposed an intention to establish historical and cultural grounds for jus-
tifying the political separation of the Ryukyus from Japan. Since few Ameri-
can scholars prepared themselves to handle relevant historical documents,
they had to rely on pre-existing studies by Japanese and Okinawan scholars.
A question arises when observing this intellectual juncture: how was the
existing Ryukyuan history made to fit in with a new theme that USCAR ex-
pected Kerr to develop? Since the three Okinawan scholars were embedded
in Japanese intellectual tradition, their works seem not to have been readily
usable. The fact was that these Okinawan scholars were actually propound-
ing different interpretations of the history of their home islands. When Kerr
met Shimabukuro and Higashionna, they were even debating on a certain
historical figure, Shō Jōken (1617–1676). The nature of Shō’s administration,
his personal character, and his vision of Ryukyuan identity were discussed
particularly in comparison with another statesman, Sai On (1682–1762). In
other words, the envisioning of Okinawan identity in postwar Okinawa was
rooted in a long history of debate among Okinawan intellectuals. It is there-
fore necessary to examine their arguments, their backgrounds, and Kerr’s
selective use of their works.
History as a Mirror of Self 3
jobs for Okinawan repatriates, but this practical concern cannot fully explain
the fact that whereas 140,000 Okinawans were estimated to come back, the
number of Japanese leaving the island was no more than 14,000. Shikiya also
insisted that Japanese POWs who had married Okinawans be sent back, even
though American authorities suggested the contrary (Okinawa-ken Shiryō
Hensanjo 1988, 76, 118, 195; cf. Asano 2007, 306–307). Shikiya seems to
have intended that he ethnically homogenize the island. Japanese history thus
had no place in this Okinawan nationalism.
A particular stateman of the Kingdom of Ryukyu was popular among those
postwar Okinawan nationalists. Sai On was a scholar-official who served
king Shō Kei (1700–1751) as his tutor and court councilor3 in much of the
first half of the eighteenth century. Born into a diplomat family of Chinese
descent, the young Sai went to China to study. Applying the knowledge
of practical science which he studied there, he successfully increased the
productivity of Ryukyu. It was the time when established rule by Satsuma
ironically ensured political stability, under which people enjoyed mastering
Japanese and Chinese cultural influences and creating distinctively Ryukyuan
arts and crafts. Sai presided over that golden age which caused the kingdom
to bloom economically and culturally. Sai’s administration was remembered
two centuries thereafter as the historical model of a statesman in Okinawa. In
the inaugural address of the Okinawan Advisory Council, the chief Shikiya
expressed his determination “to revive the age of Sai On” (Kayō 1986, 19).
Shikiya requested one of his subordinates to translate Sai’s Hitori monogatari
(One Man’s Views), an outline of key policy issues which Sai wrote in 1750,
into modern Japanese, which was then published in mimeographed form
by the Ryukyu Cultural Affairs Association (Ryukyu Bunka Kenkyu Kai),
a cultural group on Okinawa (Yamada 1950). Shikiya wrote the foreword,
and Shimabukuro contributed Sai’s biography as an appendix. The afterword
was written by Matayoshi Kōwa (1887–1953), vice-governor of the Okinawa
Civilian Administration.
Why did Sai appeal to the leadership of postwar Okinawa? Whereas the
decades of the spontaneously developed Ryukyuan trading state before 1609
might appear better suited to Okinawan nationalism, those of the humiliating
foreign (Satsuma) domination after 1609 might not. However in the after-
word, Matayoshi pointed out, “The present situation strikingly resembles
the one after the Satsuma conquest,” and wished for the “appearance of the
Sai On of the new age” (Yamada 1950, 41, 46). Evidently, Matayoshi was
not simply glorifying the past, but rather admiring the creation of glory un-
der adverse circumstances. The difficulty which Sai had faced was similar
History as a Mirror of Self 5
with that of his own situation. Matayoshi, referring to Sai’s statement, “It
is thanks to Satsuma’s care that the islanders can live and work in peace
and contentment,” wrote that he could easily imagine Sai’s anguish over the
dilemma (Yamada 1950, 45). The minutes of the liaison conferences with
American civil affairs officers (Okinawa-ken Shiryō Hensanjo 1988) record
that Shikiya, Matayoshi and Shimabukuro held meetings with the American
officers twice a week and negotiated with utmost prudence in order to secure
the islanders’ interests. It will be worth noting in this context that Shikiya
signed the foreword on a public holiday: “On May 28, a memorial for the
Ryukyu-American Friendship Day.” It was a newly designated holiday under
the American occupation to celebrate Commodore Matthew Perry’s visit to
Okinawa. In other words, these Okinawan administrators saw themselves in
the person of Sai On.
The removal of Japanese history was surely unprecedented in modern
education in Okinawa. That, however, did not mean that Ryukyuan history
had not been taught at all. Shimabukuro and other educated Okinawans built
up a sizeable stock of local-historical studies, and passed their knowledge on
to the wider public through local newspapers and public lectures. Even in
the official curriculum, teaching local history was not completely new. With
the postwar resumption of school education, the “Observation of Our Home
Land” was taught to fourth-grade pupils. Such an introductory class to history
study had already been taught nationwide under the identical title to wartime
pupils of the same age (Kokuni 2012).
In preparing postwar textbooks, Okinawan teachers set and adopted the
“Guidelines for Editing Textbooks,” which stipulated that “new textbooks
mostly treat Okinawan materials and thereby embody the Okinawan Way (the
spirit of building a new Okinawa) in order to make [pupils and students] en-
thusiastic” (Bunkyo Kenkyū Chōsa-bu 1985, 246). The Guidelines explains
the “Okinawan Way,” referring to the idea of the “Bridge between Nations.”
That famous phrase came from the line inscribed in a bronze bell hung at
Shuri Castle in 1458 when the kingdom was a spontaneously developed
trading state. Ryukyuans’ maritime activities throughout the East and South
China Seas were interpreted as evidence of their inherent internationalism,
which postwar Okinawans should revive (Bunkyo Kenkyū Chōsa-bu 1985,
246). However, during wartime, the same activities had been interpreted as
a historical precedent to prove the “Japanese” capability of extending its
power over Southeast Asia (e.g., Asato 1941). The fundamental question,
therefore, was neither whether Ryukyuan history was to be taught or not, nor
whether Ryukyuan heritage was to be praised or dismissed. It was rather how
Ryukyuan heritage was to be honored and how that honoring differed from
the way it was previously appreciated.
6 Chapter One
Iha Fuyū, a second Okinawan scholar whose name appeared in the 1952 SIRI
conference, is known as the “Father of Okinawan Studies.” He studied com-
parative linguistics at Tokyo Imperial University and deciphered a compila-
tion of ancient Ryukyuan verses (Omoro sōshi). On the basis of phonological
evidence, he demonstrated similarities between the Ryukyuan and Japanese
languages, and thereon proposed a theory of the common ancestry between
the two peoples. His Ko Ryūkyū (Old Loochoo Viewed in the Light of Looch-
ooan Studies), a seminal anthology of his early writings, represents an incon-
testable milestone in the study of the political figures of Ryukyu, just as it
does for other topics of inquiry in the field of Okinawan studies (Iha 1911a).
In the earliest version of his Ryukyuan history, “Tendencies in Ryukyuan
History (Ryuˉkyuˉ Shi no suˉsei)” (Iha 1911a, 61–106), Iha focused on three
Ryukyuan officers: Sai On, Shō Jōken, and Giwan Chōho (1823–1876).
Knowledge of Sai’s administration, as we have seen in the previous section,
became widely known through this work. Shō Jōken served as “chancel-
lor,” or sessei, from the late 1660s to the early 1670s, a half century before
Sai came to power. Iha acknowledged that Shō had implemented a series of
political reforms and thereby rebuilt the economy after the devastation of
Satsuma invasion. Iha also appreciated that Shō had preceded Iha’s common
ancestry theory, and that Shō had laid the foundation for the Japanization of
Ryukyuan society. As for Giwan, who served as court councilor during the
time of Japanese annexation of the Ryukyus, Iha valued that he had rightly
anticipated that modern Okinawa would lie within Japan.
Iha nominated those three Ryukyuan officials as “representative politicians
of Okinawa” when the journal Okinawa kyōiku (Education in Okinawa) fea-
tured “Lives of Great Men of Our Land” (Iha 1911b). Interest in local history
was being raised nationwide at that time by the enactment of the Law Concern-
ing Popular Education Research Groups (Tsūzoku Kyōiku Chyōsa Īnkai Sei,
1910). Yet, Shinjō Anzen, in his extended review of Okinawan studies, points
out an additional incentive which was particular to the Okinawan situation
(Shinjō 1975, 937–938). The Japanese Election Law was amended in March
1912, and citizens of Okinawa Prefecture became entitled to send their repre-
sentatives to the Imperial Diet in Tokyo. In the preceding year, the islanders
were excited at the possibility that their long-standing wish would soon come
true. In the midst of that excitement, Iha was invited to a public lecture where
he introduced Chancellor Shō and Court Councilors Sai and Giwan as models
for the coming Okinawan members of the Diet (Okinawa mainichi shimbun,
17 July 1911).
History as a Mirror of Self 7
Iha’s popularization of the three “great men of Ryukyu” soon saw an un-
expected outcome. In November 1915, Emperor Taishō was enthroned, and
to celebrate the occasion he conferred decorations on historical figures. The
three Ryukyuan officials were aligned with great Japanese men in receiv-
ing honors (Ryukyu shinpō, 13 November 1915). Such recognition by the
Japanese government later extended to the “stage” on which these Ryukyuan
officials had played real history. After enthusiastic lobbying by the Japanese
architect Itō Chūta (1867–1954) and the Japanese dyeing artist Kamakura
Yoshitarō (1898–1983), the decaying Shuri Castle was saved from planned
demolition and designated a national treasure in 1925. That was followed
eight years later by the designation of eighteen historical buildings including
the Enkakuji temple, the Sōenji temple, and other religious sites. By the time
those cultural assets were razed to the ground in the Battle of Okinawa, the
number of national treasures in Okinawa had risen to twenty-two.
Certainly, the heritage of the Kingdom was a source of local pride. How-
ever, if the Japanese state acknowledged the value of Ryukyuan heritage,
praise for it alone could not be taken as a sign of Okinawan nationalism. Kano
Masanao, in his biographical study of Iha (Kano 1993), explains his ideologi-
cal outlook. In Iha’s framework, the Japanese annexation of the Ryukyus in
1879 was the reunion of two branches of one nation; each group had parted
from the other some 2,000 years before. Iha argued that if the major branch
(i.e., the mainland Japanese) forced the minor (i.e., the Okinawans) to remove
the uniqueness or individuality that the latter had developed as a result of that
isolated 2,000 years of existence from the former, it would be more hinder-
ing than helpful to the reunion. If the Okinawans lost their individuality, it
would not only mean “spiritual suicide” for themselves, but also the “general
national loss” for the Empire of Japan. This is because the greatness of a
nation lies in its capacity to embrace heterogeneous elements (Kano 1993,
96–97; Iha 1911a, 94–104). It is true that governmental support for Ryukyuan
culture, after all, ended with the state control of Okinawan people, as illus-
trated by the fact that Shuri Castle was restored as a Shinto shrine (Loo 2014).
However, it is also true that both the emperor’s decoration and the national
treasure designation was a realization of what Iha had originally hoped for.
It is of note that Iha’s strategy could have worked whether or not the Oki-
nawans shared their ultimate ancestry with the Japanese. What was then the
point of his maintaining that hypothesis? According to Kano, Iha’s theory of a
common ancestry was an instrument with which the Okinawans could secure
a better position than other ethnic minorities. Iha returned home as the first
Okinawan with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and he took the lead among local
intellectuals as the founding director of the Okinawa Prefectural Library. He
felt acutely responsible for enhancing the social status of his fellow islanders.
That practical concern made Iha insist on the hypothesis.
8 Chapter One
While Higa openly discussed that the common ancestry theory was only an
instrument, Iha could not confess that it was so, even if he thought it was. A
stronger sense of mission to provide relief to his fellow islanders isolated Iha.
He closed his earliest version of Ryukyuan history, “Tendencies in Ryukyuan
History,” with three lines, each quoted from Shō, Sai and Giwan, all con-
fessing the loneliness of a statesman. In doing that, as Kano points out, Iha
confessed his own loneliness (Kano 1993, 101–104).
Shimabukuro Zenpatsu was also among the young Okinawans who read Iha’s
Ko Ryūkyū with keen interest. In the book, Sai On’s One Man’s Views and
Shō Jōken’s The Directives (Haneji shioki) were printed in type. Those rare
manuscripts were made available to a wider readership, including Shimabu-
kuro, who was in Kyoto as a student of law at Kyoto Imperial University.
Upon reading those works by Sai and Shō, Shimabukuro published his own
interpretation (Shimabukuro 1912a, 1912b).
Shimabukuro concurred with Iha in recognizing Sai On as the most able
politician in Ryukyuan history but added more attention to Sai’s practical-
scientific skills. According to Shimabukuro, Sai well understood the law of
supply and demand. Whereas Sai deplored drinking as a cause of social evils,
he promoted, rather than discouraged, the brewing industry in order to maxi-
mize crop production. Without commercial incentive, Sai believed, farmers
would cultivate no more land than necessary for tax payment and their own
subsistence. He metaphorically expressed the precarious balance required
between such contradictory policies as “guiding a horse by means of rotten
reins” (Shimabukuro 1912b).
History as a Mirror of Self 9
As for Shō Jōken, however, Shimabukuro’s view was different from Iha’s.
Shō was born of Ryukyuan royal descent, studied the Japanese arts and lit-
erature, and came into politics in 1666. About a half century after a defeat
to Satsuma, the Ryukyuan economy remained broken and public morals
degenerate. Chancellor Shō enforced strict discipline among royal officials
to curtail their overspending and to eliminate corruption among them. As a
result, he managed to restore a stable economy within a decade. Shimabukuro
acknowledged Shō’s achievement, but he praised it far less than Sai On’s;
Shō had no sense of entrepreneurship as had Sai, and Shō only implemented
defensive measures to economize on expenses. Such actions demonstrated,
according to Shimabukuro, a sign of Ryukyuan cowardliness that stood in
contrast to Sai’s caliber as a man who originated from a powerful nation
(Shimabukuro 1912b, January 25).
Whereas Iha highly valued Shō’s advocacy of the Japanese origin of the
Ryukyuans (Iha 1911a, 71–75),4 Shimabukuro regarded Shō’s common an-
cestry theory as no more than an expression of Shō’s flattering of the Japa-
nese. Shimabukuro also denied the possibility that Shō had adopted a prudent
strategy only to cope with the conquerors because Shimabukuro believed that
Shō had been too nervous and sentimental to make such a calculated move.
Although Shimabukuro admitted that Shō had laid the ground for a “happy
Okinawa Prefecture” in modern times, it was sheer fortune that his taste for
things Japanese had concurred with the actual course of history (Shimabu-
kuro 1912a, January 16).
Shimabukuro’s low opinion of Shō’s common ancestry theory can further
be explained with reference to Shimabukuro’s conception of ethnicity. In
his biographical study of Shimabukuro, Yakabi Osamu points out that while
Iha understood ethnicity in terms of objective markers such as language
and popular customs, Shimabukuro understood it as a matter of collective
consciousness (Yakabi 2010, 50–88). Thus, Shimabukuro stated, “It is not
unreasonable to consider the Ryukyuans as a people [minzoku] different
from, though very much closely related to, the Yamato people [i.e., the
mainlanders]”(Shimabukuro 1913, March 3).
However, such ethnic awareness was not incompatible with Japanese na-
tionalism. Shimabukuro argued that ethnic variety would strengthen rather
than weaken the Japanese state. He suggested that it would be helpful to
encourage ethnic expression rather than to oppress it in order to make such
a supra-ethnic collectivity firmly united. He metaphorically compared the
Empire of Japan with an ideal orchestra in which various musical instruments
were harmoniously combined (Shimabukuro 1911). In this sense, despite his
academic disagreements with Iha, Shimabukuro seems to have shared Iha’s
vision for how their contemporaneous Okinawans should claim a place in the
10 Chapter One
prewar Japanese state. However, when this framework was dismantled after
the war, Shimabukuro entered into a debate about Shō Jōken, not with Iha
(who died in August 1947) but with another senior Okinawan scholar.
SHIMABUKURO-HIGASHIONNA DEBATE
Higashionna Kanjun was the third and last Okinawan scholar mentioned in
the 1952 conference between USCAR and the Pacific Science Board. He was
born in the city of Naha and went to high school and university in mainland
Japan just as Shimabukuro and Iha did. Unlike them, however, Higashionna
never returned to Okinawa to live. Having received formal training in history
at Tokyo Imperial University, Higashionna taught in high schools and univer-
sities in the capital city of Japan.
Higashionna’s debate with Shimabukuro was about how to evaluate Shō
Jōken’s teachings.5 Just as Shimabukuro and other leaders in Okinawa, Hi-
gashionna compared post-1945 Okinawa with Ryukyu after the 1609 inva-
sion by Satsuma. However, unlike the Okinawan leadership, he took Shō’s
theory of the Japanese origin of the Ryukyuans as an example of what one
should follow in the postwar era. Self-awareness of being Japanese provided
dispirited seventeenth-century islanders with clear guidelines for recovery
from the 1609 disaster, which had been invited by Sinophile royal officials
and their Sinicization of the kingdom. Higashionna expected that the same
self-awareness would again provide guidelines for the islanders of the mid-
twentieth century who were confused about the uncertainty of their national-
ity (Higashionna 1951a).
The debate began with a book which Higashionna prepared for that pur-
pose. The book Kochu Haneji shioki6 was an annotated collection of Shō’s
directives (Higashionna 1952). Higashionna described Shō as a man of faith.
Shō, for instance, cut funds for the annual royal pilgrimage to Kudaka Island,
an ancestral islet from which the Ryukyuans were said to have settled onto
the main island of Okinawa. Shō argued that if the Ryukyuans had originated
from Japan, it would make little difference whether the king went to the islet
to offer his prayer to the ancestors or while staying at his court; the former
style of service was as indirect or intermediated as the latter would be. Shō
believed that the king’s journey to Kudaka was irrationally costly, and should
not be continued (Higashionna 1952, 213–214). Such reforms directed at the
highest stratum of the kingdom met with strong resistance, but Shō declared
himself righteous and ready to stake his life for the cause of financially re-
building the kingdom (Higashionna 1952, 192–193).
History as a Mirror of Self 11
Even in this age, in which people only pursue the immediate benefits in life
under the name of democracy, my dear Shō Jōken, if he were here, would not
flatter the powerful for fear of being penalized, or thereby forget the pride of
[our] nation, and not turn a blind eye to the truth [that the Okinawans were Japa-
nese]. . . . It has already been seven years since the war ended, but unfortunately,
another Shō Jōken has not yet come forth. As I’m embarrassed to see our home
island left destroyed, I will wake him up from under the ground and make him
sound a warning bugle (Higashionna 1952, 148).
HIGASHIONNA’S BACKGROUND
Most profiles of Higashionna point to the fact that he received formal training
in history and was an orthodox historian influenced by historical positivism.
Less discussed are his abundant commentaries on current political events that
make allegorical use of his historical knowledge. This two-sidedness will be
illuminated by an analysis of a particular scholarly trend that was influential
during his formative years.
The bulletin Rekishi chiri (Historical Geography) was established in 1899
mostly by the faculty and graduate students of the National (i.e., Japanese)
History Course in the Department of History, College of Letters, at Tokyo
Imperial University. These historians focused their research on provincial
history, implemented on-site surveys, and encouraged a practical application
of historical knowledge to modern-day problems. In other words, the bul-
letin proposed a fresh approach to Japanese history going beyond traditional
academic history which only documented past events that affected, or were
affected by, the central government (Kawai 2013, 10–33). Higashionna en-
tered the department in 1905 and found his familiarity with things Ryukyuan
to be an asset to Historical Geography. Lodging in Tokyo in the residence of
the last Ryukyuan king, Higashionna had numerous occasions to listen to the
former royal servants and to consult rare documents kept by the former royal
family. Meanwhile, Yoshida Togo (1864–1918) had completed his volumi-
nous Gazetteer of Great Japan (Dai-nihon chimei jisho) and was planning a
sequel to deal with outer regions including Taiwan, Hokkaido and Ryukyu.
Higashionna was selected as the author of that celebrated publication (Yo-
History as a Mirror of Self 13
shida 1909); few people in Japanese academia knew much of Ryukyuan to-
pography and the Kingdom’s status nomenclature which was closely related
to place names. Higashionna was able to establish himself as a rare specialist
in Ryukyuan history immediately after graduation.
One of the topics that young Higashionna enthusiastically pursued was
the Tametomo legend (Higashionna 1906, 1908). Tametomo refers to a
Japanese warrior hero, Minamoto Tametomo (1139–?), who was banished
after a defeat and according to legend escaped from exile but drifted to some
remote island. One version of the legend has it that the unidentified loca-
tion was Okinawa Island and that Tametomo had fathered the first king of
Ryukyu. That version was recorded when Shō Jōken wrote the first history
of the kingdom in 1650. Katō Sango (1865–1939) displayed skepticism as to
whether Shō fabricated the legend in order to come to terms with the Satsuma
occupation because the Satsuma clan also claimed to be of Minamoto blood.
Higashionna refuted Kato by successfully searching for the evidence that the
legend had been extant at a time earlier than 1609.
However, Higashionna was not so much concerned with prehistoric
Ryukyuans as Iha was. Rather, he delved into unattended records to pursue
the particularities of Ryukyuan history. A different history could have been
the source of alienation from Japanese society, but Higashionna’s explora-
tions often unearthed Ryukyuans’ invaluable contributions to Japanese life.
For example, a volume of Confucian maxims, Rikuyuengi, was introduced
by Ryukyuan scholars to Japan, where it was widely used as textbook in pre-
modern schools and exercised influence on shaping Japanese behavioral pat-
terns (Higashionna 1932). Similarly, Ryukyu was the window through which
Japan imported advanced medicine (anesthesia) and the sweet potato, which
saved many Japanese lives. In addition to those studies, a year-long field
survey conducted throughout Southeast Asia in 1933 as well as an in-depth
study of the Rekidai hōan, which was a recently discovered compilation of
Ryukyuan diplomatic documents, brought Higashionna peerless knowledge
of Ryukyuan foreign relations (Higashionna 1941a, 1941b). His successful
career was based on his contribution to Japanese academia by making full use
of his Ryukyuan heritage. It is interesting to reflect that his unique role stood
in parallel with the roles of the historical Ryukyuans whom he described in
his research.
In postwar Tokyo, Higashionna’s expertise became highly demanded; as
early as the summer of 1946, the Treaties Bureau of the Japanese Ministry
of Foreign Affairs requested from him details of the process by which Japan
and Qing China had negotiated sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands. Similar
requests were repeated in the latter half of the 1940s (Higashionna 1982).
Meanwhile, educated Okinawans in Tokyo organized themselves into the
14 Chapter One
On 28 January 1952, as soon as the conference between USCAR and the Pa-
cific Science Board had been concluded at Camp Zukeran, George Kerr set
about his history project. First, he interviewed Matayoshi Kōwa and Shima-
bukuro Zenpatsu (Kerr 1952a). As we have seen, Matayoshi and Shimabu-
kuro were once colleagues in the early postwar native administration. They
stepped down from public positions by that time; Matayoshi became the
president/owner of the Ryukyu shinpō while Shimabukuro the editor-in-chief
of that newspaper. The next day, Kerr flew to Tokyo where he had arranged
a coordinated bibliographic search. The search involved looking through all
types of published literature on Ryukyu throughout the collections of the
National Diet Library and several libraries attached to Tokyo University.
Meanwhile, the GHQ/SCAP staff introduced Kerr to Yoshida Shien, who in
turn introduced him to prominent scholars of Okinawan studies in Tokyo,
History as a Mirror of Self 15
referring to both Okinawan and mainland scholars in Tokyo. Kerr also urged
caution against the contemporary activities of the Japanese government and
the Japanese media. About a month before (April 28), Japan had regained
full independence. With the new freedom of speech, “an increase may be
expected . . . in the number and character of appeals . . . which will be made
to the Ryukyuan people to remind them and encourage them to think of them-
selves as Japanese subjects ultimately due to return to full Japanese control”
(Kerr 1952d, 12). The activities of the Ryukyu sub-section in the Foreign
Ministry, that is, Yoshida’s office, which prepared Higashionna’s booklets,
were a noticeable case of such reminders and encouragement.
In contrast, Kerr observed that Okinawans in Okinawa were searching
for “their own history” and were developing the theme that “Okinawa has
always been sacrificed to Japanese interests” (Kerr 1952d, 12). They cited
as evidence of that sacrifice the Satsuma invasion of 1609 and subsequent
economic domination of the Ryukyus, the Meiji government’s unilateral abo-
lition of the Ryukyuan state in 1879 as a measure to secure the southern fron-
tier, as well as the 57,000 civilians killed during the Battle of Okinawa.8 An
alternative narrative that this emergent view would provide “can be expected
to strengthen the position of the conservative leaders who are cooperating
with the U. S. Civil Administration” (Kerr 1952d, 12). At the opposite end
of the political spectrum, the “local Communists” sought to embarrass both
those conservative leaders and the American administration. They overem-
phasized the history of the Ryukyus in modern times, that is, Okinawa within
the Japanese state. Then, a “popular understanding of Ryukyu’s long history
as a separate people,” Kerr expected, “would modify arguments for ‘reunion’
with Japan” (Kerr 1952d, 12).
Having spent the summer of 1952 in Tokyo to direct bibliographic re-
search,9 Kerr went back to California to write up the final report, Ryukyu:
Kingdom and Province before 1945 (Kerr 1953). In this general history of the
Ryukyus, Kerr described Shō Jōken as a man who lacked great initiative and
worked under the influence of Japan. Firstly, Chancellor Shō, in tackling eco-
nomic problems, resorted to sumptuary laws and social regulations. The sho-
gunate in Yedo was also struggling against economic difficulties at that time.
Kerr inferred that Shō had been inspired by Yedo and had followed the sho-
gun’s measures. Those measures were not successful in Japan, neither were
the borrowed measures in the Ryukyus (Kerr 1953, 82, 99). Secondly, when
Kerr touched on Shō’s attempts to reduce the influence of native Ryukyuan
religion, he referred to Shō’s intention of increasing Japanese influence, and
made insinuations about Satsuma’s move behind the scenes. These attempts,
as we have seen, included an attempt to abolish the royal pilgrimage to the
ancestral islet; however, Kerr did not mention Shō’s intention thereby of
History as a Mirror of Self 17
reducing the administrative budget (Kerr 1953, 98). Kerr kept silent about
Shō’s selfless determination to reform the kingdom’s administration, even
though Higashionna loudly praised him for it (Higashionna 1950 a, 179–181).
If Shimabukuro had received Kerr’s final report, he would have read it fa-
vorably (Shimabukuro died in November 1953, and probably had no chance
to get a hold of it). Higashionna, one may expect, must have had a different
reaction to the report, as Kerr’s description almost entirely dismissed Higash-
ionna’s interpretation of Shō’s achievements. Higashionna surely received
Kerr’s manuscript, finished reading it and sent it to Yoshida Shien on 8 Au-
gust 1953 (Higashionna 1982, 99), but no immediate reaction was recorded.
Of note, however, is that contrary to expectations, Higashionna introduced
Kerr’s observation in support of his own argument. The mid-1950s saw an
increasing deterioration in relations between the American forces and the
islanders due to compulsory land expropriations. In “Okinawa: Past and Pres-
ent (Okinawa konjaku),” a yearlong series of short essays on the Okinawa
problem, Higashionna quoted from Kerr’s introduction to his 1953 report:
The people of Ryukyu are much more eager to be recognized and accepted as
“Japanese,” than the people of Japan are ready or eager to claim them without
reservation. . . . Japan is prepared to use the Ryukyus in any way to gain ad-
vantage for Tokyo: it is ill-prepared to make sacrifices for the island people
(Higashionna 1958, 341–342, 403; Kerr 1953, ii).
outlook: escaping from American control and going back to Japanese ad-
ministration. In other words, the continuing American administration of the
islands could be taken as yet another case of Japanese sacrifice of Okinawa.
That interpretation seems to have lain in a blind spot of Americans like Kerr.
According to Kerr, the American forces continued to stay in Okinawa
not to dominate this foreign territory but only to maintain neutrality in the
Western Pacific. In this context, he referred to a historical precedent, Com-
modore Perry’s visit to Ryukyu in 1853. Although Kerr later suspected Perry
of harboring military ambitions, he thought it worth re-examining “Perry’s
suggestions for an internationalized port” on Okinawa which would be open
to all nations (Kerr 1945, 100). Kerr published that view at the very mo-
ment when American and Japanese forces were struggling for the island of
Okinawa. That projection of the first American occupation of Okinawa onto
the second became more explicit in the final version of Kerr’s Ryukyuan his-
tory (Kerr 1958, 9).10 Such projection occurred neither to Shimabukuro nor
to Higashionna. In this sense, whether or not Kerr supported the American
strategic policy, he also saw his predecessor in Ryukyuan history.
CONCLUSION
NOTES
1. Anthony Jenkins (Jenkins 2001), who catalogued the George Kerr Papers now
at Okinawa Prefectural Archive, wrote a concise introduction of Kerr’s Ryukyuan
history. I should like here to acknowledge my debt to Professor Jenkins, who kindly
read through a draft of this chapter and offered many useful comments.
2. The surnames Shimabukuro and Higashionna are Shimabuku and Higaonna in
Ryukyuan, respectively. As Kerr’s use of these names was inconsistent, I use their
more common Japanese names in this chapter for the sake of consistency. For the
same reason, I spell Iha instead of Ifa though he himself had definite preference for
the latter.
3. Sai On was a tutor of prince Shō Kei, and continued to deliver guidance after
the latter was enthroned at the age of thirteen. Sai remained in that uniquely powerful
position, kokushi (literally, “the tutor of the country”), for about forty years until Shō
Kei’s death.
4. Yonaha Jun points out that Iha actually read Shō’s text in a way that he could
extract the advocacy of common ancestry (Yonaha 2009: 172). This suggests that
Shimabukuro’s disagreement with Iha and his debate with Higashionna, which we
will see in the following section, were all based on Iha’s misleading construction.
5. In the late 1980s, Tasato Osamu paid attention to Higashionna’s highly po-
liticized interpretation of Shō Jōken’s policies and Shimabukuro’s refutation of it
(Tasato 1988). This topic was later taken up and fully reviewed by Yakabi Osamu
(Yakabi 2010, 179–185). This section owes much to these studies.
6. Haneji is the Japanese surname of Shō Jōken.
7. Takara Kurayoshi (1989b) minutely examines the process through which Shō
assumed the chancellorship, and concludes that Shō fully prepared the “scenario” of
his administrative reforms well in advance and was thereby able to catch promptly a
chance to play it out.
20 Chapter One
The prominent Okinawan writer Ōshiro Tatsuhiro, well known for his
Akutagawa Award winning novel Cocktail Party, wrote yet another piece
in 1955, which appeared serially in a local newspaper Ryūkyū shinpō.1 Set
in a camptown, Koza, the novel Shiroi kisetsu (White Season) depicts vari-
ous characters whose lives are closely connected to the U.S. military bases,
including prostitutes, a tuberculosis patient, A-sign bar hostesses, and a local
politician who made money by running bars and shops in the camptown.
The story is told from the perspective of two protagonists, the doctor Yama-
nouchi Shunsuke, who left Okinawa before the war with his family, and just
returned to the island upon his graduation from a medical school in Nagasaki,
and Tōyama Kyōko, a public health nurse working at the Koza public health
center (Ōshiro 1976). As a literary critic Kano Masanao insightfully points
out, this novel captures the reality of people living under the U.S. occupation
in the way that the two medical practitioners, Yamanouchi and Tōyama, try
to diagnose the “disease” of U.S.-occupied Okinawan society (Kano 2008,
246). While Yamanouchi shies away from looking the rapid transformation
of Okinawa becoming the ostentatious camptown, nostalgically lamenting the
loss of “good old Okinawa,” Tōyama cannot help but face up to the reality
of Okinawan society through her everyday duties as a public health nurse.
In many ways, the two contrasting characters in Shiroi kisetsu represent
the socio-economic situation of Okinawa in the 1950s veraciously. The es-
tablishment of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands
(USCAR) in 1950, together with a local government, the Government of the
Ryukyu Islands (GRI) in 1952, enabled the United States to retain stable and
planned military control over the islands of the Ryukyu on a long-term basis.
Meanwhile, local elites and politicians began seeking Okinawan autonomy,
even if it was limited. Some claimed independence of the Ryukyu Islands
21
22 Chapter Two
with their ethnic identity as Okinawans at the core, while others sought to
utilize social resources and humanitarian aid provided by USCAR and the
U.S. government for survival under the military occupation (Toriyama 2013,
143). Overall, this was the moment when the social structure of postwar Oki-
nawa began taking shape with the absolute presence of U.S. military bases at
the core (Toriyama 2013, 7). Under these circumstances, public health nurses
like Tōyama were experiencing vividly ambivalent consequences of the U.S.
militarization on Okinawan society. Introduced by USCAR initially for the
purpose of protecting American soldiers from unhealthy local environment
and infectious diseases, public health nurses received professional training
under the guidance of American medical specialists. Some of them further
travelled to Taiwan, India, the Philippines, Hawaii, and the U.S. mainland
to receive technical training (Nihon Kango Kyōkai 1982). In this sense, they
gained social and spatial mobility and the sense of autonomy because of the
U.S. occupation. Paradoxically, the nurses could comprehend the potential
effects of imperial and military violence precisely because of their dealings
with their patients’ “diseases,” which were unequivocally the effects of the
precarious status of Okinawa being an intersection of the U.S. and Japanese
empires. Among the important questions to ask in order to untangle these his-
torical paradoxes are: how did they experience the reality of the military oc-
cupation through the act of nursing? How could we understand their agency
and subjectivity in the context of the U.S. empire? And more fundamentally,
what does it mean to protect life and provide care under the absolute presence
of militarism?
This chapter aims to intervene in the existing discussions of militarism,
imperialism, and gender in U.S.-occupied Okinawa by exploring the lived
experiences of Okinawan public health nurses. Although scholars in the field
of Okinawan Studies have generated a wide range of discussions pertaining
to the U.S. occupation, public health nurses in occupied Okinawa have not
been fully studied except for a few essays written by medical professionals.2
In part, the difficulty of problematizing their activities in a socio-historical
perspective stems from the dominant narratives of Okinawan Studies, which
tend to portray Okinawans in general, Okinawan women in particular, either
as victims or resisters. Such a framework itself is quite effective to compre-
hend the oppressive power structure under the U.S. occupation, and to reveal
the history of people who have struggled against military dominance. How-
ever, as Mire Koikari points out, this binary framework obscures the ways
in which the U.S. military occupation simultaneously facilitated women’s
varied and contradictory expressions of agency, where “they often participate
in and reinforce the dominant working of power” (Koikari 2015, 17). The
binary framework would prove to be inadequate when analyzing the women
Nursing the U.S. Occupation 23
rights that they do not have’; in so doing, they turn bare life into political
life” (Espiritu 2014, 76). By contextualizing the experiences of Okinawan
public health nurses within Cold War U.S. geopolitics, the pages follow ex-
plore nursing and nursing education in occupied Okinawa as the site where
Okinawan women consciously or unconsciously played a part in Cold War
U.S. expansionism, but nonetheless sought for “tactics” to generate viable life
under military domination.
training program for public health nurses held at the Institute of Public Health
(UTA, Kaser Collection). Graduating from University of Oregon, Watter-
worth had served as a public health nurse educator in the Shikoku Regional
Military Government Team before she came to Okinawa, where she initiated
the public health nurse stationing system with the assistance of local doctors
and nurses until 1949 (Kimura 2012, 50–53). According to Gleich-Anthony,
the Military Government nurses played an important role not only in pro-
tecting the health of the U.S. troops, but also in “democratizing” Japanese
women through nursing education (Gleich-Anthony 2007). With the guid-
ance of these two women, USCAR proclaimed ordinances No. 35 and 36
in 1951 to set up a public health nurse system. The ordinances introduced
the title “kōshū eisei kangofu (Public Health Nurses)” for the first time, and
defined the duties and qualifications of public health nurses. In the same
year, Kaser and Watterworth initiated courses to train public health nurses.
Participants applied for the courses through the recommendation of the head
nurses of municipal hospitals and clinics. Many women who had nursing
licenses came from all over the islands to seek for a new job opportunity
(OPA0000012416). In the course, participants had theoretical education and
practical training. After completing a one-year training course, they received
the license of public health nurses and were posted to public health centers or
substations in remote islands and areas. This training course later transformed
into the nursing school, which was established in 1955.
For most of the Okinawan nurses, the U.S.-promoted sense of “profession-
alism” in nursing education seemed to be one of the most significant diver-
gences from the prewar understanding of the field, in which nurses were sub-
ordinate to their superiors, doctors, organizations, and the state. At the same
time, they were expected to embody the ideal of the “good housewife and
wise mother” (ryōsai kenbo). As Takahashi illustrates, the Japanese term for
public health nurses, “hokenfu,” which has been used in mainland Japan from
the prewar period up to present, well represents this situation. The word ho-
kenfu literally means “public health women,” and does not include a Chinese
character referring either to “medicine” or “nurse” (Takahashi 2004, 157). It
is not a coincidence that the Japanese Red Cross, the leading institution of
Japanese nursing education since its establishment in 1887, adopted Florence
Nightingale as a perfect symbol of nursing because she was recognized not
only as a pioneer of professional nursing, but also as a great exemplar of
female virtues (Takahashi 2004, 161–163). Kinjō Kiyomatsu, one of the first
Okinawan medical doctors, also remembered that in prewar Okinawa general
practitioners usually employed ordinary girls and trained them to be assistants
(K. Kinjō 1961, 13). This is partly because those who wanted to become pro-
fessional nurses (and doctors) had to go outside of Okinawa since there was
26 Chapter Two
no facility for medical education on the islands. Even after graduation, as the
war progressed, many of them were mobilized as military nurses (Okinawa-
ken Hokenfuchō-kai 1994, 207). Thus, while “professional nurses” worked
actively with the imperial Japanese army on the front lines, the professional
boundary of nursing became obscured on the home front, transforming the
nursing work “from a career based on expertise into a female form of civilian
contribution to the war effort with much less emphasis upon nursing skills
and knowledge” (Takahashi 2004, 163).
In occupied Okinawa, not only did Kaser and Watterworth teach Okinawan
women medical knowledge, but also attempted to nurture their confidence
and pride to work as professional nurses. Symbolically, the term “kōshū eisei
kangofu,” instead of “hokenfu,” was adopted in occupied Okinawa, which is
direct translation from the English word “public health nurse” and empha-
sizes expertise for professional nurses. Okinawan people began calling public
health nurses “kōkan-san,” an abbreviation for “kōshū eisei kangofu,” as
they became more familiar with their presence in the community. Yonahara
Setsuko, one of the participants in the training course, still remembered that
Kaser kept emphasizing the importance of “professionalism”:
The distinctive uniform of public health nurses, brand-new white shirts and
navy-blue two-piece suits with black culottes, also helped them to have the
sense of professionalism and pride (T. Kinjō 2001, 127–129). Kaser collected
funding from the American military wives’ associations such as International
Women’s Club, and made uniforms for public health nurses. Kinjō Taeko,
the first director of the Okinawan public health nurse school, recalled that
Kaser insisted that the uniform must be “modern style” because “it can be
easily recognized by anyone, it will make you feel authentic, and give you
confidence as a public health nurse” (Kinjō interview, OPA0000012416).
Together with the uniforms, bicycles were also donated by military wives and
became invaluable vehicles especially for those nurses who were in charge
of remote islands and areas to go around and visit homes in the community,
since there was often little means of transportation. As most of public health
nurses never rode bicycles, they learned how to ride them every day after
class at the public health nurse school (Yona et al. 1967, 20–21). Beyond the
Nursing the U.S. Occupation 27
When I rode a red bicycle onto the school grounds, children gathered around
me with curious eyes. As women rarely rode bicycles in those days, bicycles
were quite effective tools to catch people’s attention, publicizing the activities
of public health nurses (Yonahara 1983, 20–21).
Never forget that public health is not only your problem but the community’s
problem. Let it be a common objective of both yourselves and the community.
Use constantly your enthusiasm and good relationships with people as a means
of inspiring them toward improvement in the health and welfare of their com-
munity and the Ryukyus (NDL USCAR 44115–44119, News Release March
10, 1962).
In those days [in the 1950s], there was a huge gap between USCAR and us in
the way each side tried to promote public health. We were dissatisfied with them
[USCAR officials], as their public health policies were quite different from what
had been administered on mainland Japan. Nevertheless, Mrs. Watterworth
aggressively wielded her power to make us follow her. I was the one with the
most defiant attitude, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I rebutted her (T.
Kinjō 2001, 267).
ment for venereal disease patients, but also provided public health educations
so that those patients would not further disseminate the disease. VD control
was not only conducted inside health centers. Just like VD control in any
other camptowns, one of the important concerns in VD control is to track a
source and route of infection. Especially in the early 1950s, Okinawan public
health nurses frequently visited the camptowns and tested prostitutes to detect
the source of infection (Uehara 1981, 88).
In commemorative publications, public health nurses including Kinjō, who
were in charge of VD control, often expressed ambivalent feelings they had
toward VD control. This is partly because of the fact that they noticed the
menace of tuberculosis and malaria, which rapidly spread among residents
in the 1950s as bigger and more immediate public health threats than VD.
Indeed, among the home-visit cases that public health nurses dealt with in
1952, 46 per cent were tuberculosis patients and 20 per cent were infectious
disease patients, whereas VD patients only consisted 2.4 per cent (T. Kinjō
2001, 131).
In addition to the actual necessity, however, public health nurses seemed
to dissociate their duties from VD control. For instance, Chiyo Uehara, a
public health nurse at the Naha Health Center, described her shocking en-
counter with prostitutes. In 1952, she visited a brothel run by a thirty-year-old
man (Uehara 1981, 88–90). The room was packed with women sleeping on
beds originally used in field hospitals. Some of them had lost every means
to live but to sell their bodies, while others were brought without knowing
anything about their planned fate. Uehara described prostitutes as “women
who embody the defeat in war (haisen no on-na tachi),” expressing a pent-up
anger both at U.S. soldiers who “bought” those women and at the Okinawan
man who ran the brothel. Compared to male doctors who often described
prostitutes as mere strangers or even betrayers, Uehara was obviously more
sympathetic to the prostitutes. At the same time, however, Uehara felt “full
of shame and miserable” when she was waiting outside of the prostitutes’
room until G.I. came out so that she could treat the prostitutes. Uehara further
writes, “I could only put up with this kind of job because it was a part of my
duties as a public health nurse” (Uehara 1981, 90). Thus, VD control simul-
taneously threatened and reinforced public health nurses’ sense of femininity
and professionalism. Katherine Moon reveals that in the U.S. military occu-
pations, VD control played a significant role not only in regulating physical
contact between the U.S. personnel and local prostitutes, but also in promot-
ing gendered notions of femininity and masculinity, weakness and strength,
and conquered and conqueror (Moon 1997). The above example shows that
VD control in U.S.-occupied Okinawa redraws class and gender boundaries
among Okinawan women, separating those who could become “good wives
30 Chapter Two
and wise mothers” from “women who embody defeat in war.” Kinjō felt
uneasiness to VD control, especially because she repeatedly emphasized the
moral ideals of femininity and motherhood in public health nursing. Hav-
ing Florence Nightingale as her most respected model, she clearly states her
motto in her autobiography and elsewhere, “to be a good nurse, you should be
a good woman, and to be a good woman, you should be a good person” (T.
Kinjō 2001, 180). By “a good woman,” Kinjō meant a woman who was ap-
proachable for anyone and who could deeply sympathize with others’ physi-
cal and mental suffering. She apparently drew this motto from her prewar and
wartime experience of serving for the Japanese Red Cross as a military nurse.
In sum, the U.S.-led public health nursing education, which in part aimed to
“liberate” Okinawan women from male-dominant militarism, did not replace,
but rather reinforced Okinawan public health nurses’ prewar understanding of
gender and femininity through the act of VD control.
Perhaps, I should tell you that Kinjo said to one of the Americans, “Even if I
didn’t learn anything, I have learned a lot about Americans that I didn’t know
before, and I say with confidence that I can trust Americans completely. Skepti-
cism I had about them, distrust or lack of complete confidence that were in me
have been wiped away and I am going back to Okinawa ready to tell everybody
that America and Americans are friends” (Yokouchi 1957, OPA0000106026).
32 Chapter Two
While selected public health nurses were impressed by the high standard of
American nursing, other nurses back in Okinawa were confronted by the
multitude of the harsh reality brought on by localities. Upon graduating from
a public health school, they were dispatched to public health centers in main-
land Okinawa and substations in remote islands and areas. By 1970, there
were 6 public health centers and 66 substations, which covered the entire
islands of the Ryukyu (T. Kinjō 2001, 118). It was often the case that public
health nurses had to promise that they would work in remote islands and ar-
eas for a certain period of time upon graduating from a public health nursing
Nursing the U.S. Occupation 33
school, since most of them had received scholarships for nursing education
(OPA0000012416). Introduced to occupied Okinawa by Watterworth, the
public health nurse stationing system3 was designed for public health nurses
to provide health care and nursing to the people in the community while liv-
ing in the same area with the people. In so doing, it enabled them to closely
engage with the people and comprehend the community’s needs. Under this
system, public health nurses were stationed in remote islands and areas in
rotation, staying in one place for approximately 2–3 years. Their daily du-
ties included home visits to find targets of practical intervention, performing
medical acts if necessary, and instructing people about disease prevention,
maternal, and child health (Okinawa-ken Hokenfuchō kai 1994). As young
women who were fresh out of nursing schools and transferred to a strange
place alone, public health nurses often felt at a loss. For one thing, people still
knew little about public health nurses and the role of their activities in the
community at first. It can often be seen in commemorative publications that
people quite often confused public health nurses with insurance saleswomen
and expelled them from their house, because the Japanese words “health” and
“insurance” are both pronounced hoken (Teruya 1962, 46). They also had
troubles in treating patients who firmly believed in a local superstition or who
devoted themselves in a new religion, and rejected Western medicine (Suna-
gawa 1961, 91). In addition, governmental officials in the municipal offices,
in which most of the stationed public health nurses set up their offices, were
not always cooperative with them at first, since these officials concentrated
their efforts on reconstruction of a local community from the war, paying
little attention to the improvement of public health (Yonahara 1983, 15).
The fact that the position of public health nurses was not established in the
administration of the government of the Ryukyu Islands also embarrassed
municipal officials in that they were not sure as to what regulations public
health nurses were using while occupying the already limited space of their
office. In this way, public health nurses were placed between the ideal of
USCAR officials and the reality of a local community.
Public health nurses indeed struggled to win the trust of the people in the
community in order to fulfill their duties as the only medical authority in a re-
spective community. Shinzato Atsuko, a former stationed public health nurse,
described how she felt when deployed in a remote island, saying that “we
had a sense that unless we do it, nobody would support. It became our mis-
sion” (Shinzato interviewed OPA0000012416). Without any support, public
health nurses took various measures to grasp the substantive situations of the
community and find targets of medical intervention accordingly. Shinzato,
for example, did so by observing the kitchens and settings during home-
visiting. Other nurses watched children playing on the streets—if they spotted
34 Chapter Two
someone with scabies or eczema, they visited their homes to check if their
family had any disease. Regular visits to a local cooperative store to gather
information of the residents in the community were among the nurses’ im-
provised tactics (Yonahara 1983, 16). Public health nurses further expanded
their activities by making use of local radio broadcasting and organizations
in the community. For example, Shinzato gathered local residents in the eve-
ning with the help of women’s association and the area chief to inform them
about tuberculosis and the necessity of immunization (Shinzato interview,
OPA0000012416). Indeed, local women’s associations (fujinkai)—many of
which were established right after the war and later incorporated into the um-
brella organization, the Okinawa Fujin Rengōkai (Okinawa Women’s Fed-
eration)—played a significant role in helping public health nurses to promote
public health activities such as the cleanup campaign, improvement of kitch-
ens and bathrooms, and maternal and child health care (Higa 1982, 156–157).
It is worth mentioning here that USCAR saw Okinawa Women’s Federation
(OWF) as a useful apparatus which could provide much assistance to U.S.
operations in Okinawa for the purpose of Cold War U.S. empire-building,
especially because OWF was regarded as “less infiltrated by leftists than any
other mass organization in the Ryukyus” (Koikari 2015, 36). It is necessary
to reconsider USCAR’s emphasis on public health nurses’ role of serving
the community in this regard. Just as Okinawan home economists played an
important role in building the “home front” of the Cold War U.S. empire in
occupied Okinawa (Koikari 2015), public health nurses actively engaged in
rebuilding local communities through health care and nursing, which in effect
helped USCAR to grasp the actual situation of Okinawan society, especially
those in remote islands and areas where the USCAR officials were not physi-
cally present. In fact, USCAR nursing counselors often attended monthly
meetings of public health nurses, which aimed for the chief nurses across the
islands to gather and discuss the problems they had in their respected com-
munities. In one of the meetings, for example, Barbara Shay, public health
nurse consultant, made sure if public health nurses accurately grasped the real
needs of the community, and advised them how to meet their needs while
simultaneously promote new ideas of hygiene (OPA R00085521B). In this
way, public health nurses in effect served as a sort of liaison of the empire
in occupied Okinawa, through which USCAR could monitor common occur-
rences in the local communities.
In reality, however, public health nurses stationed in remote areas often
encountered difficulties in administering their planned activities. The most
serious concern they had was that their activities focused too much on the
treatment of tuberculosis (TB) patients, and could not do other essential pub-
lic health activities such as maternal and child health care, mental diseases,
Nursing the U.S. Occupation 35
health counseling, and general hygiene education. Even though the number
of tuberculosis patients had been reduced during the war, it then began
increasing after the war, mostly due to the dreadful sanitary environment
and malnutrition. There were as many as 20,000 TB cases with 400 known
deaths in 1954. In response to the situation, the USCAR established a special
hospital for TB, the Ryukyu Research Institute of Tuberculosis in 1952. Due
to a chronic shortage of beds, however, patients were allowed to stay in the
hospital only for six months regardless of the state of a disease (Jensen report,
OPA U80800713B). As a consequence, those who were expected to recover
within a shorter period of time were hospitalized or had a surgical operation,
whereas TB patients with serious cases had to stay at home to have home
care under the supervision of public health nurses. The number of TB cases
that public health nurses dealt with began rapidly increasing in 1956, when
the tuberculosis prevention law was enacted. In 1960, 90 percent of public
health nurses’ works were related to tuberculosis, and they were even called
“kekkaku kōkan” (public health nurses of tuberculosis), associating public
health nurses exclusively with the image of tuberculosis. Because of this
association, people did not always favorably welcome public health nurses
visiting their home. In one specific case, a patient’s wife asked a public
health nurse not to wear a uniform so as her neighbors would not assume
that there was a TB patient in her family (Yonahara 1983, 32). Thus, their
distinctive uniform, which was designed to represent their professionalism
as discussed above, ironically hindered their activities. Another TB patient
also felt uncomfortable with public health nurses, as he felt that they intruded
into his private space and disciplined his behavior by giving him detailed
instructions on how to take medicine, how to cleanse tableware, and how to
limit contact with other family members (Yonahara 1983, 59). It was often
the case that a patient was past cure when she or he finally listened to public
health nurses’ advice. Seeing such cases, public health nurses expressed their
frustration at the deficiencies in the TB prevention law and the system of
public health nurses as a whole. Aragaki Setsuko, for example, felt helpless
that she just had to watch her patient die, as he could not be hospitalized due
to the lack of beds. Aragaki argued, “This is a patient who really needs to be
sent to the governmental TB institute. How can the government leave these
patients behind and force responsibility onto public health nurses in the name
of ‘homecare’? This is not at all real health care” (Aragaki 1967, 94). In a
similar way, Uza Atsuko pointed out that public health nurses’ activities were
quite often hindered by social and economic problems such as patients’ pov-
erty, sanitary environment, and religion, which, she thought, the government
should have dealt with. Uza wrote with anger, “I feel irritated by contradic-
tions and defects in administration of Okinawa in the way that the burden
36 Chapter Two
of unsolved social problems will end up falling on the public health nurses”
(Uza 1961, 95). Therefore, in taking care of illness of patients, they realized
the “social illness” of occupied Okinawa, caused by relentless military vio-
lence throughout the war and occupation period.
Indeed, not only public health nurses but also those who engaged in
medicine and social welfare were keenly aware of the fundamental contradic-
tions in health-care system in U.S.-occupied Okinawa. For instance, Gakiya
Ryōichi, a professor of social work, subtly asserted that the status of occupied
Okinawa being placed outside of the Japanese jurisdiction, which is supposed
to guarantee fundamental human rights of the people, resulted in deficien-
cies of medicine and public health in the islands (Gakiya 1976, reprinted in
1994, 253). Neither the Japanese government nor the U.S. government took
coherent and systematic measures to improve social welfare and stabilize the
livelihood of the Okinawan inhabitants until the middle of 1960s, when the
reversion of Okinawa to Japan became an established procedure. Although
the United States and USCAR did occasionally intervene in public health and
welfare services in the Ryukyu Islands via GRI, they often did so to pacify
the resentment of the people against military violence. For example, Robert
T. Jensen, M.D, director of the Health, Education and Welfare Department
of USCAR, explicitly suggests that USCAR provide military planes and
helicopters for transportation on a scheduled basis in support of the civilian
flying medical service, not only because this would be “expedient from the
standpoint of training,” but also because “this type of public service would
do much to improve the currently embattled military public image” (Jensen
report, OPA U80800713B, 29). Therefore, public health and social welfare
services were not obstructions but unequivocally essential parts of the U.S.
military presence. The already precarious lives of the Okinawans, as the 1951
San Francisco Peace Treaty placed the population of the islands outside of the
protection of both Japanese and U.S. constitutions, were further imperiled by
the fact that they were subjected to the logic of militarism. Without having
adequate funding sources and human resources, GRI, medical practitioners,
and inhabitants bore the financial and physical burden and greater responsi-
bility. One medical doctor dispatched from Tokyo was particularly concerned
that Okinawan public health nurses had to take care of too much work, and
did not have time to focus on their original duty, that is, preventive medicine
and nursing (Nakagawa 1967, 118). Likewise, Shinzato Yoshiichi, an Oki-
nawan doctor, regarded it as problematic that public health nurses performed
medical acts due to the shortage of doctors especially when dealing with
tuberculosis patients, which, he thought, would blur the boundary of duties
between clinical treatment and public health services. Shinzato even warns
that “kōkan” could never become “real” public health nurses unless they
could concentrate on their own original duties (Shinzato 1967, 125).
Nursing the U.S. Occupation 37
CONCLUSION
This chapter has traced the experiences of Okinawan public health nurses in
U.S.-occupied Ryukyu Islands. Having professional experiences as nurses or
midwives in the prewar and during the war, the first group of public health
nurses had a strong sense of duty to serve the community in general, and
to heal war-torn Okinawan people in particular. Their sincerity and selfless
38 Chapter Two
NOTES
Race is a much contested term in the social sciences. While popular meanings
of race as physical phenotypes on the basis of skin color very much exist to
this day, racial categories throughout history have always been tied to power
relations and ethnic minority formation (e.g. early Irish settlers in the United
States, the Chinese in South Africa). It should also be noted here that race
as a category is not fixed and that processes of racialization are time-space
contingent (e.g. such as the reclassification of the Chinese as “blacks” in
South Africa after the apartheid). As mentioned earlier, for this paper, I use
race to indicate a person or group of persons “socially defined on the basis
of physical appearance.” By physical appearance here, it is implied that skin
color and other distinct physical features become criteria for categorization,
hence “racialization.”
Racialization refers to a process whereby “racial meaning is attributed
to groups or social practices as a result of which racial hierarchies are con-
structed, maintained or challenged” (Ansell 2013, 127). From a construc-
tivist perspective on race, racialization is a process of ascribing biological
characteristics to define an Other. For Robert Miles, race is “fundamentally
ideological” and that racialization is the process where our ideas of race are
made. Moreover, it is due to social structure and relations of domination
and subordination that some differences (mostly physical) are coded as race
(Murji and Solomos 2015, 265) ). Miles, in his book, Racism (1989), explic-
itly uses the concept of racialization:
. . . to refer to those instances where social relations between people have been
structured by the signification of human biological characteristics in such a way
as to define and construct differentiated social collectivities. The concept there-
fore refers to a process of categorisation, a representational process of defining
an Other (usually, but not exclusively) somatically. (Miles 1989, 75)
cannot deny the fact that it always occupied a peripheral one. Once known as
the Kingdom of the Ryukyus, it was a group of islands that had its own dis-
tinct traditions, cultures, and languages. It enjoyed flourishing trade relations
with its neighbors from China to Southeast Asia in its heyday. In 1609 how-
ever, the kingdom was subjugated by the Shimazu clan of the Satsuma fief
and in 1879, the Meiji government officially made the Ryukyu Kingdom into
a prefecture, now known as Okinawa. While at first the government sought to
preserve Okinawan customs, policies of “forced” cultural assimilation were
eventually put in place to make the Okinawans become “Japanese” (Nihonjin
ni naru) (Tomiyama 1990). Tomiyama argues that being “Okinawan” and be-
ing “Japanese” was not in any way related to belonging to either an Okinawan
or a Japanese (i.e. mainland Japanese) culture. Rather, “Okinawan” can be
said to be a category bestowed upon by modern Japanese society. Hence, to
become “Japanese” entailed a process of modernization that called for the
eradication (fusshoku) of qualities deemed as primitive, and thus changed
into those seen as “modern,” such as being hygienic from non-hygenic (eisei
/fueisei), rational from insane (risei/kyōki), diligent from lazy (kinben/taida),
and modern from primitive (kindai/mikai) (Tomiyama 1990, 3–5).
This process of “Japanization” of the Okinawans did not erase the fact that
they were once (and still) considered to be of an inferior status than that of the
mainland Japanese. This “project” of turning the Okinawans into “Japanese”
reflects the various civilizing projects that occurred through conquest and col-
onization, where the “Other”—the “primitive,” those who “look” different,
etc.—has been racialized and had to undergo a process of “modernization”
and enlightenment. With this, the Okinawans were the racialized “Other.”
The issue of racialization in Okinawa took on a more complex form with
the American occupation of Okinawa. The United States forces, upon Ja-
pan’s defeat, turned Okinawa into a virtual U.S. military colony under direct
military administration, by virtue of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951
(McCormack 2007, 156). It was a known fact that the main reason for the
occupation was Okinawa’s strategic location in the Asia-Pacific region, what
with the burgeoning communist threat in the region at that time. It should also
be noted that during this time, Okinawa was not considered part of Japan; in
fact, Okinawans were “stateless” (Johnson 1997)—they were neither part of
Japan nor the United States. General Douglas MacArthur was said to have
stated that “Okinawans are not Japanese” (Tomiyama 1990, 1; Nomura 2005,
28), and this insistence of the U.S. on a separate Ryukyuan identity (Oki-
nawans were referred to as Ryukyuans, and Okinawa as the Ryukyus, during
the occupation), can be seen as a tactic to separate Okinawa and reinforce
Okinawan identity as non-Japanese.
The Occupying Other 43
The USAID document also states that TCNs are required to go home to their
country of recruitment within 30 days “after the termination or completion
of the contract or forfeit all rights to the repatriation” (USAID, ADS Chapter
495, page 13).
The hiring of TCNs become necessary when there are no qualified persons
in the host country to take on some specific jobs. TCNs are also hired when
the training of persons in the host country (i.e. local nationals or LNs) is
difficult due to time and other constraints. In the U.S. Department of State
Unclassified Document on TCNs, it is also stated that the hiring of TCNs will
be effected if “program efficiency and policy objectives can be achieved only
by using TCNs as a temporary substitute for available, eligible and qualified
U.S. citizens and persons from the host country” (U.S. Department of State
Unclassified Document on TCNs, page 2). This calls to mind the immediate
postwar conditions in Okinawa that necessitated the hiring of TCNs amid the
available human resources in the host society. Several can be mentioned here:
1) the lack of able-bodied personnel to help in base construction as well as
staffing of these military installations; 2) a language barrier between the oc-
cupying forces and the locals; and 3) the “former enemy” status of Japanese
The Occupying Other 45
The construction of U.S. military bases in Okinawa coincided with the Amer-
ican occupation (1945–1972) of the prefecture upon Japan’s defeat. Dubbed
the “keystone of the Pacific” (Inoue 2007, 41; Yoshida 2001, 61), Okinawa’s
position in the Pacific was regarded as geopolitically important—the islands
being strategically located “midway between Tokyo and Manila,” with all
the major cities in Asia “within a concentric circle of 2,000 kilometers”
(Akibayashi and Takazato 2009, 244). Thus, the argument for the existence
of a concentration of U.S. military bases in the main island of this small archi-
pelago that only occupies 0.6 percent of the land area of the whole country of
Japan. It was said that after World War II, the Axis powers—which includes
Japan—hosted and continued to host the most number of bases, with Japan
alone hosting 3,800 military installations (Lutz 2009a).
The creation of military bases in Okinawa led to a “construction boom”
(Sellek 2003, 82) that saw the need for workers, not only during the construc-
tion phase, but also as employees of these military installations. Hence, aside
from Americans, TCNs were also hired to work on these bases. Majority of
the TCNs were Filipinos2 who occupied mostly white-collar positions with
some even serving in the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyus
or USCAR (Tobaru 1998, 31). Many of these Filipinos landed in contractual
jobs as laborers, cooks, and clerks, as well as in white-collar occupations as
engineers, medical doctors, musicians, among others (Yu-Jose 2002, 117). It
was said that Japanese were also hired and worked as TCNs3 (Yu-Jose 2002,
110). While majority of the Filipino TCNs were male, Filipino women also
worked in Okinawa mostly as domestic helpers and laundrywomen (Ohno
1991, 243; Suzuki and Tamaki 1996, 70).4
Hiring foreign workers is usually done to address the imbalance in the sup-
ply of and demand for labor, especially when there is a surplus of jobs avail-
able. It is also a well-known fact that hiring workers to do menial work or
less-skilled labor attracts people who are willing to work on lower wages, and
these people usually come from lower-income countries or those countries
located in the periphery of the current world system. This is also the case with
regards to TCNs recruited to work in base construction and in service sectors
on base. TCNs are (and were) hired as a cheap labor force that were willing
to work on lower wages (Barker 2009, 232). They also work alongside local
nationals or LNs, who themselves are paid lower wages, and in the case of
46 Chapter Three
Okinawa during the occupation were even paid at much lower levels. Eichler
(2014), in her work on citizenship and the recruitment of third-country na-
tionals to work on U.S. military installations, said that hiring workers outside
the U.S. citizenry, as well as the reliance on the “global inequalities of citi-
zenship,” “simultaneously intersect” with gendered, racialized, and classed
inequalities (2014, 600). This reflects the case in the immediate postwar
years in Okinawa, where a pay-scale hierarchy putting U.S. citizens on top
and Okinawans at the bottom speaks of various inequalities that are present
within and among peoples in this particular space of the U.S. military base.
In the succeeding sections, however, I would also like to point out that
while most TCNs during this time were semi-skilled workers, there were also
those who worked as skilled and highly skilled workers and professionals, as
I earlier mentioned. In this case, while they may be regarded as professionals
and more skilled than their compatriots, they still occupy a much lower posi-
tion than their counterparts who hold U.S. citizenship. Thus, it can be argued
that there is stratification within the category of TCNs as it is among the U.S.
military, other U.S. citizens who work on base, and local nationals or LNs.
Okinawa during that time, they would call out to people on the streets of Ma-
nila and whoever was interested and fit for the job was hired. In other words,
it seems that at the outset there was no formal recruitment policy for Filipino
labor on base.6 However, the recruitment and outsourcing of labor from other
countries is a complex web that entails various actors and processes; and in
this case, state-level relations (i.e. between the U.S. and the Philippines, with
the participation of the Japanese government) definitely come into play.
Filipinos made up a big percentage of TCNs hired by the United States
Civil Administration of the Ryukyus or USCAR (Tobaru 1998, 31). There
are four categories of base workers (Nagumo 1996, 33):
1. Workers who receive their salaries from the U.S. defense budget
2. Workers who receive their salaries from U.S. government agencies’ dis-
bursements based on an independent profit system
3. House maids
4. Workers of agencies or companies carrying out their business inside the
bases, such as construction companies
International Act Series 3646), which states that “Filipino workers on Oki-
nawa will receive wages based on the dollar cost rates being paid for similar
work in the Philippines, plus a 25% overseas differential.”7 The Filipinos
occupied a high position in the pay scale, next only to Americans, with the
mainland Japanese ranking third, and the Okinawans fourth and at the bottom
of the pay scale (Amemiya 1996; Yoshida 2001, 30; Sellek 2003, 82; Yoshida
2007, 82). Table 3.1 above illustrates the lowest and the highest hourly wages
in U.S. dollars received by these four groups.
According to Yoshida, the workers (gunsaku rōdōsha or military opera-
tions workers) were paid in B-yen currency with Okinawans receiving the
lowest hourly wage (Yoshida 2007, 82). He enumerated the hourly wages of
the workers in B-yen, which I arranged into a table (Table 3.2) below.
Looking at Table 3.1 above, the gaps in the wage levels of these four
groups are startlingly apparent with American workers being paid almost 1.8
times more than Filipinos (an almost 42 percent gap between Filipino work-
ers who received the highest wage at 3.77 U.S. dollars per hour, to those of
U.S. citizens who received 6.52 dollars per hour). Comparing the Americans’
pay to the Japanese, it can be seen that the former are paid around 6.33 times
more than the latter (an increase to around 84 percent wage gap between
U.S. citizens and Japanese), and American workers receive a wage of 18.1
times more than the local Okinawans (a gap of around 94 percent between
Americans and Okinawans). Filipinos, despite occupying a high position in
the pay scale hierarchy, were said to be paid “local wage rates” even during
the early years of the occupation, as per a document from the PHILRYCOM
(Philippines-Ryukyus Command) to the General Headquarters of the Far East
Command on 8 January 1947:
Policy of this command has been to employ Filipino Nationals under local wage
rates. Only US continental citizens are employed at US rates of pay. Those US
citizens of Filipino extraction who were born in US (sic), and any Filipinos who
were US Civil Service employees within continental US prior to being assigned
this command are only Filipinos receiving US rates of pay. This Hq (sic) does
not concur in employment of Filipinos at US rates unless they meet require-
ments indicated above.8
As gleaned from the above document, only Filipinos who have acquired U.S.
citizenship or were U.S.-born and those who were employed in the U.S. civil
service were eligible to be paid at U.S. rates. In short, only those who have
U.S. citizenship are able to access U.S. wage rates and those who are not citi-
zens are excluded from this, despite working for the U.S. occupation forces
and being under U.S. jurisdiction during this period. This case illustrates a
“global inequality of citizenship” (Eichler 2014) that has been present even
during the time when the U.S. was just starting to establish its military might
in the Asia-Pacific region through the military bases it began constructing
with contracted labor from outside of its citizenry, mostly by former colo-
nials (i.e. Filipinos) and the locals hosting these military installations (i.e.
Okinawans). Needless to say, the defeated enemy—the Japanese—were also
hired as TCNs albeit receiving much lower pay than the Filipinos.
Meanwhile, by the late 1940s to the early 1950s, there were an estimated
6,000 Filipinos in Okinawa, 90 percent of which were male, with around half
of them single (Ohno 1991, 243; Tobaru 1998, 31). Many Filipinos cohabited
or married Okinawan women. It was due to their relatively higher salaries
among base workers that made them more attractive as marriage partners
(Suzuki and Tamaki 1996, 88). When the work contracts of these Filipinos
expired, most of them went back to the Philippines, bringing their wives and
children with them.
There were cases wherein only the Filipino husband went back to his coun-
try, leaving his Okinawan wife and child (or children) behind (Ohno 1991,
243). Meanwhile, cases wherein the Filipino husband never returned to the
Philippines are many. Some of them still work on base (despite their advanced
age) and not a few of them have had their nationalities changed from Philip-
pine to American (Suzuki and Tamaki 1996, 70–71). Several of them have
decided to be naturalized as Japanese when they decided to make Okinawa
their “home.” In the following section, I present two cases of these former
TCNs and narrations of their lives in Okinawa under American occupation.
50 Chapter Three
While it cannot be denied that the motivating factor for third country nation-
als to work on base is largely economic, and that for many of them, working
on U.S. military installations will give them more financial stability than
remaining in their home countries, macro-level factors such as global eco-
nomic inequities during this time should also be taken into consideration.
Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, TCNs are only recruited if there is a need
for a temporary substitute for available and qualified persons, who are either
U.S. citizens or those from the host country.
In the case of Okinawa, the language barrier as well as the lack of quali-
fied people could have been impediments in hiring LNs, thus the need to take
in TCNs from countries such as the Philippines. This becomes a significant
aspect from the perspective of U.S.-Japan relations as well as in problematiz-
ing the occupation of Okinawa, because of the presence of other actors (i.e.
TCNs) in the whole scheme of things.
what he would earn after graduating from university was not comparable to
what he was earning in Okinawa as a musician. This apparently is caused by
inequalities in the world system, then and now, wherein the pursuit of eco-
nomic mobility and (economic) capital accumulation becomes more feasible
(in a short amount of time) through migration. He then told me that he never
regretted his decision.
Enrico said that presently, only four of the original musicians who went to
Okinawa during the American occupation remain in the prefecture. While he
decided to become a naturalized Japanese as he planned on staying longer in
Okinawa, and that naturalization was a more practical option, the other three
remained Filipino nationals (but have permanent residency). Enrico’s deci-
sion to naturalize is premised on two reasons: 1) the acquisition of a legal
status to be able to stay in Okinawa and be granted more (legal) security, as
compared to holders of permanent residency visas; and 2) the assurance of
mobility in terms of crossing borders, as holders of a passport belonging to a
country in the Global North enjoy relative ease of movement than those of the
Global South. Of the other three “veteran musicians,” one has a Taiwanese
wife, another married an Okinawan, and the other is married to a Filipino.
Enrico has two grandsons by his son, who is an engineer. He is already well-
adjusted to life in Okinawa even if he does not consider himself fluent in the
Japanese language. He is also well-connected to his roots as he goes home
every year during school breaks in June and December.
Based on the two case studies, it can be surmised that the issue of class also
plays a role in the recruitment and employment of TCNs for work on base.
Much like entering the military, working as a TCN was a way for these
people to augment their family’s income, and for some, a way to get out of
poverty. In Carlos’s case, he once worked as a soldier before deciding to
move to Okinawa to work on base, which was seen as more lucrative than
remaining in the Philippines. With only an elementary education, he had to be
relegated to lesser-skilled jobs, but he chose to see it as an opportunity also
to learn more skills. Enrico’s case illustrates those who occupy the lower-
middle class to middle class who were able to receive a college education
and the necessary cultural capital to be able to work in jobs that call for more
skills, such as that of a musician. As I earlier mentioned, for this paper, I also
include professional workers into the category of TCN, thus medical doctors,
lawyers, engineers, etc. who worked for the U.S. military during this time
are also categorized as TCNs. Hence, a hierarchy depending on the type of
54 Chapter Three
In the 20 years that the U.S. occupied the prefecture, “Japan retained only
‘residual sovereignty’ over Okinawa while the U.S. military actually ran the
place” (Johnson 1997). During the war, Okinawans were left to think about
their place in Japanese society and whether they were really considered Japa-
nese. I have previously mentioned that General MacArthur emphasized that
Okinawans were not Japanese and insisted on a separate Ryukyuan identity.
It was also argued that Okinawan identity as non-Japanese was reinforced as
a “rationale for transferring the stewardship of the former prefecture to the
United States” (Allen 2002, 7). This definitely was a racist ploy that labeled
Okinawans as the “Other”—and thus, inferior—to the erstwhile U.S. enemy,
the Japanese. The underlying racism during this period was also manifested
in base work, where Okinawans as LNs were situated on the lowest rank in
the hierarchy (below the Japanese) of not only wage levels, but type of work.
I also mentioned earlier that the number of TCNs was significantly reduced
in the late 1950s, with their numbers only amounting to 4.2 percent of the
total civilian labor force (Yu-Jose 2002, 112). The reduction did not sit well
with the Filipinos who decried the termination of their contracts as an issue of
“persecution and discrimination” (Letters to the Editor, Morning Star, 1957).
Among the several documents I gathered from the Okinawa Prefectural Ar-
chives, a six-page letter written by Filipino returnees to the Department of
Foreign Affairs in Manila in 1957 caught my attention. The letter was written
by two former TCNs who identified themselves as members of the “Filipino
Returnees from Okinawa Association.” In it they outlined nine individual
cases of discrimination and injustice toward Filipino TCNs despite “more
than ten long years of loyal and faithful service to the United States Armed
Forces in the Ryukyu Islands.”13 Most of the cases were about Filipino TCNs
The Occupying Other 55
being terminated from their jobs (even before the end of contract), “bumped-
off and separated from his job to accommodate an American civilian em-
ployee,” and “forcibly” deported and repatriated. The letter also added that
the “campaign of persecutions and discriminations is aimed only to (sic) the
Filipinos and does not affect other nationals such as the Americans, Japanese
or Chinese.”14 These cases undeniably illustrate underlying racisms within the
context of base work. Moreover, as majority of the workforce are men, this
ranking according to nationality—which in many cases is also racialized—
can also be considered to be related to inequalities within the male workforce,
thus also indicating that recruitment of base labor was (and continues to
be) highly gendered as it was racial, and that a “hierarchy of masculinities”
(Eichler 2014, 607) among the workers and the TCNs existed.
It should also be noted here that Okinawa’s relationship to the U.S. and
Japan has become “feminized,” where occupied Okinawa is seen to be
female (Molasky 1999), with the sexual violence and rape cases symbolic
of Okinawa’s victimhood to both the Japanese (for allowing almost 75
percent of the U.S. bases on Okinawan soil) and American hegemony (the
occupation and the presence military bases) to this day (Angst 2009, 142).
Likewise, Okinawans can also be seen as “feminized,” with most of them
relegated to low-skilled and unskilled work (i.e. skilled equals masculine,
unskilled equals feminine)
The roles played by the U.S. government and U.S. corporations in the
recruitment of TCNs to these military bases are largely overlooked as much
emphasis is given to people who are seen to migrate for greener pastures.
These individuals are seen as solely pursuing their own economic gains—
while this is most of the time true, the invisible hand of the United States and
its “aggressive” role played through “colonialism, imperialist wars and occu-
pations, capital investment and material extraction in Third World countries
and through active recruitment of racialized and gendered immigrant labor”
(Espiritu 2008, 207) escapes attention.
CONCLUSION
Okinawa has been considered as a strategic site for the United States’ military
installations in the fight against communism during the Cold War years. Its
geographic location in the Asia-Pacific region is also seen as strategic in the
current order of things with the Chinese and North Korean threats looming in
the region. It will not be prophetic to say that the current U.S. military pres-
ence in Okinawa will likely continue and the recruitment of military person-
nel and TCNs is generally expected.
56 Chapter Three
The presence of U.S. military bases is usually equated with the U.S.
military stationed in the host society, but not much attention is given to the
“Others” who work on these military installations. These TCNs are usually
recruited to address the needs of the U.S. military especially when the neces-
sary skills and expertise are not readily available. It cannot be denied however
that many of these TCNs come from developing countries and see base work
as a means to alleviate their economic conditions. During the American oc-
cupation of Okinawa, majority of these TCNs were from the Philippines.
As a provider of labor and services to the U.S. military, it can be argued
that the TCNs are in a way “complicit” to the aims (and means) of the oc-
cupiers, thus becoming “occupiers” themselves. As foreign nationals hired
for base construction and eventual employment on base (both through semi-
skilled and professional work) to aid the U.S. postwar administration in Oki-
nawa, these TCNs played a significant role in carrying out the goals of the
occupation government. As with most of the U.S. military installations in the
world at present, TCNs have become indispensable labor (albeit cheap) that
enabled basing in many territories, including present-day Okinawa. The part
played by the TCNs becomes significant in Okinawa’s history not only for
their role in the military bases, but also for the socio-cultural influence they
had on Okinawa, such as in transmitting U.S. culture that had an influence on
Okinawa’s postwar culture and society (i.e. jazz music, brought by Filipino
musicians such as Enrico whose case I mentioned in this paper).15 The oc-
cupation of Okinawa should not only be seen as a relationship between the
occupied (i.e. Japan/Okinawa) and occupier (i.e. the United States), as there
were also peripheral actors that played the role of the latter.
NOTES
1. Parts of this paper are based on the Ph.D. dissertation I submitted to Hitotsu-
bashi University in March 2011. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented
at the Asian Studies Association Conference held at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel
and Towers on March 26–29, 2015. All errors in the manuscript—both content and
otherwise—are my sole responsibility. I would like to acknowledge funding from
the Grants-in-Aid (KAKENHI) I received when I was a JSPS (Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science) Postdoctoral Fellow from 2011–2013.
2. Aside from Filipinos, TCNs from India also played a significant role during
this time.
3. It should be noted here that Okinawa was considered not part of the Japanese
mainland during the occupation period. It has since reverted to Japan in 1972.
4. I personally met a Filipino woman dentist who moved to Okinawa during the
occupation period with her Filipino husband who was also a dentist. She has since re-
The Occupying Other 57
sided in Okinawa and lives with her son and daughter-in-law. She still holds Filipino
nationality. (Conversation with Dr. Santos (pseudonym), Ginowan City, 9 December
2012).
5. Information from an interview with Sonny Uechi (pseudonym) on 15 March
2010 in Chatan Town. Sonny (during the time of interview) was working on base. His
father was once a TCN in Okinawa and his mother is Okinawan.
6. Information from an interview with Marco Yara (pseudonym) on 10 March
2010 in Naha. Marco (during the time of interview) was working on base. As with
Sonny, Marco’s father was once a TCN in Okinawa. His mother is also Okinawan.
7. Airgram from the U.S. Department of State to Manila, 27 February 1967.
8. General Headquarters, Far East Command, Adjutant General’s Office Radio
and Cable Center, Message from CG PHILRYCOM (Philippines-Ryukyus Com-
mand), 8 January 1947.
9. Pseudonym. Interviewed on 7 December 2012, informant’s home.
10. Telegram from U.S. Embassy Tokyo to U.S. Embassy Manila on the Filipino
Employees on Okinawa, June 1972.
11. Pseudonym. Interviewed on 21 March 2013, Camp Foster.
12. I thank my friend and colleague Ryan Indon for this comment.
13. Letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila, 22 July 1957, page 1.
Department of Foreign Affairs Records.
14. Ibid, page 2.
15. It has been said that the American occupation of Okinawa paved the way for
the development of jazz in the prefecture. Most of the foreign jazz musicians during
this period are Filipinos. See Sunamori (2000) and Roberson (2011) for more infor-
mation on jazz music in postwar Okinawa.
Chapter Four
On May 15, 1972, residents of Okinawa woke to a new day and found that
they were “Japanese” once again.1 For the twenty-seven years from the end
of World War II until the “reversion” of Okinawa to Japanese administrative
control, Okinawans had resided in an ambiguous colonial space, situated as
they were under U.S. military/administrative control and limited in their basic
human and civil rights. Yet despite the victory of the decades-long reversion
movement, many Okinawans also voiced consternation and even outright
anger at the terms of the agreement, with some arguing that the reversion
was nothing more than a new “annexation” of Okinawa (heigō) which had al-
lowed for the continued stationing of U.S. military bases in Okinawa. As poet
and activist Takara Ben noted, the day of reversion was a day of heavy rains,
and “it was said that both the Okinawan people and the heavens were crying”
on that day (Takara 2005, 71). In denouncing the “disposition” (shobun) of
Okinawa at a prefectural residents’ rally not far from the Japanese govern-
ment sponsored reversion commemoration ceremony, Takara and others
marched down Kokusai-dōri, choking back tears of both rage and regret. On
the sides of the main thoroughfare, all the signs and placards celebrating re-
version were torn and broken into pieces (Takara 2005, 72). Indeed, for many
Okinawans, reversion represented a new betrayal of their postwar quest for
rights and freedom from military control.2
In order to understand how Okinawan intellectuals dealt with their resent-
ment over reversion, this chapter focuses on an engagement with reversion-
era debates over local autonomy in Okinawa. In many respects, existing
studies of the reversion movement tend to focus on a top-down view of the
Okinawan reversion process as a fait accompli which was bound to occur
as the inexorable result of “ending the postwar period” of U.S.-Japan dip-
lomatic relations, or as a bottom-up reversion movement that actualized a
59
60 Chapter Four
homogenous desire on the part of local residents, and which was rapturously
celebrated without dissent upon completion. In contrast to these perspectives,
this study seeks to complicate the nature of the Okinawan reaction to rever-
sion, to show that the critique of the Japanese state in regional autonomy de-
bates, and the imagination of alternative arrangements of the center-periphery
relationship, occurred at the very moment in which the reversion process was
being realized, and included a number of lively intellectual debates. Within
this context, the underlying argument of this chapter is that while the postwar
movement for regional autonomy in Japan has generally been from greater
centralization to more local autonomy, in contrast, the situation for Okinawa
has largely moved in the opposite direction toward greater central control.
In focusing on the question of regional autonomy in Okinawa, this chapter
will not be focusing on movements for independence which sought to pro-
mote the development of an independent Okinawan nation-state. Nor will this
chapter focus on those activists and intellectuals such as the hanfukkiron-sha
(or proponents of opposition to reversion), who sought to contest reversion
by not only promoting a logic of opposition to the Japanese state, but also cri-
tiqued the very nature of the modern nation-state system itself.3 Instead, this
chapter is focused on the specific nature of those intellectuals and activists
which argued for Okinawan autonomy from within the logic of the Japanese
state itself, as a means of carving out a more limited sense of sovereignty and
rights.
In describing this process, this chapter will begin by briefly discussing
the development of local autonomy in postwar Japan, and detail Okinawa’s
position in the reversion process and the manner in which, in contrast with
growing mainland movements for decentralization, the reversion process
ultimately foreclosed alternative possibilities for local-state relationships
that could have afforded greater opportunities for Okinawan autonomy.
Within this context, initiatives for local autonomy were voiced by a number
of prominent Okinawan intellectuals and their supporters, and an analysis of
their proposals will take up the remainder of this chapter, highlighting their
critique of the reversion agreement, their positions related to Okinawa’s
historical particularity, and their push to address local sovereignty issues,
especially in terms of diplomacy and defense.
remained under U.S. rule. Beginning with the U.S. occupation in 1945,
American planners on the Japanese mainland had long sought to institute
measures to promote local autonomy at the prefectural, city, and village level,
as a means by which to break up the worst excesses of the Japanese wartime
state and to instill a sentiment of grassroots democracy. In attempting to ac-
complish this task, occupation planners had to overcome decades of histori-
cal development in which the very idea of local self-government had been
associated with control by the central government. The centralization of the
prewar Japanese state, with its appointed prefectural governors and placing
of staff of the Ministry of the Interior at local executive offices, was seen by
occupation authorities as part of the structural foundation that had limited the
growth of democratic sentiment (Horie 1996, 49). Though there were some
wartime initiatives to spur local autonomy in the guise of local town-block as-
sociations and other forms of neighborhood groups, much of this growth was
geared toward the sublimation of dissent and the enforcement of community
compliance with wartime goals of military recruitment and taxation (Horie
1996, 55). Local autonomy was not predicated on allowing for democratic
growth, but in forging localities into the national war effort, and thus served
as a tool or even a smokescreen for central authoritarian control.
Seeking to break these precedents, authorities of the Supreme Commander
of the Allied Powers General Headquarters (SCAP GHQ) were quick to
initiate a number of reforms at the onset of the occupation period. Chief
among them included measures such as the abolition of the Ministry of the
Interior, initiating the direct election of prefectural governors starting from
1946, promoting direct democracy through referendum and recall options,
and promoting other proposals for local autonomy at the prefectural level.
Though occupation authorities sought to advance local autonomy as a stated
goal of the occupation, in truth, strong central control over prefectural affairs
persisted, especially as seen through the continuance of delegated functions
from the central government (kikan inin jimu) which made up “more than
50% of the operations of the prefecture” (Hoshino 1996, 360), with some
academics arguing that this rate may reach as high as “70 to 80 percent of
metropolitan and prefectural districts’ daily work” (Yoshida 1990, 132). Ad-
ditionally, central control over finances continued to limit local autonomy,
buttressing criticisms of the “30-percent local autonomy principle in Japan,”
which argues that of the total budgetary needs for any locality, that only 30
per cent is raised by the localities themselves, while the rest of their budget
is received in the form of designated transfers from the central government
(Aldrich 1999, 63). These two aspects, consisting of delegated functions and
a lack of local fiscal autonomy, combined with other norms of administration
such as the siting of central government officials in localities either through
62 Chapter Four
The reversion to Japan that the Okinawan people have come to long for is not
simply for the movement of administrative authority from the hands of the U.S.
military to Japan. It is for the establishment of a new system for Okinawa which
will use the occasion of reversion in order to escape from the military bases and
secure peace. It’s because during the war and after, this island has continuously
been enveloped in this militaristic environment, and in regards to this, cannot
get used to it no matter what. Therefore, reversion to Japan is not what was
promised to Okinawa as the removal of military bases (Kuba 1971, 138–139).
Thus Kuba suggests that in contrast to the mainland view that stressed rever-
sion as a recovery of prewar administrative rights and territory, that Okinawan
people instead sought a removal of the military bases and the establishment of
peace. Even further, reversion will subsume Okinawan issues under the frame-
work of national politics, and “the will of the Okinawan people will sadly be
buried in the middle of the [mainland] residents’ general will,” a process that
will silence Okinawan demands and result in the “Japanification of Okinawa”
(Kuba 1971, 139). With the memory of the Battle of Okinawa still strong in
his mind, Kuba argues that the post-reversion arrangement will place Okinawa
at the frontlines of conflict with China, and even worse, could lead to another
wartime tragedy in Okinawa, because of the presence of the military bases.
Kuba follows this cautionary statement with an economic discussion which
critiques the post-reversion development plans that have been offered thus far
by the central government and offers suggestions and concerns of his own.
To begin with, he points out the manner in which the central government has
overemphasized the promotion of industrialization in Okinawa as a spur to
development. According to Kuba, this emphasis on industry will bring about
maldistribution, with the accumulation of negative impacts on the air, earth,
and water of Okinawa and in this emphasis on environmental impacts can be
seen echoes of mainland environmental movements. Instead of industrializa-
tion-led development, he argues instead that:
aftermath of World War II. In assessing the reversion movement, Higa, like
Kuba, suggests that the reversion movement should not be seen as an uncriti-
cal movement for reversion to the Japanese “motherland,” but instead, that
the reversion movement had other goals related to a recovering of Okinawan
sovereignty. As he states:
The goal of the reversion movement has come to be expressed in various terms
such as the removal of the one-sided oppression of Okinawa as a sacrifice, the
need to break from being under alien rule, and the anti-war/peace movement as
motivated against the effective rule by and maintenance of U.S. military bases,
among others. But above all, it is about recapturing the rights of administration
granted to the U.S. which has ignored the Okinawan residents’ will, and it is
a realization of the democratic principles of people’s sovereignty (Higa 1971,
134).
Since the reversion movement had failed to accomplish many of its goals, es-
pecially regarding the removal of the U.S. military bases, Higa considers that
further action must be taken in order to realize Okinawan objectives. From
this point, he argues for regional autonomy as an extension of the reversion
movement, stating that “It can be said that the Okinawan residents’ fight to
acquire rights of autonomy also seeks to realize the idea of people’s sover-
eignty. What is meant by this is that the fight for autonomy has a closely con-
nected relationship with the reversion movement” (Higa 1971, 134). Thus,
for Higa, the goals of the Okinawan reversion movement, as expressed by the
Okinawan people themselves, have been ignored, and these underlying goals
can now be expressed within the context of the push for regional autonomy.
Two aspects underlie his critique of wholehearted assimilation of Okinawa
solely as another mainland-style Japanese prefecture. The first aspect in-
volves a critique of local autonomy as it has been actualized in the mainland.
For while there has indeed been a growth of practices that by their appear-
ance resemble having greater local autonomy, Higa considers that central
government direction and supervision, coupled with the emphasis on agency-
delegated functions has meant that in terms of local prefectural autonomy,
that “there is no big change from the prewar period” (Higa 1971, 135). At
this point Higa raises a second aspect that is a position more specific to Oki-
nawan history, which, like Kuba, is based on a continued awareness of prior
discrimination at the hands of the Japanese. As he states:
Respect for the will of the people in the democratic principle was denied under
prewar Japanese rule, and they were forced to experience discrimination from
Japan in various forms, so that Okinawan residents are very conscious of this
principle. The abolition of oppressive discrimination is the most important thing
70 Chapter Four
in the political culture of Okinawa, and the valuation of this greatly influences
Okinawan residents’ political actions (Higa 1971, 135).
The particularity of Higa’s position can be seen in the use of language that
refers to the “sacrifice” of Okinawa and the “obligation of the nation to cor-
rect the gap with the mainland” (Higa 1971, 137). One of the ways that Japan
can do this is to develop Okinawa as an autonomous region that will ensure
that the hard fought autonomy that the Okinawans have claimed through the
postwar period will not be lost.
In fact, a great deal of Higa’s argument is that contemporary Okinawan
autonomy will be greatly reduced under the terms of the reversion agreement.
As he relates, “The results of the autonomy struggle that the Okinawan resi-
dents have waged for a long time are that the Ryukyu government, in terms
of legislative, administrative, judiciary, and other fields, has come to exer-
cise a substantial and large amount of power” (Higa 1971, 136). Wholesale
standardization will mean that mainland laws that Okinawans had no input in
will be applied to Okinawa regardless of local particularities. The strength of
the publicly elected Ryukyu government executive to grant permissions and
approvals will be appropriated by the central government. And even further,
the distance of the judiciary from Okinawa will mean that geographic and
administrative blocks will hamper Okinawan initiatives under the law. Part
of Higa’s critique is that the current government in the Ryukyus has taken an
overly conciliatory line with the mainland government, and, echoing Taira
Kōji’s critiques, suggests that this submissiveness to prefectural standardiza-
tion will only end up reinforcing Okinawa’s marginal status.
In contrast, Higa argues for a revitalized sense of autonomy as defined
in the formation of a special autonomous “Okinawa-shū” or an Okinawan
“state” (a “state” in the same sense that California is a state of the U.S., thus
hinting at support for a federal model of government). The starting point for
this autonomous body would be the recognition that “the authority of ruling
oneself is originally in the possession of the residents” (Higa 1971, 138)
and not the nation, and would involve the stance that administrative rights
should not be “reverted” to mainland control but instead should be reverted
to the government of the Okinawan people. Even further, these rights should
be strengthened and expanded. Within this special autonomous body, this
Okinawa-shū would “maintain all rights outside of military and diplomatic
rights, etc., and specific related authority” (Higa 1971, 138). Even though
such military and diplomatic rights will be held by the central government,
he states that in both of these areas “it is needless to say that the will of the
Okinawan residents needs to be adequately reflected” (Higa 1971, 138) de-
spite being ignored up until now. Additionally, in terms of the chief execu-
tive, or “special autonomous body administrative chair,” of this Okinawa-
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy 71
shū, this chair would be elected by a general vote, and would not be directly
supervised by the central government. All rights of approval and permission
would be exercised by this chair, and this chair would not be beholden to
administer and execute delegated functions from the central government, in
contrast to the setting up of a centrally directed Okinawan development office
as stipulated in the reversion agreement. In terms of the legislature, it should
be entrusted with the task of determining the applicability of mainland laws,
and in terms of the judiciary, it should allow for the receiving of trials by Oki-
nawan residents in their locality. Higa also suggests that a number of special
measures need to be developed as part of the formation of this Okinawa-shū.
The first aspect involves the importance of acknowledging that the “autono-
mous body, more than the nation or central government, should be borne as
the responsibility of local residents” (Higa 1971, 140). Secondly, in the area
of finance, special assistance and treasury investments and loans should be
developed, and special tax allocations in the form of special finance measures
should be enacted.
Higa closes his argument by suggesting three general reasons to support
the establishment of this special autonomous body. The first relates to the
basic need to support a universal value of grassroots democracy. The second
relates to recognizing the unique character of Okinawa as not only geographi-
cally distant from the mainland, but also as having a distinct historical and
cultural background, with an “oppositional consciousness to “Yamato” (Higa
1971, 141). With its unique postwar history, Higa argues that Okinawa op-
erated in a “position as a semi-independent nation” (han dokuritsu kokuteki
chii) possessing a hard-won level of authority and autonomy. The third and fi-
nal argument is related to Higa’s appeal for the establishment of an Okinawan
special autonomous body as a contribution to the establishment of regional
autonomy as a principle that can expand notions of mainland autonomy.
A year after reversion, Chūō University Professor of Economics Noguchi
Yūichirō also suggested that Okinawa should pursue the goal of autonomy
in a June 1973 article. Considering that the implementation of reversion had
caused a number of “blocked conditions” to develop, ranging from rever-
sion inflation, rising unemployment due to the cornering of the local goods
market by mainland tourism capital, and what he calls the “zaibatsu-fication”
of mainland administration efforts (in this case, referring to the dominat-
ing impact of mainland corporate capital in Okinawa), he felt that a new
“starting point of reform” was needed to shake Okinawa out of its sleep.
Noguchi outlines two aspects critical to this position, namely that first “this
political purpose must have a wholeness of the kind that the ‘reversion to
the homeland’ goal had,” and secondly, “that this political condition will be
able to reverse the established truth of reversion to the mainland” (Noguchi
72 Chapter Four
1973, 234–235). Suggesting that in the end it did not matter so much if an
autonomous state would result in an independent state or a federal one, the
main point for him was “the rapid strengthening of the regional solidarity
of the Okinawan residents,” with the added caveat that any such proposal
“dismantles the centralization of power that had laid over Okinawa from the
Meiji period forward, and has the aim of putting politics back in the hands of
the residents” (Noguchi 1973, 236). Thus, for Noguchi, not only is the push
for local autonomy focused on the return of democratic control to Okinawans,
but inherent in his historical references is a critique of the forced integration
of Okinawa by Japan.
That said, Noguchi does suggest a number of reasons for why he favors
an “Okinawan autonomous state” (Okinawa jichi-shū) over other potential
forms of autonomy. He begins by stating that he is not deeply attached to his
particular envisioning of an autonomous state, suggesting that any political
shape that allows for rights of autonomy would suffice, whether it would be
an independent state, a federation, an autonomous state, or a special autono-
mous region (Noguchi 1973, 237). He even goes so far as to say that “If we
seek Okinawan residents rights to autonomy in its most complete form, the
natural logic is that Okinawan would become an independent state (dokuritsu
kokka)” (Noguchi 1973, 237). However, in terms of an independent state, he
notes that though a number of ideas of independence have been suggested by
other intellectuals, that “from the view of what is even now a small ethnic
consciousness among the Okinawan prefectural residents, this will probably
not be accepted” (Noguchi 1973, 237). This low assessment of Okinawan
ethnic solidarity can also be seen in Noguchi’s terminology that generally
eschews such terms as “Okinawan people” in favor of the phrase “Okinawan
residents.” In addition to this critique, Noguchi also suggests that projects
such as the European Economic Community show that the global tide is mov-
ing toward greater integration, not separation. In terms of the second option
of forming a federated state (renpō kokka) where the central state retains only
the rights to diplomacy and defense, and the localities maintain judicial, leg-
islative, and administrative powers, Noguchi feels that such a proposal will
require constitutional revision, a potential that he considers highly unlikely.
Even further, since for “modern day Okinawa, the peace constitution has
become the main grounds for resisting rule by the mainland” (Noguchi 1973,
237), he seems to argue that opening issues of constitutional revision for the
purposes of federalization could simultaneously endanger the peace constitu-
tion. In addition, he notes the impracticality of establishing either an inde-
pendent state or a federation so soon after the implementation of reversion,
suggesting that an autonomous state is more feasible (Noguchi 1973, 238).
Finally, in terms of a “special autonomous region” (tokubetsu jichi-ku) as pro-
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy 73
posed by Yokohama City Mayor Asukata Ichio (of the Japan Socialist Party),
in contrast to Noguchi’s conception of an “autonomous state,” Asukata’s pro-
posal is situated philosophically in the framework of national local autonomy,
and as such “it does not have the initiative of seeking decentralization of the
central government from the point of view that rights to autonomy are rights
particular to a region’s residents” (Noguchi 1973, 237). Thus, Noguchi’s
proposed autonomous state occupies a different positionality in relation to
decentralization debates, that achieves not only administrative decentraliza-
tion, but political decentralization as well, and can reach these goals without
requiring constitutional revision and the dangers that this would entail.
In ways similar to Higa, Noguchi gives some detail to his idea of what
an Okinawan autonomous state would look like. The first aspect of what he
seeks is the transfer of administrative duties from the central government
to the state government, as headed by a state governor. Administrative du-
ties previously held by the prefecture and nation, including the Okinawa
development office and national branch offices, would in turn be moved to
the shi-chō-son (city-town-village) level, and he argues that this “heightened
shi-chō-son knowledge of autonomy itself is the political foundation of an
autonomous state” (Noguchi 1973, 238). Under his proposal, educational
systems and police forces would also be reformed to have greater autonomy
from the central government, in contrast to their current subordinated status.
In contrast to the unicameral prefectural assembly, a bicameral system with
direct election of representatives would be adopted, with substantially stron-
ger powers over rules and regulations. The judiciary would be separated from
the nation, with city courts as the main avenues for civil affairs and criminal
cases, and with the strengthening of the citizen examination system of high
court judges. A phased-in adoption of public elections of judges with a juror
system would also be sought. Finally, in terms of local finances, the ratio of
income, corporate, and liquor taxes that are distributed to localities could be
raised, and in addition, a special system of distributing local tax grants would
also be developed.
From this point, Noguchi expands on this discussion by addressing three
major points that deal with issues of development, the local-center relation-
ship, and the issue of foreign relations and national defense. In terms of
development, Noguchi echoes Higa Mikio in pointing out the failures of the
Okinawa Development Bureau, noting a number of “broken promises” that
included the unwillingness of the central government to address inflation
brought on by the Ocean Exposition planned for 1975 and the rising rates of
unemployment. Like Higa, he suggests that the development bureau should
be disbanded and replaced with a local development bureau under the state
governor, and should involve plans to “reorganize the Ryukyu Bank as a
74 Chapter Four
state-operated bank which can issue bonds, and establish an ‘Okinawa devel-
opment bank’ specializing in financial development” (Noguchi 1973, 240).
This would allow it to receive contributions from mainland Japanese banks
and also respond more directly to the state governor, thus increasing Oki-
nawan self-reliance. In terms of reconceptualizing the local-center relation-
ship, Noguchi proceeds by proposing the creation of “consultative adjustment
committees” which would be situated between the nation and the shi-chō-son
and not simply be in a position to deny national pressures on the shi-chō-son,
but would be actively involved in working to actualize shi-chō-son requests
at the national level. In addition, these committee representatives would serve
as observers in central government cabinet meetings and ministerial advisory
committees, thus increasing information access and transparency. Even fur-
ther, Noguchi argues for the formation of the “autonomous state’s foreign
relations and defense committee,” which would promote the particularity of
Okinawa’s regional position and serve as a “substantial brake regarding the
exercise of the rights of diplomacy and defense that are monopolized by the
central government” (Noguchi 1973, 241). This committee would be con-
nected directly to the state governor, and would also be empowered to be
able to exercise independent diplomatic actions, with the main limit being
that while able to criticize central government policies, the committee would
be prohibited in acting contrary to national policy. In this way, Noguchi’s
proposal seeks to structurally assert a means by which Okinawans will not
only exert greater local autonomy, but will be strengthened at least in their
capacity as observers to monitor and influence national affairs.
From this point Noguchi expands on the issue of diplomacy and defense
by suggesting that with the enactment of an autonomous state that Okinawa
should issue a statement that, first, will call for the withdrawal of Japanese
Self-Defense Forces, second, will demand the withdrawal of all U.S. military
bases within three years, and third, will issue a “Declaration of Okinawan De-
militarization” (in conjunction with the national government if possible) (No-
guchi 1973, 242). Such an act, he argues, would serve not only to reflect the
popular will of the Okinawan people (which have suffered under increasing
post-reversion militarization with the situating of Japanese SDF forces in Oki-
nawa), but would also send a message of friendship to China and North Korea,
while providing a powerful example of anti-militarism to the world. Such an
action would also serve to stimulate discussion about how best to pursue a
path of “unarmed neutrality” which can only proceed, according to Noguchi,
through the “limited demilitarization” of Japan’s territorial extremities.
Noguchi then concludes his discussion by bringing forward a discussion
of dōshūsei, especially in regards to recent proposals to develop a regionally
conglomerated autonomous state in Kyushu. While Noguchi acknowledges
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy 75
CONCLUSION
liberal view of the nation, much as the formation of the European Union has
forced European nations to embrace a liberal view of citizenship that stands
in contrast to the more exclusionary nationalisms of prior ages. Much as
scholars writing during the period of reversion had also argued for the revi-
sion of the Japanese state form to be more inclusive of Okinawan particular-
ity, Shimabukuro ultimately suggests that the question of autonomy centers
around whether or not Japan can embrace and respect the diversity that had
always marked its existence.
The continuing emphasis on a new form of regional relationship with the
central state in the context of debates around autonomy, perhaps mirroring the
“Two systems, one country” formation that had been arranged for Hong Kong
in relation to China, has remained eminently provocative. It remains unclear,
however, how Hong Kong democracy protests in the fall and winter of 2014
will temper such perspectives, having shown the limits of local autonomy and
democracy movements when faced against the priorities of a strong central
government. Other movements for regional autonomy such as in the province
of Quebec in Canada, or Scotland in the United Kingdom, provide additional
contemporary models of comparison for regional autonomy, though these
comparisons demonstrate that while modern nations today have been willing
to accommodate growing local movements for autonomy through the conces-
sion of limited local rights, that when such movements combine to push for
actual independence through popular referenda, that ultimately, secession
may not seem as attractive to local residents when compared with the con-
tinuance of a more moderated federal position. That said, though not often
seen as being as dramatic as movements for independence, local autonomy
movements have other potentials. As scholar Kelly Dietz comments:
once independent island state, who had been forcefully assimilated into Japan
as an oft-forgotten colony. Though the central government may exhibit reti-
cence to allow for a “one country, two systems” formation in Japan, the un-
equal base burdens and continuing special measures and laws that have been
enacted in regards to Okinawa have already created a situation of particularity
in Okinawa. As scholar Taira Kōji has noted, “these special measures impart
to Okinawa Prefecture’s government and politics characteristics that are
considerably different from those of other prefectures of Japan. Okinawa and
the rest of Japan are in fact ‘two systems’ already” (Taira 2002, xxii). In this
sense, creating a unique system for Okinawa may just well serve as a simple
recognition of what Okinawans, faced with continuing structural discrimina-
tion throughout the postwar period, have already known for a very long time.
NOTES
Their works not only illuminate the shared histories of “minorities” between
Okinawa and other societies in the northern Pacific but ultimately showed
the multilayered or multileveled historical experiences within the Okinawa
struggle.
In this spirit, I would like to discuss the formation of Okinawa’s multi-
scale historical consciousness by examining its connectivity with anti-base
activism in East Asia. While the previous studies mostly highlight the north-
ern Pacific, East Asia is also a crucial place to reconsider the continuity and
change of hegemonic powers which formulates the political and social orders
in Okinawa. On the one hand, since the end of World War II Okinawa has
been considered as a strategic basis of “the western Pacific” for the United
States, but, on the other hand, it has been one of the key national frontiers
throughout the history of modern Japan, facing the Chinese continent and
Taiwan. Furthermore, since the time of the Korean War (1950–1953), the
military bases and ports in Okinawa and South Korea have been deployed
within the same command of the U.S. 5th Air Force and 7th Fleet. Were there
any flows of civic interaction on the U.S. bases in East Asia? If so, how did
such kind of transnational networks emerge? What was the common concern
which connects the local activism in different places? From a perspective that
brings to the fore the global and regional networks of anti-base civic activ-
ism, this chapter explores the roots of local internationalism in Okinawa. As
the Okinawan activists forge overseas networks, the number of scholarships
about the Okinawan struggle in history and other disciplines from transna-
tional aspects also increases. While many of those existing studies highlight
the events, we also need to understand the historical process by which the lo-
cal internationalism emerged. This perspective gives us a sense to understand
how the Okinawan movement finally became an international or transnational
movement and what social and intellectual contexts lie underneath. To this
end, I examine the historical background of Okinawa Korea People’s Solidar-
ity (OKPS), one of the first local civic groups which initiated internationaliza-
tion of the Okinawan anti-base activism as a case study. The history of OKPS
contributes to the intellectual debates on civic activism, historical relations,
and transnationalism in contemporary Asia and Pacific region. Also, through
the case study of OKPS, this paper would reveal another story of “the Oki-
nawa struggle” beyond the confinement of its territorial boundary.
OKPS was founded in 1998 by five male activists from Okinawa and main-
land Japan—Nishio Ichirō, Tomiyama Masahiro, Takahashi Toshio, To
Beyond Minority History 85
Yusa, and Arasaki Moriteru. Arasaki is a senior academic known for his
research on the history of the Okinawan people’s anti-base struggle after
World War II. Based at Okinawa University since 1974 (where he served as
the university´s president in the 1980s), Arasaki has been one of the front-
runners of this research field. Besides his commitment to the anti-base move-
ment as an academic, Arasaki had been involved in founding many activist
projects in Okinawa, most notably the Society of Hitotsubo Anti-war Land
Owners.1 Tomiyama Masahiro has been an active participant of the anti-base
movement since his teenage years. While Arasaki has devoted himself to the
movement through intellectual work, Tomiyama has always been involved
through anti-base activism in the frontline of confrontation.
While Arasaki and Tomiyama have their ancestral roots from Okinawa,
Takahashi Toshio came originally from the mainland in the early 1980s. He
had been known as the leader of a radical sect of student activism when he
lived in the mainland prior to his relocation to Okinawa in the mid-1980s.
Nishio also originated from the mainland, but has been involved in activ-
ism in Okinawa for the last four decades. As a radical pastor whose usual
activities are missionary activity and running a local kindergarten, Nishio is
also known for his long-term involvement with peace and ecology activism.
To Yusa, too, became involved with OKPS from outside Okinawa. As an
Osaka-based Korean activist, To has been involved with political activism
including helping anti-war American GIs to desert during the Vietnam War
and supporting the democratization movement in South Korea from Japan
(Arasaki et al. 2011). The founding members of OKPS came from different
backgrounds, but they came to know each other as they were members of
Hitotsubo Anti-war Land Owner’s Association. These individuals gathered to
establish OKPS with the aim of internationalizing Okinawa’s anti-base strug-
gle, particularly by establishing links with South Korean anti-base activism.
Today, over thirty people are registered as members of OKPS but they are
widely dispersed. Many of them are residing in Okinawa Island, and some
of them are living in mainland Japan and South Korea. In a strict sense,
members are expected to pay 500 yen as a monthly membership fee to cover
costs of group activities. But because of the nature of the membership, it is
difficult to collect from all the members. Thus, in a practical sense, this rule
is applied loosely and irregularly. Also, as another principle, the members are
expected to attend a monthly meeting to discuss activity, policy and other ad-
ministrative matters. However, this has never been made mandatory because
it is hardly ever possible to bring all the members together because of their
dispersed locations. Likewise, although OKPS has an annual assembly where
all the members are supposed to gather, in fact the annual assembly is usu-
ally organized as one of the regular monthly meetings. However, these loose
aspects of the membership and organizational structure do not mean that the
86 Chapter Five
group is inactive. There are members who regularly attend the meetings ev-
ery month from cities, towns and villages including Naha, Urazoe, Futenma,
and Yomitan. These people serve as core members in implementing various
group activities, corresponding with a widely dispersed network of individu-
als inside and outside Okinawa.
Although OKPS was founded in June 1998, its origins go back to the late
1980s. One of the crucial moments in this early period occurred when five
South Korean men visited Okinawa in November 1986. They were survivors
of a group of laborers who were forcibly taken to various places around
Okinawa from colonial Korea during World War II. According to a historical
study, about 350 Koreans, including the five men who visited Okinawa, were
mobilized to work around the Kerama Islands, located forty kilometers away
from the mainland of Okinawa in June 1944. They were part of a total of
some 15,000 Korean laborers who were collected to work in various places in
Okinawa towards the end of the Pacific War. Most of the Koreans in Kerama
Islands came from Gyeongsang County in North Gyeongsang Province. Ar-
riving in Kerama, they were put to work building the secret shelters used to
keep small boats to be used for suicide attacks against the Allied Powers.
Conducted under the orders of the Japanese Imperial Army, this mission was
called marure. During the Battle of Okinawa, about 80 Korean laborers in
Kerama died, including some who were executed by the Japanese soldiers.
Struggling with hunger, they stole potatoes from the local farmland, but were
found by the local villagers and reported to the Japanese military officers.
In the end, 257 people survived and they were captured by the American
soldiers. After the war, they returned to Korea. These survivors had been
longing to take back the remains of their fellow Korean forced laborers to
their homeland. They established an organization called the Pacific Fellows
Association (Taiheiyō Dōshikai) together with other former Korean forced
laborers engaged in different parts of Japan during wartime (Arasaki 2004,
102–107). This is how the five Koreans came to visit Kerama Islands, par-
ticularly Aka-jima Island and Zamami-jima Island, in order to commemorate
the spirits of those who could never return to their homeland.
The visit of the five Korean survivors inspired not only Okinawans but
also some ethnic Koreans in Japan (so-called Zainichi Koreans). Among
them was an independent documentary maker, Park Sunam. She filmed the
Korean survivors’ journey to Kerama and made a film titled “Ariran no uta:
Okinawa kara no shōgen” (The Song of Arirang: Testimony from Okinawa)
Beyond Minority History 87
The Okinawan activists´ encounter with former Korean forced laborers was a
crucial moment. It was the first experience for them to see Koreans who sur-
vived the war in Okinawa and hear their memories. Also, the significance of
this period lies in the fact that this trip became the earliest occasion on which
some key members of OKPS met to work together. By joining the com-
memorative trip to Kerama, the founders of OKPS came to recognize another
colonial history in Okinawa, which also influenced local activists to consider
Okinawa’s historical present in relation to other Asian neighbors. But this
encounter with former Korean laborers was not the direct trigger to start the
international anti-base solidarity movement with South Koreans. Although it
was undoubtedly an important moment for Okinawan activists to understand
their colonial past in relation to Korea, Okinawans did not yet consider this
history in relation to their contemporary activism.
The international anti-base solidarity campaign started in Okinawa from
since the early 1990s. Okinawan activists, including Tomiyama Masahiro and
other founders of OKPS, wondered if it is possible to achieve by Okinawan
people only to win the struggle against the U.S. bases. Other local activists
too had similar concerns about the isolation of Okinawa’s anti-base move-
ment. Knowing that there were other places where people took their anti-base
struggle to the world, these concerned Okinawans began to feel the necessity
to create an international solidarity campaign. One of the first countries they
contacted was the Philippines. One of the reasons was the Philippine democ-
Beyond Minority History 89
ratization movement, especially with its success in ending the long dictator-
ship of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 (the so-called People Power
Revolution). There was another, more practical, reason. Tomiyama had a
friend, Arakaki Tokiko, who founded a citizens’ group called the Society for
Friendship of Okinawa and Philippines, which was started with the aim of
creating cultural exchange between the two places on the grassroots level.
So, through her introduction, Tomiyama first visited Manila in the late 1980s.
Following Tomiyama’s first visit, he and his fellow activists visited the
Philippines almost every year until the mid-1990s. Their main contact was
a progressive activism network called Bayan (the Bagong Alyasang Maka-
bayan or the New Nationalist Alliance). As an umbrella organization joined
by many different leftist movement organizations, Bayan was founded in
1985 and conducted general strikes as a means of protest against Marcos’s
dictatorial regime. Together with communist and other progressive organiza-
tions in provincial areas, Bayan was a core force of the People Power Revolu-
tion in 1986 (Schock 2005, 146). The drastic change of the Philippine politi-
cal landscape in the late 1980s was of strong interest to Okinawan activists.
Yet what attracted Okinawans most was the 1991 agreement for the transfer
of Clark Airbase from the U.S. Air Force to the Philippine government,
which was put into effect in the following year. Like Futenma and Kadena
Airbases in Okinawa, the Clark Airbase had also played an important role for
the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Therefore, the closure of this, one
of the largest U.S. airbases in the region, was perceived as a great achieve-
ment by the Philippine citizens. Therefore, when they heard the news, some
Okinawans thought that they should learn from this neighboring country, and
they started organizing a trip to the Philippines.
To strengthen Okinawa-Philippine solidarity, Tomiyama, Arasaki, Nishio
and some other activists organized a group to study the history and current
political and economic situation of the Philippines. The main aim of this
study group was to study how the Philippines had been able to remove the
American bases from the country. They also studied the relations between the
Philippines and Japan, including the history of the Japanese wartime occupa-
tion of the Philippines, and contemporary issues such as the local impact of
Japanese trade and investment (Ajia to Rentai suru Shūkai Jikkō Iinkai 1997,
1). In the meantime, Tomiyama visited the Philippines several times. After
Tomiyama’s visits over several years, the Okinawan side decided to organize
a symposium to learn about the Philippine experience of anti-base movement
activism. In this context, Nishio, Tomiyama, Takahashi, Arasaki and their
friend To Yusa started a group called the Action Committee for Solidarity
with Asia (ACSA or Ajia to Rentaisuru Shūkai Jikkō Iinkai) in 1994.
90 Chapter Five
The turning point for the activity of ACSA came rather coincidentally in late
1996 when an activist named Kim Yong-han visited from South Korea. He
was the leader of a group called the Headquarters of the National Campaign
for the Eradication of Crimes by U.S. Troops (Juhan Migun Beomjoe Geun-
jeor Undong Bonbu, or Jumibun in Korean). Established in 1993 after the
rape and murder of a young local woman by a U.S. soldier, “the Yun Geum-I
case” of October 1992, this group has been playing the leading role in the
anti-US military base movement in South Korea. The Yun Geum-I case was
a brutal murder case that triggered a nation-wide protest campaign, seeking
a fair criminal judgement against U.S. military and the revision of Status of
Forces Agreement between the U.S. and South Korean governments. Prior
to revision of the rules governing the criminal prosecution of U.S. military
personnel in 2001, the South Korean government did not have jurisdiction
over the U.S. servicemen who committed crimes in the country. Therefore,
South Korean activists such as Kim Yong-han were impressed by reading a
Beyond Minority History 91
After hosting a meeting with the forty-three activists from Korea attended by
over two hundred people, the founding members of ACSA decided to dis-
solve and re-form the group. This is how people who founded ACSA decided
to start Okinawa Korea People’s Solidarity (whose formal name is: the As-
sociation that Aims to Create People’s Solidarity through Anti-US Military
Base Movement in Okinawa and South Korea, or Okikan or OKPS for short).
The group was established in June 1998.
Like ACSA, OKPS was based in Nishio’s Uruma Chapel. What the
members urgently needed to start collaborative works with Koreans was a
basic knowledge of Korean social movements. While some members such as
To, Takahashi, and Nishio had been individually involved with the Korean
democratization movement while they were in mainland Japan, their basic
knowledge of South Korean society was limited. With the help of Zainichi
Koreans such as Suh Sung, a Zainichi Korean activist who had been detained
in South Korea for nineteen years due to his political involvement with the
anti-authoritarian regime campaign, the OKPS members held social and
cultural events from late 1997 until early 2002 to inform people about the
base problems in South Korean politics. During this period, over twenty-five
visits took place between the two regions. The reasons for the trips were
diverse, including participation in academic conferences, and attendance at
demonstrations in both Okinawa and various places in South Korea. Through
the exchange of people, Okinawan activists and South Koreans learned about
each other. Also, from 1998, with the help of a Korean student studying at the
University of the Ryūkyūs, an evening Korean language class was opened.
Although people such as Takahashi and Tomiyama were working during
the daytime, at night they frequently went to study Korean. They could also
recruit new members for OKPS through the class. In addition to language
lessons, the members of OKPS held study groups. Initially they intended to
focus on the base problems. However, according to Tomiyama, the issues
that the members eventually needed to study covered a wide range of topics
other than the anti-base movement, such as historical and territorial problems
between Japan and South Korea (Arasaki et al. 2011, 10). Tomiyama also
states that OKPS succeeded in building a relationship of trust with Korean
activists over the course of the first five years as a result of their frequent
interaction across borders.
MUTUAL PRECONCEPTIONS
The visit of the Korean activists to Okinawa in 1997 was indeed the begin-
ning of a process that opened a gateway for bilateral grassroots networks.
Beyond Minority History 93
However, there was also some ambivalence and skepticism in the feelings of
each side toward each other. For Korean activists, their ambivalent feelings
were primarily based on the history of Japanese colonialism in Korea. In the
mid-1990s, there were still a large number of Korean anti-US base activists
who thought that the presence of U.S. military bases in Japan prevented Japan
from rearming. They saw the U.S. forces as a “jar lid,” containing any pos-
sible resurgence of Japanese militarism. From this perspective, many Korean
activists were skeptical about the aims and philosophy of the Okinawan anti-
US military base movement. Furthermore, there was a widespread perception
in Korean society that U.S. military bases helped South Koreans protect their
country from the North Korean threat. Takahashi recalls that many South Ko-
rean journalists were interested in asking Okinawan activists why they were
opposing the U.S. military bases (Arasaki et al. 2011, 14–15).
At the same time, Okinawans were worried about developing a solidarity
movement with South Korean activists. Although military dictatorship had
formally come to an end when President Roh Tae-woo, a former general
of the South Korean Army, declared the democratization of South Korea in
1987, Okinawan activists were still concerned about surviving elements from
the former military regime, best represented by the issue of the National Se-
curity Act. As a second generation Zainichi Korean who also had a long-term
involvement with the democratization movement of South Korea in Japan
during the 1970s and 1980s, To Yusa knew only too well that many of his
fellow Zainichi Korean activists from Japan were imprisoned in Korea under
the National Security Act. Tomiyama says that he and fellow Okinawan ac-
tivists in the 1970s and 1980s had a preconception that there was no freedom
of speech and no social activism in South Korea under dictatorship (Arasaki
et al. 2011, 10–14).
Hesitation to deepen the solidarity movement with Koreans was not only
derived from the image of the South Korean military regime shared by the
members but also from personal experiences. Some members had visited
South Korea before 1987, where they had witnessed South Korean everyday
life which was quite different from life in Japan at that time. Some of them
were deeply shocked by their experiences in Korea, and had stopped their
involvement with activism related to Korea until the late 1990s. Among
them was Nishio Ichirō. Nishio, who was studying at a theological school in
Okayama called Nōson Dendō Shingakkō (the Okayama Theological Semi-
nary for Rural Mission), flew to South Korea with his Korean friend in early
August 1974. Although this visit was part of their religious training at a rural
chapel in Seoul, he was also involved with left-wing student activism at his
previous theological college, Tokyo Union Theological Seminary (Tokyo
Shingaku Daigaku). Because of this political background, Nishio was anxious
94 Chapter Five
about his first visit to South Korea. On his arrival he was greeted by the
sight of Korean soldiers with machine guns at Seoul’s Gimpo International
Airport. His anxiety reached its peak when he was about to leave South Ko-
rea in mid-August. At the immigration desk of Gimpo Airport, the officers
confiscated his passport. Knowing little about his situation or the local lan-
guage, Nishio was in a panic and only recalled what he was told by his friend:
“Never lose your passport.” Later he found out that this was because of the
assassination of Yuk Young-soo, the wife of the President Park Chung-hee,
by a young Korean resident in Japan, Moon Se-gwang. When this so-called
“Moon Se-gwang Incident” occurred, South Korean police suspected that the
perpetrator was Japanese. Therefore, all the Japanese who planned to leave
the country around this period were blocked from departing. The only excep-
tion was fishermen.6
FACE-TO-FACE RELATIONSHIP
In the course of building trust with South Korean activists, the members of
OKPS have kept one principle as the motto of their activity. That is to create
and prioritize “face-to-face relationships” (kao no mieru kankei) with South
Korean counterparts. The former representative of OKPS, Nishio Ichirō,
said that, when he and his friends launched OKPS, they decided to build up
a close relationship with South Koreans to the point at which they would be
able to see their Korean counterparts as friends.7 Firstly, this meant an actual
exchange of people between the two areas. As we have seen, the relation-
ship between the two different groups of social actors started with suspicion
and unfamiliarity toward each other. With such a beginning, the best way in
which the members of OKPS could break the ice with South Korean activists
was to establish a regular cycle of movement of people. During the first few
years, the members of OKPS frequently flew to Korea and also invited Ko-
rean anti-US base activists to visit Okinawa. Through the members’ partici-
pation in events such as study groups, symposiums, academic conferences,
study tours and actual anti-base struggles, Okinawans increasingly learned
about South Korean anti-base struggles from firsthand experience.
Secondly, the principle of face-to-face relationships also implies a type
of solidarity based on interpersonal relationship rather than organizational
connectivity. This approach enabled Okinawan activists to create flexible
and wide-ranging individual relationships in many different kinds of anti-US
base activist groups in South Korea. Although this group’s first encounter
with the Korean anti-base movement was through Kim Yong-han and Jumi-
bun, the members of OKPS were involved with anti-US base campaigns in
Beyond Minority History 95
other places including Mae Hyang Ri, where local villagers and supporting
activists demanded the closure of a military base used as a target practice site
including depleted uranium shells, and also with a protest campaign against
the extension of the military training facility in Pyeongtaek. In recent years,
some members of OKPS began to be involved with the anti-naval base con-
struction movement in places like Gangjeon, Jeju Island. Their relationships
with Korean activists have been growing through these shared experiences.8
Despite their initial unfamiliarity with ways in which to approach their South
Korean counterparts, OKPS and their Korean counterparts have created mu-
tual trust. This was achieved in part through frequent communication that en-
sured Okinawans understood people’s lived experiences and knowledge born
out of the social contexts in South Korea. Through meetings at conference
venues, at protest sites being exposed to freezing water from the water cannon
of riot police in Pyeongtaek’s cold winter, and at downtown bars where they
drink together, OKPS has become the first Japanese anti-base group which
could successfully build a solidarity movement with Koreans over the issue
of the U.S. military bases. Inspired by OKPS, civic groups in other areas of
Japan with U.S. bases, such as Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture, began to
follow OKPS in creating collaborative projects with Koreans.
Meanwhile, the Korean activists also found Okinawa to be an important
“reference point” for the anti-base movement. Here, the notion of “reference
point” means that the Koreans not only refer to their counterparts but also
introduce ideas and strategies from Okinawa’s anti-base movement into their
local activism. The anti-base struggle is indeed a translocal movement in
which Okinawan and Korean participants are connected through people and
ideas across different local contexts. In this sense, the forty-three Koreans’
visit to Okinawa in 1997 was profoundly important in that it was the one
of the earliest moments in which Korean activists learned Okinawan ways
of conducting anti-base campaigns. Through this event, Korean activists
learned the strategy developed by the Hitotsubo Anti-War Landlords. This
strategy was introduced to the struggle in Korea. By purchasing a portion of
privately owned land collectively, Korean citizens in Maehyang-ri started to
initiate their local version of anti-war landowners from the late 1990s. Bring-
ing a court case against the Korean government over the noise from the U.S.
bases is also another strategy that was introduced from Okinawa. Following
examples from places such as Kadena and Futenma, where local citizens
organize groups to take legal action against noise pollution (bakuon soshō
96 Chapter Five
When I was studying South Korean base problems, I saw a pamphlet which
says “let’s learn from Okinawa” but I thought this was an overestimation. The
point (of the pamphlet) was “Okinawa made the U.S. apologize, but the U.S.
have never apologized to us (South Korea)”. . . Although they (South Koreans)
are saying that they should learn from Okinawa, I am doubtful about the current
situation of the Okinawan anti-base movement. I rather think that Okinawans
are encouraged by Koreans. . . . I keenly feel the importance of considering how
we can learn from them. (Arasaki et al. 2011, 13)
South Korean activism is always sensational and exciting. When I was marching
with other fellow activists in front of Seoul Mayoral Building, people suddenly
spread a big American flag. It was a massive flag. You know what happened?
A few young guys ran in the middle of the crowd to cut the flag into two. I was
thrilled. I wished we could also do that performance in Okinawa.9
Perhaps one of the most crucial things that Okinawa learned through interac-
tion with the Korean anti-base movement was the significance of Okinawa’s
geopolitical location in the region. Kadena Airbase in Okinawa was one of
the main sites from which American B-29 bombers were sent to the Ko-
rean Peninsula during the Korean War. After half a century, while the U.S.
military command has changed globally since 2001, reflecting 9/11 and the
subsequent attack on Afghanistan, Okinawa is still regarded as a crucial place
for America’s regional strategy in the Asia-Pacific, especially in relation to
Northeast Asian affairs. Although this fact has been widely known among
local activists in Okinawa, the actual strategic connection between Okinawa
Beyond Minority History 97
and Korea was not known until OKPS learned about this through colleagues
in South Korea. As To Yusa says, since the Korean War, the headquarters
of U.S. Forces Korea, located in Yongsan near Seoul, has been a center for
U.S. military operations in the Northeast Asian region including Okinawa.
He also says that when the commander of the U.S. Eighth Army is changed,
it has been conventional that the newly appointed officer is always taken on
a tour of inspection of the bases in not only Korea but also Japan, including
the places such as Futenma and Kadena in Okinawa and Atsugi, Yokosuka,
Hokkaido and Yamaguchi (Arasaki et al. 2011, 18).
This intra-regional connectivity within Asia also raises ethical questions
for the Okinawan anti-base movement. Tomiyama recalled that when Oki-
nawan activists succeeded in stopping the import of America’s depleted
uranium bombs in 1997, they did not even imagine that those bombs would
instead be relocated to a base in South Korea. He said that until he learned
about these events in Korea he did not consider the impact of this “success,”
from the Okinawan perspective, which in fact just shifted the burden to their
regional neighbors.10 For the members of OKPS, acquiring this sort of knowl-
edge through interaction with Korean activists helped Okinawans reconsider
the meanings of their activism in relation to other places in the region.
Five years of constant interaction with South Korean activists from 1998
until 2002 have brought slight changes to the Okinawan anti-base move-
ment. Compared to the early days, visits of Korean activists to Okinawa are
no longer unusual, and have instead become important annual events for
Okinawans. Although their activities are still not very well-known, growing
interest in the Okinawan anti-base movement amongst Korean activists and
an increase in the number of visitors show that the activities that OKPS has
organized for the last two decades have had some impact. This has encour-
aged further collaboration between Okinawans and Koreans in fields such as
the environmental movement. Citizens from Okinawa and Korea started un-
dertaking a collaborative survey of land contamination on the sites of former
U.S. military camps from the mid-2000s. This was a positive progress of the
transnational solidarity movement.
is approaching, there have always been public events around Okinawa. One
of the main ceremonies is usually organized by the Okinawa prefectural
government. The governor of Okinawa and high-profile political figures
come to give speeches to celebrate this historical day. However, anti-base
activists and scholars also organize events with quite different motivations.
Organizing public fora such as symposia, panel discussions and lectures, they
question what “reversion” actually meant for Okinawa and its people. Also,
during the week, there has been a tradition of making a human chain that sur-
rounds the U.S. Futenma Airbase.
In 2012, this historic day was to have its fortieth anniversary. For this
memorable year, both the prefectural government and civic groups had been
working to organize events on a greater scale than previous years. There were
numerous posters and flyers displayed at corners of streets and on billboards.
In this environment of excitement, the members of OKPS had also been
working on their events. Ever since 2003, OKPS have been inviting Koreans
to participate in the series of events around 15 May. With guests from di-
verse organizations, they have organized public events in different places in
Okinawa. Also, the members of OKPS become tour guides, and take Korean
visitors to Henoko and Takae to show them the ongoing protest campaigns.
The members of OKPS usually start working on this project from the pre-
vious year. For the events of May 2012, they started planning the Koreans’
visit from late September 2011. The agenda items for the monthly regular
meeting, which are not so numerous at other times of the year, gradually in-
crease as the anniversary approaches. With senior figures such as Takahashi
and Nishio as coordinators, the members discuss issues related to this week-
long event. The agenda is extensive. Jobs such as booking accommodation,
organizing a pick-up service for Korean guests from the airport, interpretation
at formal and informal venues, stage setting, and preparation of lunches are
all conducted by OKPS.
In addition to the tour-guide role, OKPS has been working on a musical
event. Since 2009, OKPS has invited cultural performance groups such as
Deoneum and Kkottaji. Deoneum performs traditional farmers’ music called
pungmur nori. Playing the drums and dancing in a circle, the performers not
only showcase classic folk culture but also express protests against the po-
litical establishment. Based in Incheon, one of the centers of South Korean
industrialization, they have been collaborating closely with industrial work-
ers. The group Kkottachi is also known for its use of music performance as
a means of social protest. While Tŏnŭm plays traditional music, Kkottachi
sings in a contemporary pop music style. In Okinawa as in Korea, music
plays a crucial role in the culture of the peace movement including the anti-
base movement. Indie artists such as rappers Kakumakushaka and Chibana
Beyond Minority History 99
Tatsumi are among the singers whose works have been popular in Okinawa,
particularly among youths. OKPS approached several local musicians, and
was able to book an Okinawan traditional music singer, Ayumu Yonaha, for
the coming event.
The annual music event for 15 May had been organized by new members
of OKPS rather than the senior founding members. People in their thirties
or forties were particularly active. Among them is Ishikawa Takashi, who
proposed the idea of inviting Kkottachi. Originally born and raised in Chiba
Prefecture, Ishikawa used to work in Tokyo as a medical doctor, particularly
for manual laborers. He moved to Okinawa in the early 2000s at the invita-
tion of a senior pulmonologist in Naha. While working in the local Daidō
Hospital, Ishikawa has been involved with OKPS ever since he arrived. He is
one of the main contributors to OKPS in terms of financial assistance. Yet his
career as an activist started when he was a university student. When he was
a medical student in Chiba University, Ishikawa started becoming involved
with social activism to support workers affected by industrial accidents, par-
ticularly those suffering from respiratory disease. During that period, he met
concerned medical students in South Korea who also worked for the laborers.
It was then that Ishikawa was introduced to Kkottachi, and OKPS was able
to invite the group because of his connections. Participation of the young
generations is not only helpful for the seniors but is also playing a vital role
in introducing new kinds of activities to OKPS. The young participants do not
necessarily share the contexts and experiences of their elders. But OKPS has
gradually become better known among local activists and other local citizens
through cultural events such as music concerts during the events of 15 May,
which embodies the distinctive cross-border reach of this group. In this sense,
the spirit of OKPS is developed not only by its senior members but also by
the younger members who are creating new styles of collaboration between
Okinawa and South Korea.
CONCLUSION
This chapter examines the process by which one group of Okinawan anti-base
activists gained a regional perspective on the meaning of their local activism.
The project of building a transnational network was initiated by five local
activists who felt a common imperative to seek new ways to develop Oki-
nawan anti-base activism. But the founders of OKPS were not only motivated
by anti-base politics. By reflecting upon the historical relationships between
Okinawa and South Korea, they questioned the dominant historical narra-
tive of Okinawa’s victimhood at the hands of Japanese imperialism. In other
100 Chapter Five
words, the OKPS was founded by the local citizens who realized the necessity
of reconsidering their local histories by including regional neighbors whose
colonial past and experiences were hardly remembered in the popular ac-
counts of Okinawa’s modern history. In this sense, it is important to highlight
the significance of historical consciousness with regard to Okinawa’s postwar
(or, arguably Okinawa’s postcolonial) conditions that motivated people to
start the transnational solidarity movement.
While based on such historical awareness, the actual transnational coop-
eration became possible through a series of relatively fortuitous events in the
late 1990s. Although the group was founded by concerned local Okinawan
citizens in the mid-1990s, its existence would not have been possible without
the visit of Korean activists who became interested in Okinawa’s mass pro-
test campaign in 1995. After the failure of their first attempt at transnational
cooperation with Philippine activists, Okinawan activists faced difficulties
in starting a new international solidarity movement. In such circumstances,
the first visit of a Korean activist in 1996 and the following visit by forty-
three Koreans to learn about the Okinawan anti-base struggle gave hope for
Okinawans to restart their project. Thus the transnational anti-base movement
between Okinawa and South Korea was made possible by a coming together
of people who similarly sought new visions to develop their struggles in two
different locations.
The effort that OKPS has made to develop relationships with South Ko-
rean activists over the last twenty years has created solidarity based on trust
between different activist groups across national borders. Through exchanges
of people, ideas and experiences, they could establish a type of mutual refer-
ence system by which the activists in different locales could compare and
learn about the anti-base movement in two different locales. At the same
time, this solidarity movement also generated a regional perspective in which
Okinawan and Korean activists could reflect upon the impact and the mean-
ings of their local activism on their counterparts. For OKPS, this means that
the notion of region has widened the scope of their activism by extending it in
relation to regional neighbors. In this sense, one of the significant outcomes
that OKPS has brought to the Okinawan anti-base movement is the idea of
East Asia through which the local anti-base activists reflexively consider the
continuity of American hegemony as a regional issue, which enabled them
to think of the implications of their activism beyond the local confinement.
NOTES
1. Hitotsubo is a size of land which is equivalent to 3.3 square meters. The main
activity of this society is to purchase the land from the original landlords who have
Beyond Minority History 101
their property within the U.S. military bases. In doing so, the activists refuse to rent
their land to the Japanese Ministry of Defense, which is responsible for offering the
land to the local U.S. military, and engage in a court battle with Japanese authority
over the land. The participants of this project are widely spread all over Japan, in
places such as in Tokyo and Osaka as well as in Okinawa.
2. This was the rape and murder of two Japanese schoolgirls by a young male
zainichi Korean. Park exchanged a number of letters with this man, who was sen-
tenced to capital punishment, and she edited a book based on those letters titled:
“Tsumi to Ai to Shi to” (Guilt, Love and Death) in 1963. Some intellectuals such as
Suzuki Michihiko publicly criticized the capital punishment imposed on Lee. For
example, see Suzuki 2007.
3. Interview with Takahashi Toshio, March 26, 2012.
4. Interview with Nishio Ichirō, November 23, 2011.
5. Interview with Nishio Ichirō and Tomiyama Masahiro, November 23, 2011.
6. Interview with Nishio Ichirō and Tomiyama Masahiro, November 23, 2011.
7. Interview with Nishio Ichirō and Tomiyama Masahiro, November 23, 2011.
8. Interview with Tomiyama Masahiro, November 21, 2011.
9. Interview with Masahiro Tomiyama, December 14, 2011.
10. Interview with Tomiyama Masahiro, November 21, 2011.
Chapter Six
103
104 Chapter Six
DISCOURSES OF MULTICULTURALISM
modern nation-state along with its colonial others and minoritized popula-
tions (Fujitani 2011, Robertson 2002, 2012, Ryang 2000, Weiner 1994).
Tessa Morris-Suzuki (2010) has looked at how the borders of nations (and
laws which shape and enforce them) are not self-evident but co-constituted
by broader geopolitical contexts. Globalization and transnationalism in Japan
produced new and changing kinds of identifications and habitus among those
such as “third culture kids” and kikoshijo [returnee children and youth who
lived some years abroad] (Goodman 2003, Kanno 2000) whose relative eco-
nomic privilege and global mobilities are often also the very source of their
marginalization. Taken together, this substantial body of research has effec-
tively worked to show that Japan is not, and never was, homogeneous. For
those living in Okinawa, where Okinawans’ sense belonging and place within
the nation-state of Japan is fraught, this scholarship is especially salient, but
also painfully obvious.
The focus within these discussions has turned more recently to “interna-
tional marriages” (for example, Faier 2009 and Kudoˉ 2014), driven by chal-
lenges posed in integrating and creating communities of belonging for new
immigrant spouses, the educational system, bullying, cultural identification,
citizenship, and transnational kinship ties. While the first wave of literature
and research in Japan on mixed race identity arose in response to the plight
of abandoned “Amerasian” children in the aftermath of defeat in World War
II and postwar occupation, this more recent direction in scholarship takes
the idea of a multiethnic Japan to the next logical step. It examines not only
diversity and minorities within Japan, but also how the long-term presence of
minorities and immigrants produce a more hybrid and shifting definition of
Japaneseness itself. It reflects an interest in effecting social change in Japan,
and the emergence of hybrid new identifications that complicate how the na-
tion has been imagined. While Japanese youth are unprecedentedly diverse
and multiracial, forms of discrimination and racism are far from obsolete. The
self-image of Japanese homogeneity serves still to justify restrictive immigra-
tion policies, lack of legal anti-discrimination protections, and assimilationist
perspectives. However, as Japan’s demographics change, issues around inclu-
sion—legal and cultural—become increasingly pressing, requiring a shift in
assumptions of who “counts” as Japanese. These questions (and, therefore,
the answers produced) nonetheless assume the stability of Japaneseness by
focusing on mainland Japan. If one decenters these questions about diversity
and unevenness in Japan to look at Okinawa, one would readily see that
Okinawans live the question of “Japaneseness” in ways that destabilize its
normative construction.
Despite the increasing attention to diversity and minority experiences in
Japan and grassroots efforts to address specific needs of communities at
the local levels, one can be skeptical that this shift necessarily represents a
106 Chapter Six
fundamental turn toward a more tolerant and accepting society. Given de-
cades of economic stagnation and pessimism about Japan’s future alongside
increased visibility of cultural and ethnic diversity in Japan, the positive
revaluation of mixed race children and youth may be linked to the ways in
which they index—real or imagined—a forward looking optimism about
Japan. That is, their visibility speaks to aspirations for Japan to be a more
cosmopolitan nation with an economically robust future, tied to neoliberalism
and global capital. The valence is akin to rhetoric found in the promotion of
“Cool Japan” by government and business sectors hoping to harness Japan’s
so-called soft power in the global marketplace (McGray 2002). In this sense,
mixed-race celebrities embody a kind of Japanese hybrid “coolness,” evi-
dence of Japan’s successful engagement in transnational capitalist flows. This
projection of a more globally integrated Japan is, however, cast in terms of
highly stratified global racial schemas and colorism where certain forms of
hybridity and mixed-race identities are more desirable and celebrated more
than others. When one speaks of haafu children, the default assumption is that
the haafu children are “half” white. In Japan, it is not uncommon for white-
ness (and its fetishization) to stand in for westernness and foreignness, much
to the disappointment of many Asian Americans in Japan who might not re-
ceive the same reception from Japanese as their white American colleagues.
And, as Laurel Kamada (2010) found in her research on mixed-race adoles-
cent girls in Japan, the girls in her study strategically draw on these positively
valued associations of mixed-race identity with transnational cultural capital
and the West in order to negotiate their position in school and manage being
regarded as foreign by classmates and teachers. However, these are strategic
resources available only to certain mixed youth.
HAAFU IN MEDIA
The recent growth of Japanese mixed-race studies follows the more wide-
spread fascination with mixed-race bodies in mainstream consumer culture
and Japanese mediascapes. Actors, comedians, models and musicians who
are mixed—or haafu, from the English loanword, “half”—have gained some
prominence, raising visibility and awareness, however superficially, about
mixed-race experiences in Japan. Even recent beauty trends have picked up
on the popularity of haafu models, resulting in a proliferation of make-up tips
in magazines and online video tutorials as well as plastic surgery menus that
offer to help women achieve the haafu (generally white) look. It is unclear
at first glance whether these trends are symptomatic of internalized anti-
Asian racism or constitute a part of popular cultural practices in Japan that
Fault Lines of Occupation, Limits of Hybridity 107
play radically with the plasticities of the body and in identities (for example,
cosplay, monomane). However, being told one looks haafu in this context is
considered a compliment, where haafu women are frequently described as
being especially kawaii or “cute.”
Haafu attributes or features can be a form of desirable otherness and fe-
tishization that simultaneously functions as a reassertion of non-belonging
and exclusion. Recent media attention seems to offer relatively positive
representations of mixed-race Japanese; however, television shows and the
crafting of celebrities such as Jero, a black enka singer from Pittsburgh whose
grandmother was Japanese, often draw on the structural elements of humor
that upend expectations in order to elicit surprise and pleasure in audiences.
These expectations (and being able to upend these expectations) are premised
on maintaining a rigid and racialized self/other dichotomy in how “Japanese-
ness” is defined. They reproduce delineations of Otherness by exploiting the
play on the pleasure of transgressing these boundaries with the Other in ways
that reaffirm those boundaries. The source of the humor is in the cognitive
dissonance and surprise of (for example) hearing fluent Japanese spoken by
a person one assumes to be foreign. Some older mixed Okinawans expressed
frustration at the willingness of some Okinawan haafu talent to perform cari-
catures of their identities for comedic effect. In making light of (or worse,
completely erasing) haafu experiences for the sake of mainstream humor felt
insulting and grating, serving to counter their years of work and activism to
assert their belonging. Screens in media function as an actual screen or shield
from the audience, such that transgressions and difference are rendered safe
and kept at arm’s length from the viewer’s everyday lives. One young Japa-
nese Tokyoite in her mid-20s spoke to me of her fear of black people, and
how this fear of encountering them in real life is one of the reasons she did
not want to travel to the U.S. Yet she enjoys performers such as Jero, admires
haafu models, and avidly consumes globally circulated black expressive cul-
tural forms and influences in Japanese popular culture.
Mary Douglas (1966) argues that bodily taboos and rituals dealing with
dirt and pollution come to represent the borders of culture and community
itself. That is, coherence and maintaining order in society is enacted through
the boundaries of the body by managing that which is deemed dirty or is un-
categorizable and ambiguous. Thus, the points of permeability are also points
of vulnerability and danger, but also of the power to shift and transform the
boundaries themselves. The mixed race body in this sense is a manifestation
of social flux and a “failure” to maintain a given social order and the “purity”
of the nation constructed on the premise of racial and cultural homogeneity.
It is not uncommon in conversations in Japanese about mixed-race identities
for speakers to use phrases such as “jun nihonjin” [pure Japanese] to refer to
108 Chapter Six
I seem to see many more mixed people like me here in Japan. I think this is
a good thing but at the same time, I am a little worried because I see many
“Hafus” (Half Japanese as we are called in Japan) feel that being Hafu is being
superior because now suddenly we are popular on TV, music videos, magazines
and in movies. I just feel that being mixed is great since you can understand
different cultures and embrace more easily different views on life, but it is not a
supernatural thing. (Hapa Voice last accessed July 7, 2016)
When I first met Akira, he was living in Japan as a kind of ambassador for
global nikkeijin youth and a public advocate for a more inclusive and multi-
cultural Japanese civil society. As was the case with many individuals with
whom I spoke, he is attempting to normalize haafu identities in an environ-
ment in which haafu is still entrenched as an Other, and therefore not fully
Japanese. Akira’s claim that being mixed-race allows one to understand dif-
ferent cultural perspectives and multiple worldviews is echoed among those
promoting the term “double” [daboru] as an alternative to “half” [haafu].
While “haafu” is currently the most common term used, it invokes the racial-
ized language of blood quanta. Critics argue that “half” is diminishing of
mixed identities because it implies an individual is culturally incomplete and
partial. As I will discuss again later in the context of Okinawa, the privilege
of access to multiple worldviews and cultural spheres is not always possible
for everyone: it is not inherent to the condition of being mixed-race and
presumes the normativity and stability of the heterosexual nuclear family
structure. There are some who grew up without a relationship to one or either
biological parents, and therefore were cut off from other cultural worlds and
from avenues of transnational identification. This access and cultural mobil-
ity provides significant cultural capital to those who are identified as mixed,
both in Okinawa and in Japan more broadly. But this access is uneven at best.
Popular images of mixed race identities notwithstanding, stigma and xe-
nophobia are far from obsolete. Attempts to celebrate hybridity and diversity
often fail to address the kinds systemic racism and exclusion that shape, and
continues to shape, the lived experiences of many mixed children. Often,
media representations elicit backlash and hate speech, especially on online
Fault Lines of Occupation, Limits of Hybridity 109
baby of their own. Usually, the story is recounted in a scandalized and critical
tone. One man concluded this with the rhetorical question: “Can you believe
there are Japanese women like this?” They viewed such women as an embar-
rassment to the nation. The prevalence of these narratives may or may not
accurately reflect a reality or an actual behavioral trend. However, they are
revealing of the storyteller’s anxieties—some of which may be historically
rooted—not just regarding foreignness and miscegenation, but also about
Japanese masculinity and the control of women’s bodies and sexuality. One
of the major economic and policy concerns of the Japanese government is the
rapidly declining birthrate, in which young women are often blamed for being
too selfish, frivolous, and consumer-driven to marry and reproduce. In these
stories, women’s sexual or romantic desires are sublimated into the fetishiza-
tion of the mixed-race baby as the ultimate consumer trend, and are therefore
distracted from their “proper” roles of marriage and family.
Implicitly reproduced in these stories is the notion that a rejection of pa-
triarchal and patrilineal family structures is a symptom of disorder in women
and an aberrant value system. These kinds of urban legends and cautionary
tales may be a more contemporary iteration of the sensationalized figure of
the “yellow cab” from the 1990s, a derogatory media term used to describe
young Japanese women in search of sexual adventures and relationships with
non-Japanese—especially white—men. Karen Kelsky (2001) argues that the
erotic and romantic desires of “yellow cabs” for non-Japanese men reflect an
identification with the West. In their rejection of Japanese men, Kelsky reads
cosmopolitan and internationalist aspirations among Japanese women that
serve as an implicit critique and resistance to hegemonic gender norms and
nationalism in Japan. The censure and policing of women in the media and
popular discourses such as these are not produced in an ahistorical vacuum,
but rather are informed by ambivalent ideologies around modernity, history,
and occupation vis-à-vis the West that are projected onto women’s bodies and
mixed-race children.
This dynamic, however, plays out quite differently in Okinawa, where
layers of colonialism and militarization add a more complex and fraught
reality to sexual politics that does not exist in Japan in the same way. Unlike
Japan, as Annmaria Shimabuku argues, the denial of sovereignty and the
confiscation of land by the U.S. military produced Okinawans as “petitioning
subjects”:
The relationship to their land and bodies is not just metaphorical in the sense of
Okinawa’s political exploitation symbolized by an exploited woman. Instead,
the metaphor breaks down as the confiscation of their land means . . . a new
relationship with their very own bodies that literally become a terrain rich in
sexual resources that they must work. . . . The struggle for territorial control col-
Fault Lines of Occupation, Limits of Hybridity 111
lapsed into a struggle for boundaries of sexual control within the human body.
(Shimabuku 2010, 367)
Seemingly disparate bands of color are fused into a unitary amalgam and one
single cultural emblem of queer togetherness and belonging. While these im-
portant symbols and meanings of unity provide a potent impetus for community
efforts, they at once obscure contradictory and uneven queer spaces. (2003, 4–5)
communities are imagined and produced risk hiding deep structural histories
of inequality and racialization that reproduce barriers and relationships of
power. These challenges are especially relevant for Okinawans.
known as having a more visibly substantial mixed race population than in the
rest of Japan, and this fact is often mentioned alongside the other “problems,”
as if mixed race children were yet another indicator of supposed underdevel-
opment.
Mixed race experiences complicated existing discourses and tensions
around Okinawan identity. Mixed Okinawans are often regarded as embody-
ing the condition of a militarized “post”-coloniality in contemporary Okinawa
in ways that do not resonate in Japan. Mitzi Uehara Carter (2014) writes with
nuance about how mixed Okinawans negotiate the asymmetries and conflu-
ences of these discourses of identity, even as mixed Okinawans are generally
obscured within more dominant uses of (and traffic in) haafu identities within
Japan. Naomi Noiri (2010) also emphasizes the ways in which mixed race
Okinawans are often overlooked. She outlines the complexity and difficulties
of defining Okinawan identity given its colonial relationship with Japan and
the U.S. This history shapes a dominant Okinawan narrative of victimhood,
according to Noiri, which obscures more nuanced views of minoritization
and marginalization within Okinawa. If Okinawans constitute a minoritized
identity within Japan, then Amerasians, to use her language, are a minority
within a minority. As a consequence, Noiri illustrates how, despite grassroots
activist efforts to ameliorate legal inequities faced by mixed race children
around statelessness and citizenship under occupation, the legal changes
did not address the social stigmatization or lack of cultural citizenship faced
by mixed race children in Okinawa. Furthermore, among mixed children,
blackness has historically been further stigmatized; hierarchies of racial seg-
regation in the U.S. were reproduced in military installments abroad. Hence,
Okinawan businesses and service industries catering to the military also
reproduced segregation (and racism) off-base. While racial segregation is no
longer an active aspect of the military or of the service industries, the effects
of institutionalized racism are still felt.
While the mixed race Japanese adolescent girls in Kamada’s research
can use the cultural capital of the west as a form of social leverage, those
in Okinawa often cannot access the same strategies, even if connections to
the U.S. and the military bases may provide very real economic benefits
and opportunities for upward mobility. Associations and connections with
an American military presence present complicated and ambivalent forms
identification within Okinawa. A few mixed Okinawans I spoke with did not
have parents or family connected to the U.S. military, but because of the po-
litical economic landscape in Okinawa, they are nonetheless still read within
the frame of militarization and colonial history. Noiri’s work has focused on
the AmerAsian School established in 1998 by concerned mothers of mixed-
race children. The school provides English language education, a safe space,
114 Chapter Six
and community for mixed children who may otherwise have faced bullying
in schools. As a couple of mixed race Okinawan parents noted to me, not all
parents, however, have the resources available (or the means to seek out the
resources) to send their children to schools like the AmerAsian School. While
I suggest historical and system forms of marginalization serve to complicate
mixed race identities in Okinawa, Welty (2014), on the other hand, highlights
the individual agency of mixed race Okinawans in the face of their doubly
colonized positionality. She argues that many mixed Okinawans do draw
on privileges associated with their transnational connections. Furthermore,
because of the prevalence of mixed race children in Okinawa, she argues that
public sympathies for mixed race children in Okinawa allowed for a greater
recognition of mixed race subjectivities societally. This helped establish
institutions and pathways to assist mixed race children in ways that are not
as readily available in other parts of Japan. Going against the narratives of
victimhood and marginalization, power and privilege, for Welty, cannot be
understood in simplistic either/or terms; rather they are experienced in highly
individual ways.
vided for her: “I always felt very loved,” she told me. Although her mother
was raising Amy as a single parent in Okinawa, they were financially stable
and received support from her father. Perhaps most significantly, rather than
attending local public schools, she attended a school for mixed-race children.
She credits this environment for providing a protected space for people like
herself. She recounted that she did not experience bullying and the school
provided a space of belonging and validation. As she says, “In fact, I felt I
was one of the cool kids.”
As she grew older, Amy gradually became aware of the fact that some
mixed race Okinawan children were living under very different circumstances
than hers. She began to encounter and meet other mixed race children who
attended local schools, and who were bullied and felt isolated. One memory
of this that stood out to her was of a mixed girl riding the bus alone. She was
wearing a regular public school uniform. She also kept staring at Amy and
seemed to want to talk and connect with her, but Amy did not think much
of it. Amy regrets not reaching out to her when she had the opportunity, but
only when she was older did she fully realize how different their lives were
from hers. Looking back on that encounter and on how her childhood was
different from other mixed race Okinawans, Amy carries around a feeling of,
in her words, “survivor’s guilt.”
Amy’s life trajectory is not uncomplicated or without difficulties, despite
her position of relative privilege. But her experiences are vastly different
from those such as Mieko, a mixed Black Okinawan woman. Whereas many
mixed Okinawan and mixed Japanese individuals I knew went by an English
name, even if they were not given an English name at birth, Mieko stood out
for her persistence in using her Japanese given name. Her mixed Okinawan
friends admired her fortitude in not relenting to what they perceived as social
pressures of using an English name to ease interactions within Okinawan
society. As a child, Mieko lived in the care of another family, as her mother
had to juggle multiple jobs. Mieko attended the local school where there were
only a handful of other mixed students in other classes. Her blackness made
her especially visible and isolated. She was bullied or teased by classmates,
and received little sympathy or support from her teachers, an experience
familiar to many other mixed children. Mieko later discovered her mother
had wanted to have an abortion while pregnant with Mieko. As a teenager,
this knowledge contributed to her strained relationship with her mother. She
does not know who her biological father is and has not been successful in
searching for him. Having grown up poor in Okinawa and attending local
schools, she never had the opportunity to learn English. Over the years, she
has made concerted efforts to learn the language. Her desire to learn English
was twofold: she thought English would help her find information about her
116 Chapter Six
father. Being able to speak English would also provide her with more job
opportunities—and opportunities for upward mobility—related to the Ameri-
can military presence. She bears a heavy sense of responsibility toward her
children, who she feels has inherited some of the trauma and legacies of her
own experiences, and she wants to give them opportunities that were inac-
cessible to her.
Identifying as haafu or mixed then does not guarantee a set of shared expe-
riences on which to build connections and communities. One mixed woman
from mainland Japan who relocated to Okinawa relayed to me her realiza-
tion that being haafu in Okinawa has distinct and profound challenges than
what she faced as a child growing up in Japan, and she was keenly aware
of a limit to her ability to understand and relate with mixed Okinawans in
her hopes to be an effective ally. Mixed race identities are often described
in terms of hybridity, where the dissolution of boundaries create something
distinct and new, beyond the sum of its parts. In Okinawa, and I suspect in
other contact zones as well, these boundaries are often reproduced rather than
transcended, and the consequences for people’s lived realities are significant.
The labels and categories hide the deep rifts and forms of unevenness that
are the product, in the case of Okinawa, of military and colonial dominance,
in both historical and contemporary forms. The divisions then are structural
and systemic. They are often organized around the fences (metaphorical and
real) of the military bases, building on gender, race, and class inequalities.
These divisions are a form of segregation that determines opportunities for
education, upward mobility, and transnational linkages. It also affects the
kinds of personal resources available to individuals in how they identify and
their ability to position themselves within different social contexts. The factor
determining which side of the fence one falls as a mixed child is very often
the presence or absence of the American biological father.
When I interviewed Amy, she spoke of her excitement when she was first
introduced to Mieko. Both were outgoing and extroverted, and about the
same age. They shared a similar sense of humor. Initially, they got along
well, could relate to each other on the basis of being mixed, and they seemed
inseparable. They were brought together because they both initially identified
each other as haafu. However, ultimately differences in class and cultural
capital were too great to surmount, despite Amy’s desires to share and extend
her cultural capital with Mieko. While one enjoyed a successful career and
a broad social network, the other struggled to make ends meet and, limited
by language and habitus, felt uncomfortable crossing into other, more trans-
national social circles. She described how attempts to help her friend with
contacts and job opportunities created distance and awkwardness between
them, and Mieko never followed through. Amy summed up the difficulties in
Fault Lines of Occupation, Limits of Hybridity 117
CRITIQUING HYBRIDITY
the broader history of the cold war and the U.S. military in the Pacific while
simultaneously highlighting the specificities of the distinctly shaped Okinawa
on the level of lived experience.
Here, I think the debates around identity categories, labels, and naming are
informative. Besides words that are now outdated or considered derogatory,
some have urged that the term “half” or “haafu” be abandoned and replaced
with the term “double.” Others, such as the producers of the Hafu Project,
recognize the debate but feel that the term haafu is acceptable because
“double” is overly positive. Byron Fija, a well-known language activist and
musician in Okinawa, maintains that the term “double” is not any better than
“half” for people like him since he does not culturally identify as American
and grew up without any ties to his American kin. The expectation of plural-
ity becomes a burden, and perhaps a reminder of cultural loss or lack. Byron
Fija has settled on the term he coined, amerika-kei uchinaanchu [American
Okinawan]. In explaining to me why he made this choice, he said: “Double is
just as hurtful and discriminatory to me as being called half. Because I don’t
know my American side. I am not double. . . . In the U.S., you call yourself
Japanese American to indicate that you are an American who happens to
be of Japanese descent. In the same way, I am an Okinawan of American
descent.” He has been active in trying to create a network of people who
identify as amerika-kei uchinaanchu because, he noted, there has been no
structural support or community for people like him and of his generation.
While the AmerAsian School is an important space and community for mixed
race children in Okinawa, such schools were neither available nor something
his family would have been able to afford had it been an option for him when
he was school-aged.
Attempts to create alliances across haafu communities and experiences can
prove to be difficult. One man I spoke with expressed appreciation but also
frustration with haafu networking events. In bilingual or multilingual gather-
ings, English often ends up taking precedence and more space in the discus-
sions, despite the best of intentions, making some Japanese speakers feel
more hesitant about participating. This dominance of English also influences
the topics and perspectives that are privileged. The ability to speak English
and to be multilingual frequently signifies the habitus of a higher education,
greater cultural capital, and class mobility. Thus, attempts to create dialogue
and alliances may inadvertently reproduce hierarchies and inequalities.
The question of naming is raised frequently, in both Japanese and in Eng-
lish. I suggest that this question represents a productive resistance to reifica-
tion and coherence. Writing about this topic requires naming and describing
the subject of analysis, and this practice is inherently objectifying and reduc-
tive. The producers of the Hafu Project which attempts to represent mixed
Fault Lines of Occupation, Limits of Hybridity 119
race Japan suggest that “[h]afu has become almost like a nation or an ethnic
group of some sort within Japan. Hafu is not only a description but an entity
in itself” (Hafu Project). Spaces and opportunities for creating connections
and solidarity, where stories and experiences can be shared and represented
across differences are important. However, the narratives of haafu and mixed
race Okinawans actively complicate this idea put forth by the Hafu Project,
the idea that “hafu is an entity in itself.” People themselves are drawing on
haafu discourse not to create a new ethnic group necessarily (though one
may argue that there is a time and place for pan-ethnic mobilizations), but
to expand the way we think of ethnicity and minorities belonging in Japan,
Okinawa, and the world more broadly. This ongoing contestation around the
term requires a constant attentiveness to difference and inclusion that I think
is useful. And this is where theories of hybridity from the genealogies of
cultural studies remain relevant, in that rather than looking at hybridity or the
hybrid as an object of study in itself, we can think of hybridity as a practice
in which identity categories are both contested and utilized as strategies for
negotiating power and belonging.
NOTES
1. This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
and the University of Tokyo, Komaba. I thank Shinji Yamashita and Yujin Yaguchi
for their steady mentorship and guidance. Ryan Yokota has been an abiding friend
and colleague to whom I am deeply indebted. I am grateful for the countless people
who have generously helped me along the way in this project, and most especially to
those in Okinawa and Tokyo who shared their time, space, connections, and stories
with me.
2. In my forthcoming article, I suggest that multiculturalism is an empty concept, a
cipher. Rather than using the term multiculturalism as inherently descriptive or evalu-
ative of specific national spaces or social phenomena, we should analyze instead how
discourses of multiculturalism are used in shaping how nations imagine themselves.
3. While not an exhaustive list, see, for example: Befu 2001, Denoon et al. 1996;
Douglass and Roberts 2000; Graburn et al. 2008; McConnell 2000; Ryang 1997,
2000; Weiner 1997, 2000; Iwabuchi and Takezawa 2015, 2008; Willis and Murphy-
Shigamatsu, eds, Hankins 2014).
4. A pseudonym.
5. A pseudonym.
Chapter Seven
Champurū Text
Decolonial Okinawan Writing
Ariko S. Ikehara
121
122 Chapter Seven
Sakiyama Tami (b. 1954) is an unconventional writer who writes from the
“in between” spaces of Okinawa, the U.S. military, and Japan, offering the
champurū f/actor of fecundity between words/worlds.2 As a writer who is not
bound by an “Okinawan subject,” Sakiyama acknowledges her complicity
in the production of a fixed image of Okinawa in the process of unhinging
herself from that same image through her writing (Okumoto 2007, 191). Sa-
kiyama’s use of language is demonstrated through the shimakutuba (island
language), which is the inter-mixing of different Okinawan languages and
mixing of Japanese that is best described as inter-mixed-lingual-ling. My use
of the –ling is to show the mixing and multiplying potential in the language.
According to Japanese language and literary scholar Davinder Bhowmik, Sa-
kiyama presents “Okinawa” that goes against “the entire body of Okinawan
fiction (which) is fraught with the issue of language” (Bhowmik, 2008, 11).
The “issue” conjures up the ghost of the past, a deep scarring history of
colonialism that disciplined Okinawans for being Okinawan and speaking
Okinawan language in the late nineteenth century. Bhowmik refers to the
Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 (Kyōiku ni kansuru chokugo) as
technologies of oppression by which language and “being” Okinawan were
both prohibited by policy and policed by the Japanese imperial regime (6).
Alan Christy further contextualizes the process of Okinawan assimilation in
mainland Japan through the “Lifestyle Reform Movement” of the 1920s and
1940s. In this movement, the Japanese state regarded Okinawan clothing,
walking, speaking and music as signs of laziness and backwardness (Christy,
1993, 613). As we often find in other stories and histories of colonialism,
passing was both an instrument of assimilation and a tool of resistance for
the colonized and oppressed, and as such, Okinawans too deployed both
strategies. Thus “Okinawan subject” is, at best, equivocal and needs further
explication. Sakiyama, as an Okinawan female writer, neither gives up nor
resists the constructed Okinawan subject of the inferior or the authentic, but
cuts to the middle, moving through the aporia of this contested subject called
“Okinawa/n.” A new expression emerges, a text made up of various island
languages of shimakutuba (Okinawan) and standard Japanese, producing a
Champurū Text 125
Literature,” Kina explains, Sakiyama’s “stories are told within the logic and
vision of the borderlands as the center” or “chasm of Okinawan society as de-
liberate choice.” Sakiyama thereby “creates a logic that justifies agency in the
borderlands” (Kina, 2011: 21). Situating Okinawa as a borderland provides
the framework for understanding how language is born in what Kina trans-
lated in Sakiyama’s text as the “edge,” “‘the place emerging in between the
mutually exclusive landscapes” or ‘chasm in everyday life’” (20). Champurū
text emerges from “the edge” of Sakiyama’s hometown, Koza, which is a
city with the name that is “one in many in between(s),” for there are many
speculative etymologies of Koza as Koja, Kuja, and Gosa with no determin-
ing source that authorizes one over the others.
Sakiyama’s short stories of Kuja or what Kina calls Kuja series, seven
total, were published in a popular literary magazine called Subaru. In Kuja,
which is Koza in Okinawan pronunciation, Sakiyama’s text rushes like a vor-
tex in a champurū operatic force, combining the sound and texture of words,
events, history, story, and mystery through the voices of hybrid real-imagined
characters. This combinatory style obscures reality and takes a flight into the
surreal with a certainty of other obscured reality moving through the gaps,
moving in between the texts. This movement in between texts produces a
mix-multiplying effect of champurū. Reviewing Sakiyama’s Kuja series
Kina finds in Sakiyama’s text the plurality of the “abyss of uchinā-guchi that
includes ‘the visible living beings, the invisible dead, and souls/lives, who
have voices in her narrative’” (Kina 2008, 62). Shimakutuba is the abyss of
uchina-guchi referenced here, which carries the multivocality that speaks in
the sensual/visceral sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch of Okinawa in
Sakiyama’s stories that require a different writing and reading to allow the
chance, the possibility, and the opening for something new, the unthinkable,
the improper, the other to emerge. “Kotōyume dūchuimuni” (Solitary Island
Dream Soliloquy) (Subaru, 1:25:1, 2006) is such story that turns a table
around through the co-opting of the gaze between the colonized and the colo-
nizer, and in turn offers the third eye witness—which is the diligent reader,
fan or academic, whose labor is to follow the changes in the symbolic roles
of the characters and the ubiquitous signifiers flying from multiple directions
at once—to enter the champurū zone.
“Solitary Island Dream Soliloquy” is one of the Kuja series, which begins
with the Japanese freelance photographer whose intention was to photograph
Okinawa’s scenery of ocean and everyday life that is not Japan. Unexpect-
edly, he is “spirited away” into a dreamy world of Koza’s entertainment dis-
trict where performance multiplies into a surrealistic event that crosses into
life, blurring the line between the performer and the audience, and turning
the lens from the one who is looking to one who is looked at. The photogra-
128 Chapter Seven
pher takes the bus to Okinawa, but accidently gets off at a place called Kuja
and stumbles into a dreamy, surreal, and visceral space of a small theater
house. A last vestige of the yesteryear of occupied Okinawa, the theater and
the performer named Takaesu Maria together take him on a surrealistic ride
that turns his gaze back onto him as he is made to listen, not gaze, into her
world full of complex fragments that are thrown into the air through Maria’s
surrealistic performance right before his eye. As he stepped off the bus, he
left this world, entered that world and encountered, those people in that time
of occupation where Okinawa was neither Japan nor America. This place is
full of theater houses decorated with full of show pamphlets. He picks up a
pamphlet that read:
“Do you remember this time? Please recall those people from that city” [Italic
added]
In the above quote, “People” and “City” are written in katakana, a Japanese
writing system for foreign words. The city here is Koza, which was the first
“American town,” a bar and entertainment district for the soldiers during the
occupation. Kuja alludes to Koza’s uncertain etymology that creates a sense
of mystery and nostalgia of the place and the name, producing a structure of
feeling of this untenable multiplicity. Koza, formally known as Kuja, is a city
associated with the American occupation of Okinawa. In 1974, two years after
the official ending of the American occupation in 1972, the city gave itself a
new name, Okinawa City, to symbolize both the end of the American occupa-
tion and the start of the new Japanese era: a birth of the postwar/occupation
Okinawa in the backdrop of the on-going American military presence. While
Koza is no longer an official name for the city, the name lingers in the place
and is still being used by the people, both Kozans and the city government to
make use of the past—history, legacy and identity as an American city—for the
present production of culture toward a future economic prosperity as well as to
preserve the Koza spirit, the cultural and ideological symbolism of Kozans as
neither Japanese nor American. I define “People” here as Kozans who possess
this spirit, those who have lived through the occupation and those who have
lived when Koza was Koza, Kuja, or other moniker of Koza. Takaesu Maria’s
mixed-race-ness and gender as Filipina and American signal us back to that
time and to those people who lived and experienced the actual war, occupation,
and reversion. That (factor) and Those (actor) become affective in evoking a
different champurū Okinawa/n f/actor that emerges from the pastness of history
onto a contemporary staging of a story in overlapping surrealistic loop.
Rather than tracking the multivocality and pan-directional movement of
the story, for the purpose of this chapter, I focus on the format of her writing,
using various forms of Japanese and Okinawan, mixing, deconstructing, and
Champurū Text 129
So let me tell you what the era was like. In the allies, the city was overflowing
with American soldiers who go to and come back from the battlefield. First we
thought they were “mussai mussai” [an ideophone for “scruffy” or dirty, denot-
ing the military exercise/patrol] in the city during the daytime, but at night, this
became a place for rest and relaxation to “takkuwaimukkuwai” [an ideophone
for depicting the suggestive sexual intimacy through the body movement of two
people walking very closely, or embracing or kissing passionately] with girls.
These [soldiers] are people who are the contract killers who follow the State or-
der! Omg, there’s no place of escape, it’s the act of madness to kill or be killed,
exposed under the dim city light, how can I put it, well, let see, it’s like, “haa
iiaaa iiiaaa.” The strange voices were heard almost every night. As if the night
crew resembling a crowd of moths. (92)
What I want to elucidate here is the use of disintegrated and fragmentary lan-
guage form on the levels of word and expression. The word is amalgamated
in Japanese Kanji form (Chinese character) and Okinawan speech written in
katakana form (Japanese syllabary used to denote foreign words, similar to
italics used in English) in creating a kind of hybridized word of one with mul-
tiple forms, signifiers, meanings, and connotations of Japanese, English and
Okinawan. The word for “American soldiers” is written in Japanese katakana
to denote the correct use of the syllabary for foreign word, but is written in Oki-
nawan accent, heetaitaa (in Japanese, heitai), an expression used in an every-
day conversation, found in classic Okinawan poems, writing, and expression,
as well as used in Okinawan performance art, folk music, dance, and plays. An-
other Okinawan word, hingibasyo (In Japanese, negeba), which means a place
of escape, is reconfigured through amalgamating different parts in one word:
Japanese kanji on top of Okinawan word in katakana, in the middle of the “es-
cape,” the Okinawan speech for “to” is in Japanese foreign symbol, katakana,
then finally ends with Japanese kanji, for “place.” Finally, the word does not
exist formally or linguistically in Japanese or Okinawan; it is a champurūed text
produced at the crossroads of race, place, and space in Sakiyama’s and other
Okinawan writers’ work that embody an Okinawan f/actor among other factors
(i.e., war, military, occupation, and the postwar life).
On second and third paragraphs of the quotes above, she uses the Oki-
nawan expressions, “mussai mussai” and “taakuwaimukkuwai” to depict
the familiar scene of the bar and entertainment district of Koza in how one
remembers in visual and visceral images of different bodies (military men,
couples, girls) moving and shifting from day to night, and place/bar to place/
battleground. The expressions in the familiarity of the place evoke the sound
of the time of occupation when soldiers come in as an oppressor, bringing
130 Chapter Seven
down the reign of terror and violence of war through the image and sound
of soldiers in duty in military uniforms and black leather boots. Visual and
visceral effects of soldiers jogging in unison making the sound, “left right
left, left right left,” patrolling the place, looking for any criminal activities or
resolving black-white racial conflicts are etched in both the streetscape and
mindscape of Kozans as everyday life events under occupation. In the night,
the sexual mood and the neon lights shine against those couple’s bodies as
they walk, talk, drink, laugh, and dance in the streets and/or inside the bars.
The sounds of the “mussai mussai” and “taakuwaimukkuwai” as expressions
are not Japanese or American, but Okinawan that point at that time and space
of Koza/Okinawa for those who were there and call themselves Kozans today
in spite of the name no longer official. Maria, who is Filipina and American,
is that Kozan who tells the American occupation story delivered in Sakiya-
ma’s champurū text as Okinawan f/actor. While the protagonist like the real
Japanese people may not have experienced or understood Okinawan time and
space of the occupation, he and the reader are situated to listen to her story.
Sakiyama’s writing of mixing, deconstructing, and recombining language
effectively changes the way the occupation and Okinawan stories are told in
reversal wherein Okinawan speaks and Japanese listens. This champurū text
emerges from the cracks between text and life, creating a third passage to pass
on information to those who listen (i.e., the reader).
In the sixth line, an Okinawan expression “haaiiaaa iiiaaa” written in
katakana refers to a call-and-response phrase, “haaiiiaaa iiaaa saaa saaa,”
which is used in an Okinawan traditional taiko performance, eisaa that sig-
nals the start of a performance. The response that follows after the call is
“saa saaa,” which upon hearing, the music and performance begin, and later,
the call-and-response session might return again somewhere in the middle
and/or at the end. Sakiyama’s use of the expression is performative—an
Okinawan speech written in katakana syllabary gains a double meaning of
the expression as both Okinawan and foreign, which confounds “Okinawa”
as “America,” foreign, and/or not Japan. The imagery of American soldiers
flooding the streets and backstreets of Koza—kill or be killed—alludes to
that colonial difference between three nations that still exists today. Thus the
word conjures up multiple time and space of history as pastness, and paints a
strangely ironic and iconic sense and reality of the champurū zone.
The incomplete call of Sakiyama’s version of “haaiiaaa iiaaa” in missing
the phrase “saa saa” gives a different reading that occurred at the site of this
missing link. One could draw on many possible threads here, but I focus on
space between the two that allows a third articulation of her use of the expres-
sion “haaiiaaa iiaaa.” I suggest the incompleteness of the call-and-response
gained a doubled meaning in both directions: in Okinawan term, it is the
Champurū Text 131
camp created after the Battle of Okinawa, and the beginning of transformation
of Okinawa as an American territory.3 The fiction is based on the author’s re-
ality of living day-to-day witnessing the lived experience of Okinawans who
experienced the war, the internment camp, and the postwar life that formed
this Okinawan American Champurū story. The author, real name, Kishimoto
Katsuji, a native of the Yoshihara district of Koza, is an acupuncturist who
writes short stories, combining history and everyday life into a semi-fictional
narrative. The author’s lived experience with Okinawans and Americans in
Koza informs his writing. I therefore read the story of Kana as a codex with
simultaneous multiple signifiers that produces a champurū’s textual space be-
tween fiction and non-fiction revealing the pastness of history through which
the Okinawa’s champurū f/actor emerges as a third expression.
Narrated by a five-year old girl named Kana, the story takes place in the
Kamara internment camp (eventually renamed Koza Camp), which was es-
tablished immediately after the start of the war. The novella opens with her
slowly recovering from amnesia, and seeing life in transition, from home life
to a new camp life in the aftermath of war. The situation is fuzzy and unset-
tling as people make sense of the place, other people, and space that have
changed overnight. They awaken from a nightmare into an awareness of the
surroundings in which they must live amongst strangers in a place called
Koza Camp, which in real life became “home” for many people. Through
fiction, the story reenacts the true story of the aftermath of the war, which
left one fourth of the prefecture total and one third of the main island of ap-
proximately 150,000 (Roberson 2009, 691; Johnson 1999, 16; Molasky 2001,
16) of the Okinawan population dead in less than three months from April 1
to June 22, 1945.4 The remaining Okinawans were captured and imprisoned
in several internment camps throughout the island. Located near what would
become Koza, the Karama internment camp brought together strangers in
the spirit of the common Okinawan expression, icharibe choodee, “when we
meet, we are brothers and sisters.” This sense of kinship also applies to the
Americans, an idea rife with contradiction in light of the continual sexual
violence against the local Okinawan women. The physical structure of bases
is a common sighting of the everyday, and a reminder of the not-so-distant
memory of the war and occupation, living in contradistinction as part of the
psychic and physical landscape of life.
In Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the
Politics of Remembering, Marita Sturken (2009) argues that the social pro-
duction of national memories of the Vietnam War is constructed by what she
calls “the technologies of memories.” These technologies produce feelings
of nostalgia in cultural products such as public art, memorials, docudramas,
television images, photographs, advertisements, yellow ribbons, red rib-
Champurū Text 133
bons, alternative media, activist art, and art on bodies. In such a way, spoken
language offers clues, and written text performs the feelings of nostalgia,
while simultaneously performing champurū as a signifyin(g) practice that
tropes on tropes (Gates 1988) where one signifier leads to multiplying others
in a third textual forms of hybrid (Bhabha 2004), curdled (Lugones 2003),
or champuruˉed. These forms are similar to creolization and Sakiyama’s
shimakutuba, and as third text, champurū text represents the history of mix-
ing speech patterns of Okinawan and English to create a series of foreign-
local words such as gibumii (Give me), chokoleeto (Chocolate), and sankyu
(thank you) inserted into the Okinawan Japanese colloquial speech. Many
Okinawans who grew up during the “American era” remember expressions
such as “gibumii chokoleeto” as a language expression used when seeing an
American soldier and asking for sweets, and saying “sankyu” after receiving
some chocolate, chewing gum, or candy. Sturken suggests that chocolate as
an American sign conjures up memories of war and produces nostalgia for
the occupation era in the present. For Okinawa, the nostalgia is an intimate
part of the everyday, weaved into the common and mundane landscape
of life, making it less dramatic or “heavy,” though not forgotten. The past
intermingles with the present, living a champurū sense of life that not only
survives, but also, and more importantly, thrives in champurū formation.
Taco Rice, for example, is a popular dish for tourists, military personnel, and
local Okinawans. While its history is the military occupation, Taco Rice has
become the new champurū dish promoted as “Okinawan Soul Food.” Simi-
larly, the word Engrish (the Japanese/Okinawan pronunciation of English)
is a cultural object of occupation, which holds sensorial memories of sound,
form, and use, made intelligible through the interaction between people and
the exchange of words. Yoshihara’s novel captures the Okinawan-American
champurū zone created through the common use of the mixed-lingual form.
Engrish words such as miruku (milk) and pantsu (underwear)5 offer a space
representing the continuum past to present through an affective quality simi-
lar to the technologies of memories of war and occupation. When Kana told
Nao, “my stomach hurts,” Nao responded, “everyone has a stomach ache
when you drink milk for the first time.” Nao comforted her that she will get
used to it, it will get better and diarrhea will stop eventually. And, she told
Kana, “go ahead, put it on. It’s an underwear made from the sheets that we
received as American military rations” (10–11). The words in italics are
written/spoken in foreign katakana form that has crept into Okinawan words/
world that are changing, literally as one speaks in champurū, which is part of
the technology of memory as parts of colloquial speech.
The minutiae of everyday interactions of words and people create the differ-
ential experiences of intimacy versus distance. For example, the pronunciation
134 Chapter Seven
Figure 7.1. Teruya, the former Black District, 2012. The building shows the sign over
other signs, “Right On Custom Tailor,” which served both the black men and Okinawan
schoolchildren.
Ariko S. Ikehara.
strangers who became families in the strangest circumstance of life. But his
mother tells him in Kana’s presence that she already has three children to care
for, and that with a scarcity of food, it is not possible to take Kana in. The
mother turns to Kana and says gently, “I am sorry, little Kana.” And Kana
nods. Here the emotion is not negative but expansive, allowing an unspoken
understanding of all three characters that share circumstances. History be-
comes a site of many re/turns when people who are at first strangers become
family through an unspoken bond created in a dire state of war and militarism.
I argue that this textual space between real and fiction holds memories of not
only Okinawans, but also the Americans in Okinawa whose bodies and sto-
ries are already part and parcel of the narratives of war, military, and postwar
life. Furthermore, cultural texts such as literature, photographs, performance,
and objects present the f/actors of America in Okinawa’s champurū text as
f/actors that cannot be erased or ignored, and most importantly, dismissed, in
the colonial construction of “Asian” as essential and eternal; that is to say, the
texts also signify an American f/actor in their multilingual fold. These texts
perform as a living archive that records and holds onto the mixed-lingual-ling
tonality of the American and Japanese f/actors in the textual soundscape of
Okinawan champurū.
This common story is represented in Nao, a 15-year old girl who is gang-
raped by American military soldiers. This incident invokes the 1995 rape
of a 12-year old girl by three U.S. Marines, which is both the posterior and
anterior to the history of rape. This real-life event awakened the world via so-
cial media and the Okinawan women’s movement, which galvanized a trans-
national movement of many citizens and organizations to critically examine
the impact of the military on women, children, citizen and the environment
around the world. Yoshihara’s novella, depicting the sense of that everyday
space, tells the story as it is happening. Again, fiction and real life, past and
future, meet through Kana, now to show that women’s bodies become sites
of violence under U.S. military culture and sites of critical resistance for life
that literature puts into context beyond the text as an on-going question mark:
does Okinawan LIFE matter?
Okinawa’s American Champurū story witnesses, records, and critiques
the American history and presence, while also creates non-binary, multiple,
and creative worlds/words as possible, thinkable, and available. The making
of words/worlds is what I am arguing is decolonial, which for Okinawans,
is the champurū way of writing, living, expressing, and commenting on life
in the middle of living. The spirit of Nuchi du takara (life is precious/life is
a treasure) lives through this writing, allowing the invisible visible, impos-
sible possible, and unthinkable thinkable to emerge and take shape in one’s
imagination and life. Nakada Tsuyoshi’s short stories exemplify the potential
of champurū text as decolonial whereby “American” recedes into the back-
ground while “Okinawan” foregrounds the history of Okinawa’s American
Champurū story. His third is the im/possible figure of an Okinawan black
mixed race female. In both stories, history is not fixed, but an ongoing pro-
cess of recovery and discovery at the middle of crossing text and life as a
third articulation.
is the final story in a three-part compilation of Koza stories told from three
renderings of Koza as Revolution, Okinawan, and Black. I focus on the final
act through the black-Okinawan female protagonist, Eri, who represents an
Okinawan f/actor that resists the master narrative and creates a new Oki-
nawan future, life, and possibility. Her Okinawan-ness, mixed-ness, and
blackness are in a disidentificatory mode, resisting the tragic trope, while
presenting an alternative mode of narrativity and reality of a different life,
which makes her character, a site of champurū text. In this section, I employ
performance art praxis to situate the body at the center in order to explore a
new formation of place, “race,” and space from the middle, the mundane, and
the in-between. Here I illuminate the parallel structure in both Sakiyama’s
“deteriotorizing language” in creating new emergence of knowledge and the
body’s function to deterritorialize the borders of discreet racial and ethnic
markers is both striking and instructive. Both point to the ‘Okinawa,’ which is
still identifiable in shimakutuba and mixed-race/ethnic body. This Okinawa, I
argue again, is the champurū f/actor. But first, I give a brief overview of the
history and literary representation of the Black District for context and refer-
ence for Nakada’s story.
Teruya’s Black District was formed during the occupation as a place of
haven functioned as an ethnic enclave for black soldiers who at the time still
experienced racism and segregation in the U.S. and in the military. Before
the Black District was an “all-black territory,” however, Teruya along with
the municipalities at the crossroad were not just for blacks, but served all
soldiers. As all “races” among military personnel were present between 1944
and 1952, the areas along the intersection were not racially segregated. How-
ever, according to the city’s archive, part of this “interracial” space, in fact,
had been already segregated prior to 1952, when part of Teruya officially
became the bar and entertainment district, which eventually developed into
the Black District.
By 1952, the bar and entertainment district spread into the adjacent Misato
Village where the military made a simple style barracks as bars in the Misato’s
“Back Street” that became exclusive for the black soldiers. As part of city devel-
opment, Teruya’s ground was flattened by the bulldozer for constructions that
focused on Honmachi dōri where bars, restaurants and cafes developed to ex-
pand the bar and entertainment district in 1954/55. (Koza Bunka Box 3 2007, 62)
It is inferred from the above quote that the informal formation of the ‘Back
Street’ of Misato was a precursor to the formal formation of the Black District
of Teruya that exclusively served blacks. In other words, the Black District
developed as an economic expansion, and not a phenomenon, and often
described as “natural,” “organic,” or unknown. This unknown factor often
Champurū Text 139
becomes the source of wild imagination and fantasy for writers, filmmakers,
and travelers.
In my analysis of the postwar literature about Koza and the Black District,
I found a set of tropes and images that fix the story in a particular orientation,
point of view, and/or a dominant ideology, thereby limiting the possibilities
of the emergence of the multiple. As described in literary scholar Michale
Molasky’s analysis of Konketsuji (Mixed-blood), a story that takes place in
Teruya, highlights “black” as a negative sign that tropes the father, the mother
and the child:
[The story] raises the difficult issue of Koza’s rejection of those “mixed-blood”
children of African-American fathers who most dramatically represent the
town’s hybrid heritage. . . . The widespread Japanese preference for those of
white/Japanese mixed parentage to black/Japanese, but it exposes the postmod-
ern celebration of hybridity to be irrelevant to whose lives are constrained by
the stigma of “racial impurity.” (65)
The text underpins multiple factors at play the issue of “race” that brings
in Japan, the U.S., and Okinawa into the broader historical context of co-
lonialism as western projects that directly link to the “dramatic and hybrid
heritage” of Teruya. “The tragic, erotic and dramatic” tropes are reproduced
through the Okinawa black mixed female character named Hitomi who is
portrayed as unassimilatable in the contemporary novel Miruku-yu (2012).
140 Chapter Seven
The novel, which takes place mostly in the Black District, is a highly drama-
tized and stylized story based on real events that took place in Koza during
the occupation. In the novel, the male protagonist gazes upon Hitomi’s body
through the fact of blackness:
Hitomi’s mixed black-blood figure with long hands and feet does not fit with
the look. Her external appearance matches better with Jazz or Blues than the
island folk songs. It brings out the irony and pity, as she is unconscious of the
incongruity. (Hase 2012, 507)
It is the constant gaze that fixes the fact that a particular body (black, mixed,
dark, etc.) is the Other who is also not Asian, Japanese, or here, even Oki-
nawan. It is the sleight of hand of the writerly style that reproduces not only
the image, but also the “fact” of blackness or otherness that fixes in the minds
of the writers and readers. When history is silenced, stories and experts speak
for the “Others” to construct their “facts” and to write characters through
the dramatics of a colonial gaze in the text. Elsewhere I critique the literary
portrayal of black-mixed female characters as excessive and domesticated as
sickly, tragic, and/or unusually “purified,” innocent and conservative, as if to
domesticate the subject/character according to the hypersexual and animal-
istic impulses that seem to ooze out of the character’s silence. Against the
colonial epistemological fixity of the “death” of these characters, Nakada’s
work provides a champurū model that represents the local, the lived perspec-
tive of Teruya, in which the characters are not depicted as overtly dramatized
or traumatized but presented in the mundane voice with a normal amount of
life drama that reflects part of the author’s own reality and life as a resident
of Teruya.
Now I turn to the work of Nakada Tsuyoshi, The Koza Revolution. In
2010, Nakada submitted the novella in the Koza Literary competition for a
literary prize, but was not awarded. Subsequently, he published it an online
book publishing website called wook until February 28, 2017 when the site
was closed and changed under the new book publishing site called Beyond
Publishing.7 While the literature is no longer available online, Nakada’s story
is a living archive of the Black District history and legacy written by a Koza
resident who witnessed and lived the era as a child. The story beyond its
textual form has another life of performance art wherein Nakada performs
as a one-man show for the local Teruyan residents in a homemade theater
space in one of the closed down shopping areas in Teruya, alluding to the
theater tradition of the past and the location of Sakiyama’s theater district in
the Solitary Island Dream Soliloquy. He plays the grandmother and retells
the story in three parts, spacing out the dates of unscheduled performances.
Nakada is an active member of the community who was a long-time union
Champurū Text 141
This intimate portrait of family affair is not part of the common story of the
Black District, yet for Teruyans and people living along the Koza Crossroad,
this is the reality of the occupation. Eri’s “blackness” is a common fact and
sight of life, not only for Eri’s family, but also for everyone she encounters
in Teurya, Koza, and Okinawa where in real life, figures like Eri were com-
mon fact and mundane sight for Okinawans. This mundane Okinawa depicted
through Eri’s character defies the fixity of both the narrative and the charac-
ter of black-Okinawan female as tragic. She resists the master narrative by
not only surviving in the story, but also thriving as one who holds the key
to the future of Teruya and Koza. She thereby challenges the common as-
sumptions and unexamined “facts” about Teruya’s Black District in both the
literature and the mainstream societies. Although the story moves quickly
from Eri’s uncertain future to the shining moment of becoming a mayoral
candidate, the narrative, nonetheless, escapes the tropes of the eroto-tragedy
(erotic and tragic) by turning the unthinkable into reality. In real life, a lack
of representation of black-Okinawan female characters as heroines or posi-
tive role models begets a bleak past, present, and future for the possibility of
making a difference in the lives of Teruyans. In her speech as Koza’s first
black-Okinawan mayoral candidate, Eri honors her grandmother through all
the grandmothers who lost EVERY thing: having lost the experience to be
young and hopeful, enduring hardships during the war, and continue working
for others’ future after the war. Furthermore, these diverse experiences of the
grandmothers in the intimacy of Okinawa’s postwar life are often faded in the
background or not available in mainstream text or societies. Writers of Koza
fiction who are outsiders often choose to write in a spectacular style to show
the spectacles of people, place, and space of Teurya, Koza, and Okinawa
in order to capture mainstream readership. The grandmothers’ connection
with daughters and granddaughters, for example, are lost in the interracial
and miscegenation drama and stigmata affecting both the novels and real
life stories, yoking the structures of society and narrative into one common
story and fact of blackness, mixed-ness, and Okinawan-ness. Yet, in spite of
the challenge of being “black,” Chiyo, her grandmother brings her up to be
Champurū Text 143
Do you have in your hand what you wished for? What is it that we really
desire? (112)
What is it that you all really desire? Everyone, this is a challenge. Let’s
change it. Let’s challenge ourselves (113)
Please cast your honest vote to the first black mayor for the Okinawa City!
(The song, “What is it you wish for” by Okubayashi is playing) (114)
In both the speech and the song, a sense of something new is on the horizon
that is made palpable through the overlapping calls of “what do we want,”
“what do we desire,” “what do we wish for” that culminate at the end of the
story in multiple formation. I look at how the novel ends as a champurū space
in order to arrive at the author’s intention in placing Eri’s speech at the end of
the Koza trilogy with this particular song, which is playing in the background
and metaphorically, continues to play off the text. Below are the first and the
last verses of the song:
war, the presence of the U.S. military, and the economic and political op-
pression by the Japanese government have yet to pay off in good terms.
However, the spirit of Kozans keep making those attempts to revive the
economy by appropriating its own history into a unique champurū symbol of
multicultural celebration as key to success while waiting in the hope for the
change that is yet to come. Against the odds in both the story and real life,
Eri, like Okinawans, not only survives, but also thrives in the everyday the
uncertainties of the future; and moreover, she/Okinawan f/actor is the future
that people have yet to see as the first black-Okinawan mayor who holds the
key to Koza city’s economic recovery in the story, and, it would be so, in real
life. Here, she is not the Other, but one who is included in the “we” in both
cases without the exceptional or unusual marking of her character to make it
into an unusually exceptional or spectacular figure. She speaks and looks like
the one who has been brought up in that place, space, and time of history of
Okinawa as neither America nor Japan. She, an Okinawan champurū f/actor,
is no longer subjugated by the master’s hand that mutes her voice and recon-
figures her into an effigy of someone else’s literary and literal imagination.
The author gives her an impossible story that in turn gives a possibility of
bright life as the novel ends with a high hope in Eri’s last words, followed by
a stage direction (With a Bright Smile). I suggest this unusual storyline can be
defined as a champurū moment that arises through the text into the reader’s
visual cue in signaling that something else is waiting, lingering, or escaping
through the space between text and life. This waiting reminds me of a literary
strategy that Trinh Minh-Ha presents in her chapter that discusses about The
Debt of Love in Vietnamese story, and that the hope is “always kept alive in
the tale—hope, and not expectation, . . . through the forces that exceed the
lifetime of an individual, that people who knew the lore of survival seek to
solve difficult situations and social inequity” (2011, 17). Trinh’s hope in the
tale is the possibility that I read in Nakada’s story that offers the waiting as
a suspended space that opens up a third context for possibility that redirects
the reader to see that what seems to be a closure at the end of the story is
actually a reopening of a historical turn against the closure of an incomplete
history. It is precisely the meaning that Trinh gives: “hope is kept alive in the
tale” (17) that allows the gesture of opening and reopening to be a possibility.
A subtext of the last line lets a reader know, it is not the end of the line or
story. I suggest that this residual space of waiting is that smile that leaps off
the page, re/turns the gaze upon a reader in meeting “I to an eye” exchange,
thereby shattering the fixed image of the impossible subject on/off text, and
disrupting the master narrative that maintains power and controls the Other.
The reader could very well have missed the play between sign and signi-
fier: bright/possible, smile/hope, but nonetheless a reader reads the textual
146 Chapter Seven
representation of the one who is smiling bright at the end. The smile brightens
up (possibility and hope) the story of Eri who has broken the image of the
impossible subject. In the end, the Other transfigures into an active figure, the
champurū f/actor, that speaks/writes on behalf of itself in multiple, swinging
the pendulum back and forth where the invisible becomes visible, the impos-
sible becomes possible, and the colonial becomes decolonial.
NOTES
1. In this article, all translations from the Japanese are the author’s unless other-
wise indicated.
Champurū Text 147
Since the reversion of Okinawa from the U.S. to Japan in 1972, documentary
photographer Mao Ishikawa1 has chronicled the gritty underbelly of Oki-
nawa, Japan. Her work examines the intertwined post-World War II history
of Japanese and American militarization and the lives of Okinawans working
in peripheral industries. She first gained notoriety with her 1975–1977 “Hot
Days in Camp Hansen!!” series, which features Okinawan and Japanese
mainland hostesses fraternizing with African American servicemen.2 This
chapter compares and contrasts this early controversial work with her 1987
“Life in Philly” series. In “Life in Philly,” Ishikawa follows U.S. Army pri-
vate Myron Carr back to his native Philadelphia, after having met him in 1975
in the Teruya bar district in Koza City (now called Okinawa City). Shot in
black and white, yet offering neither a black nor white perspective on inner
city African American life, Ishikawa’s photographs walk “fence lines” of
desire and present her Okinawan perspective of the Black Pacific.3 What fol-
lows is an examination of the transnational framing of Okinawan and African
American bodies, whose identities and experiences have been constituted by
the American militarization of spaces in both Japan and the United States.4
I first met Mao Ishikawa and her former manager Naoko Uchima in June
of 2012 at a coffee shop in Naha just as the rainy season ended and the rising
summer sun steamed up the streets. Ishikawa was wearing a yellow, orange,
and black aloha print shirt that matched the streaks in her bleached curly
hair. She greeted me with initial apprehension. I overheard her ask Uchima in
Japanese if I was a white gaijin (foreigner). Uchima reassured her that I was
an Uchinānchu (Okinawan) “Amerikan” hāfu (my father is Okinawan from
Hawaiʻi and my mother is white), and that I was also an artist. Her face re-
laxed and she seemed to recognize my ambiguous “Asianness” as Okinawan.
I sensed she could place my story in Okinawa’s pre-World War II history of
149
150 Chapter Eight
mass labor migration to the Americas that followed the poverty and famine
from the crash of Okinawa’s sugar farming industry. Or alternatively, she
may have placed me in the postwar legacy of the U.S. military occupation
of Okinawa and the appearance of Amerasians—Ishikawa had photographed
interacial couples and their Amerasian children in her 2005 “Marriage with
a GI” photographs for her book Fences, Okinawa (Ishikawa 2010, 102–109).
She spoke directly to me in English, “Can you understand me? I speak bad
English that I learned from black men in bars.” Ishikawa gave a big laugh and
showed me her work.5
Mao Ishikawa’s photos have exhibited extensively in galleries and muse-
ums in Okinawa and Tokyo and she is considered one of Okinawa’s most im-
portant living artists, but aside from her inclusion in The Perpetual Moment:
Visions within Okinawa and Korea at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New
York in 2004, her works are not yet widely known in the United States.6 Her
photographs have primarily circulated through Japanese photobooks such
as Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!! (1982); A Port Town Elegy (1990/2015);
Sachiko Nakada’s Theater Company (1991); Okinawa Soul (2002); Life in
Philly (2009); Fences, Okinawa (2010); Here’s What the Japanese Flag
Means to Me (2011); Hot Days in Okinawa (2013); and Morika’s Dream
(2014). The Japanese photobook is a distinct genre in which images, text and
book design come together as an artwork in its own right.7
As we sat in the shadows of a nearby shopping mall in what used to be
the formly independent Ryukyu Kingdom’s port city, in what had turned into
a battleground during World War II, and was now a thriving city center, I
flipped through her archives and was drawn in by the romance of hand pro-
cessed and printed 35 mm black and white photographs.8 The physicality of
the analog photos, even in reproduction, stands out in our digital moment. She
had recently completed her Fences, Okinawa project when we met, in which
she walked and photographed the entire perimeter of the U.S. military bases
of Okinawa from the South to the North. The book opens with an image of
children standing on a coral reef at the water’s edge as they photograph a pas-
senger airplane approaching a nearby base landing strip. In the next image,
a hand painted school zone sign featuring American and Japanese national
flags lies on the ground in front of an all too familiar running chainlink fence
topped with three strands of barbed wire slanted inwards to keep the civilian
population out of the bases. This is juxtaposed next to a grainy image of a
sky filled with outbound Chinook transport helicopters. With 74 percent of
the bases in Japan still located in Okinawa and nearly 20 percent of the total
landmass of Okinawa taken up by U.S. military bases, Mao Ishikawa docu-
ments the comings, goings and transnational circulations of U.S. soldiers and
their impact on Okinawans.
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes 151
The US Marines are trained and based in Okinawa, South Korea, Australia,
Guam, and the Philippines. They drink and talk a lot while they are in Okinawa,
and then they will be sent to Afghanistan . . . US soldiers move from Okinawa
to many places in the world to fight, which Okinawan people sometimes do not
realize. I take photos of the young soldiers regardless (Ishikawa 2010, 3).
She first began photographing U.S. soldiers in Okinawa at the close of the
Vietnam War when she was just twenty-one years old. The only child of a
customs worker and full time mother, Mao Ishikawa was born in 1953 and
grew up in the rural northern Okinawan village of Ōgimi and currently lives
and works in the south in Tomigusuku City, Okinawa.
Ishikawa became a photographer “. . . because I was born in Okinawa. I
wanted to take photos of the military bases . . . focusing on Okinawa in rela-
tion with the US military bases and US soldiers (Ishikawa 2010, 5).” How ex-
actly she became politically mobilized at the age of eighteen is an important
key to understanding her career as a photographer. On November 10, 1971,
when she was in her third year in high school and just becoming involved in
an amateur photography club, she witnessed the infamous death of an Oki-
nawan riot policemen who was killed by a Molotov cocktail thrown by an
Okinawan demonstrator. This so-called “Matsunago Incident” happened in
the midst of a Naha City rally by over 100,000 Okinawans who were express-
ing dissatisfaction against the June 17, 1971 Okinawa Reversion Agreement
that Ishikawa described as admitting “the maintenance of the U.S. bases and
the deployment of the Self Defense Forces in Okinawa [Ryukyu Islands and
the Daito Islands]. . . . I was in the demonstrators and saw a Ryukyu riot
policeman lying paralyzed before me. Smoke was going up in the air like
volcanic fume and I knew he got killed. His fellow riot policemen were fro-
zen onto the spot.” When the moment of shock passed, the riot police began
to violently retaliate against the demonstrators. Ishikawa recalls, “I ran along
the roofs of houses as hard as I could. While running, I vomited and tears and
snot were mixed up” (Ishikawa 2010, 146). She decided then and there that,
“I will photograph Okinawa, the islands fired with anger! I’m going to be a
photographer!”9 Taro Amano, Curator in Chief of Yokohama Art Museum,
noted that as a result of witnessing this riot she “became deeply skeptical of
the reversion campaign that caused some to take a human life–often without
regard to their political views. And she became firmly determined to take
photos of Okinawa, a place filled with political contradictions.”10
Following the reversion of Okinawa from the U.S. to Japan on May 15, 1972,
this newfound passion for photography and purpose led her to travel to Tokyo
152 Chapter Eight
Okinawa in Kin Town, Camp Hansen has been a United States Marine
Corps base where recruits have trained in live fire artillery drills and combat
since the 1950s. It is within this context that the sexual and racial politics of
Ishikawa’s work must be considered.
Scholar Linda Isako Angst notes that for many young American recruits,
“the tour of duty on Okinawa is their first time abroad-indeed, the first time
many of them have ever been away from their hometowns.” While they may
have hoped to “see the world,” they frequently find their lives confined “to
the narrow world (and world view) of the base and the bars and brothels in
its immediate periphery” (Isako Angst 2003, 136–137). These entertainment
districts, which also include legitimate businesses and lively music scenes,
are an infamous part of the unofficial R&R (rest and recuperation) culture
in Okinawa and lay bare a problematic legacy of forced militarized prostitu-
tion at the former Japanese “comfort” stations of World War II.12 After the
war ended, “Japan created the Recreation and Amusement Association for
U.S. troops to engage in prostitution. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who ad-
ministered Japan during the postwar occupation, ended the association after
four months in 1946.”13 “Following the Korean war,” writes scholar Miyume
Tanji, “sexual assaults of women and girls by US soldiers and officers was
common” so some Okinawans came to support “special catering districts”
(tokushu inshoku gai) in places like Koza or Kin Town, “designed for US
military clientele . . . to create a ‘sexual breakwater,’ aimed at protecting
‘normal citizens’ from the potential danger of sexual violence” (Tanji 2006,
80). While officially illegal since 1956 in Japan and certainly off-limits to
U.S. troops who would technically be subject to court-martial, by the late
1960s, according to the U.S. based non-profit Women for Genuine Security,
as many as 10,000 Okinawan women were “coerced into prostitution through
economic hardship” with “one in thirty . . . employed as prostituted women
for the U.S. military in A-sign bars [The “A” meaning “Approved” for mili-
tary patronage].”14 Ishikawa counters that it is a stereotype to assume that “all
women working at base towns are selling their bodies” and she stressed her
own agency and that of her subjects in an anti-colonial narrative. “I pictured
their open and lively way of living, their dignified sights, without hesitation
to the stereotyping eyes, unlike many other people on this small island who
try to live carefully under the eyes of the others. I started to love those women
who just didn’t give a damn about working at bars for black soldiers. I loved
their majestic attitude.”15
In her analysis of the infamous 1995 gang rape by three U.S. servicemen
of a twelve-year-old Okinawan school girl and the specific power and gen-
dered dynamics of Camp Hansen, scholar Linda Isako Angst cautions that
their geographic isolation from the general population, their low salaries, and
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes 155
the nature of their work which is “intensely fixated on their own physicality”
are factors that “contribute to producing a situation in which an occupation
army of restless young, foreign men who have received little preparation for
understanding Okinawan society constitute a clear and present danger to the
local community, especially its women and girls” (Hein and Selden 2003,
136–137). This sense of danger has been exacerbated by the post-reversion
U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which set legal guidelines
for U.S. military personnel. Because the agreement put military personnel
who have committed crimes while off duty into U.S. custody rather than Jap-
anese police custody, regardless of the severity of the crime, it is perceived
as allowing soldiers to be above the law, or at least outside of the reach of
Okinawan or Japanese legal repercussions.
Ishikawa’s dignified view of her former co-workers runs counter to the dis-
missive history of downplaying situations where bar hostesses and prostituted
women have been victims of violence (Tanji 2006, 103).16 In stark contrast,
when victims have been children and young women who are viewed as in-
nocent, their violation symbolically comes to stand in for the subjugation of
Okinawa as the body politic and has led to mass media coverage, outrage,
and protests against U.S. military bases (Tanji 2006, 159).17 A recent example
is from a June 19, 2016 demonstration where according to the organizers
approximately 60,000 Okinawans gathered to protest against U.S. military
bases after the gruesome rape and murder of a 20-year old Okinawan woman
by a U.S. contract worker at Kadena Air Force Base.18 In the case of everyday
violence against female bar workers or prostitutes, however, the widespread
outrage that has characterized these other cases is often muted or silenced, in
a way that “blames the victim.”
The adjective of “hot” in “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!” thus might allude
not only to the tropical climate of Okinawa and the intimate subject matter
of the series, but also to the “hotness” and potentially explosive dynamics
of race, gender, and military occupation. Ishikawa reflected on her motiva-
tion and strategy for capturing this post-reversion era, “I will take photos of
people who live on this island full of the U.S. military. The U.S. military
equals the U.S. personnel. How can I take photos of them? Yes, I will work
as a hostess at a foreigner’s bar. Yes, that is the quick way.”19
Artist and curator Ayelet Zohar has described the series as bravely displaying,
. . . forbidden relationships between the local girls, experiencing the poverty and
isolation of their location, befriending the American G.I.s who, on one hand,
signaled the far away, powerful and the exotic world of America, and yet, were
often themselves victims of the American system. Many of the men involved
in the photographs came from poverty stricken areas, faced social and financial
156 Chapter Eight
barriers, and used their military service as a launching pad to a better life in the
US.20
The women in the photos had started a new life and objected to the raw, naked
portrayal of life at that time. Ishikawa’s husband, whom she married in 1978,
also objected to the publication with a vengeance [he had known about the
photographs and Ishikawa’s past when they married]. Her decision to publish
the book, in spite of these objections, resulted in Ishikawa with her two-year-old
daughter leaving her husband.25
When her fellow hostesses knew her as a peer, Ishikawa says they consented
to being photographed. While it is unclear if they knew the photographs were
intended for distribution as “art” rather than for a personal archive, their
staged postures and direct gaze indicate a reciprocal pleasure in being looked
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes 157
Figure 8.2. Cover image of Hot Days in Camp Hansen!! (circa 1975–1977). Published
in 1982 by Aaman Shuppan.
Courtesy of Mao Ishikawa.
published in 1982 some of her friends “did not want to bother” their husbands
and families with their past. Respecting their wishes for privacy, Ishikawa
gave the original negatives to the women. Before the book was publicly
distributed, she manually cut out six pages from the book that the women
deemed especially problematic.27 Her father, however, secretly kept some of
the original prints, recognizing perhaps that the photographs had historic and
artistic importance for his daughter. In 2011 in a cabinet shelf unopened for
30 years, Ishikawa’s daughter discovered the photos and gave them to her
mother on New Year’s Eve. Ishikawa burst into tears and thanked her father.28
When she made the decision to publicly show “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!”
in 2012, Ishikawa clarified her original intentions for this work,29
This is not an infiltration report. I did not intend to take “sneak peek photos”
on the sidelines. I am neither a magazine photographer nor a photojournalist. I
started taking photos by involving myself in the situation. It is not only a docu-
mentary but also my own emotional record. So working at a bar for African
American personnel is important for me. I decided to become a lady in Kin
Town. (Ishikawa 2013, 148)
Ishikawa thus identified with the hostesses and sought to capture their daily
life in Okinawa while creating an alliance with African Americans. In her
photographs, which were subsequently republished by Foil Co., Ltd. in a book
titled Hot Days in Okinawa in 2013, the hostesses sport big hoop-earrings,
wedge platform shoes, mini-skirts and bell-bottoms and permed hair styled
into “natural” Afros which allude to the iconic symbol of Black pride popu-
larized by members of the Black Panther Party or by actress Pam Grier in the
Blaxploitation hit Foxy Brown (directed by Jack Hill in 1974).30 Ishikawa de-
sired to transgress racial and sexual norms and stereotypes of Japanese female
submissiveness and passivity. She identified strongly with Black culture on a
personal level and in relation to Okinawa’s subjugated geopolitical position.
Her work and political beliefs call for self-empowerment that is at the heart
of the Black Power movement. She states:
Since black people were increasing their civil rights back home in the U.S. at
the time, and the “Black Power” phenomenon reached as far as Okinawa. While
starting to photograph the U.S. soldiers, my concern shifted to the Okinawan
hostesses with whom I worked at the same bar and women who drifted in from
“Yamato” (the mainland). The women, who dream of marrying U.S. soldiers
and living happily ever after, are betrayed over and over. The women, who are
skilled at getting [?] supply them with money and goods. The women, who are
intoxicated all the time with alcohol and drugs. The women popular among the
soldiers in spite of being quite homely. The women who bear a soldier’s child
and marry him, going off to the U.S. to live. . . . These women had to be brave
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes 159
to live in Okinawa. When I was walking with a black man, I saw everyone’s
eyes filled with contempt and curiosity. “What’s wrong with loving a black
man? What’s wrong with enjoying sex?” I myself was young and attractive in
those days. I was popular with the soldiers and lived with two black soldiers. It
was the heyday of my youth. Those women’s ways of life greatly inspired me.31
LIFE IN PHILLY
So you see we both are in the same situation. . . . The Black GI’s are aware
of this situation that brought about the riot, and this was truly a RIGHT-ON-
MOVE. That’s the only way they’ll bend. (Ueunten 2010, 115)
I asked Byron if he would mind me taking pictures of him in bed with one of
the women. He OK’d my request immediately and right away brought along
his girlfriend, who was about to turn nineteen. She had two small children and
had just given birth to a third. “Look!,” she said, and squeezing her breast she
expressed some breast milk. (Ishikawa 2009, inside cover)
She thus reveals a bodily familiarity shared between women, which is em-
phasized in other scenes where multiple nude woman lounge around on a bed
smoking, comparing stretch marks and joking around.
Ishikawa employs an unfussy aesthetic as she portrays sexuality as a mat-
ter-of-fact. We consistently see the subjects’ faces. No one is disembodied,
as they are so frequently in the surreal Japanese experimental art photography
of her mainland peers (e.g. Nobuyoshi Araki’s erotic photos of anonymous
Asian women bound in ropes and chains). While not portrayed in these
intimate frames, Ishikawa’s role as an observer/voyeur and her “emotional
record” is present through the narrative text and raises questions if she is an
insider or outsider here.
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes 163
Figure 8.3. Mao Ishikawa, Bryon Carr, and his girlfriend in 1986, Life in Philly. Pub-
lished in 2011 by Gallery Out of Place/Zen Foto Gallery.
Courtesy of Mao Ishikawa.
“I don’t know how I managed to take photos of all the various scenes,
which are all so very natural. In every one of them, everyone is unselfcon-
sciously themselves and they are unabashed by my presence,” Ishikawa wrote
in 2009 upon reflecting on seeing the works exhibited for the first time in
over twenty years (Ishikawa 2009, inside cover). I am reminded of American
photographer Nan Goldin’s rebuttal of photography’s assumed voyeurism, “it
ceases to be an external experience and becomes a part of the relationship,
which is heightened by the camera, not distanced. The camera connects me
to the experience and clarifies what is going on between me and the subject”
(Goldin 1986, 277).
When the “Life in Philly” prints were first exhibited at Minolta Photo
Space in Tokyo in 1987 Ishikawa printed them poster sized. In this decon-
textualized space, how did the cross-cultural and spatial context of the pho-
tographs’ reception rely on and reinforce ideas of Blackness? Scholar Mitzi
Uehara Carter, author of the blog Grits and Sushi, suggests that from her
perspective as a mixed-race Black Okinawan,
where bases are heavily concentrated. What does it mean for contemporary Oki-
nawan viewers to see Black bodies framed in such a way, so intimately, so desir-
able, so de-militarized in the bedroom or caught in the banality of the everyday?
Does it challenge static understandings of Blackness as “government-issued” or
inflame feelings about crossing into an off-limit territory to some extent—of the
fence line itself?38
Ishikawa showed the series one more time in 1988 in a solo show in Naha
City Gallery in Okinawa. It was not until 2007 that she had the opportunity
to exhibit the works again, alongside a series of self-portraits, in her “Laugh
it off!” exhibit at Gallery Out of Place, in Naha City. Collector Mark Pearson
purchased the vintage prints and in 2009 his Gallery Out of Place published
an oversized photobook titled Life in Philly: Mao Ishikawa. Printed in
saturated rich blacks with full page and double page bleeds, the images are
contextualized with minimal explanatory text, and interspersed with crowded
montage layouts.
CONCLUSION
In the context of Okinawa during the U.S. war in Vietnam, the sexualized
gaze of U.S. soldiers, Black and white alike, subjugated Okinawan hostesses.
While many of the women may have worked the bars with the “dream of
marrying U.S. soldiers and living happily ever,” some, like Ishikawa, were
looking for adventure, love, friendship, and sexual freedom. Ishikawa po-
sitioned herself as a hostess and dared to look back seeking solidarity with
African American soldiers who shared affinities of resistance as ethnic and
racial minorities. Ten years later in Life in Philly, she played the “Othered”
role of Asian tourist in the U.S., photographing Black inner city life. But even
here she disrupts the stereotype of the time of the “group-minded Japanese
tourist . . . generally armed with two cameras, one on each hip” (Sontag
1973, 10). Ishikawa’s gaze both dominated and befriended her female Black
subjects. Was she an “artist as ethnographer,” as art critic Hal Foster (1996)
would say, employing an imperialist gaze? Or could her Third World move-
ment era solidarity with Blacks and indigenous position as a minoritized
Okinawan woman be seen more along the lines of indigenous scholar Linda
Tuhiwai Smith’s perspective, with Ishikawa claiming Afro-Asian spaces to
give testimony, tell stories, remember, and celebrate survival (Smith 2012,
143–164)? As Asian American scholar Gary Y. Okihiro has written about
the Black Pacific, “this detour into ‘the imperial and colonial zones,’ in Paul
Gilroy’s words, away from the centers and toward the margins, reveals the
workings of empire not only on colonial subjects but also and reciprocally on
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes 165
the colonizers in return, like spiders in the bananas of the empire” (Okihiro
2006, 315).
In drawing the two series together, marked differences in the responses of
her subjects become apparent. Binaries of male/female or Black/white power
relationships are insufficient as there are multiple hierarchies of positional-
ity and diverse femininities at play (Enloe 2007, 147). Whereas the women
of Kin reacted negatively to the publication of Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!,
when Life in Philly was published and Mao mailed him a copy in March of
2010, Myron enthusiastically responded.39 He was so pleased that he couldn’t
stop crying as many of the people she had photographed had already passed
away. Her photographs captured the spirit of the times and brought back fond
memories. Byron was also reportedly happy with his pictures. They felt like
she had made them movie stars.40 Myron passed away in October 22, 2011
of a genetic condition and Bryon died of the same cause shortly thereafter on
August 1, 2012.41 The brothers’ portrayal and positive reaction could be seen
as reinforcing stereotypical masculinist images of Black males as possessing
hypersexual prowess. It is telling that the girlfriends in Life in Philly remain
anonymous, as do the women of Kin Town (though the Kin women got to
“speak” back to the photos quite forcefully, while the Philly women have not
had or chosen to take that opportunity). Ishikawa’s work provides a critique
of militarization that is problematized by Black sexuality and the subjectivity
of Okinawan women. Her work gains much of its poignancy through teeter-
ing on sensibilities of exploitation and desire, often as intimate insider to the
real lives of those around her. Through Okinawan eyes, her work extends the
visual archive of the Black Pacific by centering Black bodies within Japanese
history.42
NOTES
1. Japanese names have been presented in the American manner with the first
name followed by the surname.
2. The terms “hostess” and “barmaid” are used interchangeably in this chapter. At
the request of Ishikawa, I have used the term “hostess” to describe her former em-
ployment. “Barmaid” and “lady in Kin Town” have also been used in places where I
am directly quoting from previously published citations from Ishikawa. In Okinawa,
the terms “barmaid” or “bar girls” typically referred to a cocktail server who worked
at the bars in front of the counter with a wage often determined primarily on their
ability to socialize with GI men, but who had more choice around non-economically
based relations. “Hostesses,” in the modern Japanese sense of the word, refers to
women hired with an expectation to go on “dates” with customers. “Hostess,” in the
U.S. context, refers to women hired to welcome and seat customers at the front of
166 Chapter Eight
25. Taro Amano quoted in “When a personal history changes into History,” ibid,
Maoishikawa.com. Accessed September 6, 2012. http://maoishikawa.com/press/
when-a-personal-history-changes-into-history.html.
26. I did not have access to interview any of the women directly to get their per-
spective on Ishikawa’s photographs.
27. Ibid, Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!
28. Ibid, Taro Amano.
29. Although the work was shown again in 2004, the book has since been taken
out of circulation.
30. See image by Toyomitsu Higa and Mao Ishikawa, Hot Days in Camp Hansen
!!, 1977, 25.7 x 18.9 cm, BritishMuseum.org. Accessed September 13, 2012. http://
www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_de-
tails.aspx?objectid=3412893&partid=1&searchText=web&fromDate=1700&fromA
DBC=ad&toDate=2100&toADBC=ad&numpages=10&images=on&orig=%2Fresea
rch%2Fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx¤tPage=5.
31. Mao Ishikawa, “Hot Days in Camp Hanson” quoted from “Non-Sect Radical:
Contemporary Photography III,” ibid, Maoishikawa.com. Accessed July 30, 2012.
http://maoishikawa.com/works/hot-days-in-camp-hansen.html.
32. Mao Ishikawa, “Philippine Dancers,” Maoishikawa.com. Accessed September
6, 2012. http://maoishikawa.com/works/philippine-dancers.html.
33. See also “The Presence of (Black) Liberation in Okinawa Freedom Transna-
tional Moments, 1968–1972” by Yuichirio Onishi in Extending the Diaspora: New
Histories of Black People, ed. by Dawne Y. Curry, Eric D. Duke, Marshanda A.
Smith (Urbana, IL: Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 2009), Ch 8.
34. Ibid, Uchima interview, September 1, 2012.
35. Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Chicago, Chicago (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1969).
36. Ibid, Ishikawa interview, June 28, 2012.
37. In reality these were staged shots, “the couples were playing” and not actually
having sex. Ibid, Uchima interview, September 13, 2012.
38. Mitzi Uehara Carter, e-mail message to author, September 14, 2012.
39. Translation provided by Naoko Uchima, ibid September 13, 2012, of Mao
Ishikawa, “マイロンの感想 (Myron Straight),” Blog.livedoor.jp/ishikawa. Accessed
September 13, 2012. http://blog.livedoor.jp/ishikawamao/archives/65822907.html.
40. Ibid, Ishikawa interview June 28, 2012. To date these works have yet to be ex-
hibited in the U.S. so the full implications of the photographs have not been actively
debated in African American contexts.
41. Ibid, Ishikawa interview, November 27, 2013.
42. “Through Okinawan eyes” alludes to the title of a memoir of twenty-eight boys
from Okinawa who attended the University of New Mexico in 1950. Jane Leuders
and Edward G. Kluckhohn, Through Okinawan Eyes (Albuquerque, NM: University
of New Mexico Press, 1951). It is not meant to assume that Ishikawa’s perspective
stands for all Okinawans.
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186 Index
transnational, ix, xi, xv, 82–83, 103, U.S. military bases, ix, xii, xiii; anti-.
106, 108, 114, 116–117, 139, See anti-U.S. base activities; Camp
146, 149–150; alliances, 82, 103; Hansen, 154, 156; Camp Koza, 131;
anti-base movement, 100, See anti- Clark Air base, 89–90; Futenma, 89,
U.S. base activities; anti-colonial 97–8; in Atsugi, 97; in Germany,
campaining, 82, 154; cooperation, vii; in Guam, 122; in Hokkaido, 97;
100; feminist, 152; imaginings, 104; in Japan, vii, 122; in Okinawa, vii,
kinship ties, 105; movement, xii, ix–xii, 122; in Philippines, 122; in
137; networks, xiii, 84, 99; political South Korea. Vii, 84, 90, 122, 150;
alliances, 126; solidarity movement, in Yongsan, 197; Kadena Airforce
97, 100; transnationalism, 103, 105, base. 52, 89, 96, 155–56; Yokosuka,
114, 117 95, 97
Treaty of Peace with Japan, xii, xvn1, U.S. military installations, 39–40, 46,
11, 20n10, 36, 42 50, 56
Trinh T. Minh-Ha, 121, 126, 145–6
Trovillot, Michel, 122 VD control, 28–30
tuberculosis, 21, 24, 29, 34–36 Vietnam War, 28, 85, 89, 132, 151, 153,
160, 164; anti-, 82, 160
Uehara-Carter, Mitzi, 113, 163, 166n4
Ueunten, Wesley, 160 Watterworth, Juanita A., 24–28,
United Kingdom, 81 32–33
United States Civil Administration of World War II, x, xii, 45, 59, 69, 84–86,
the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR), xiv, 105, 149–150, 154
1–3, 10, 14–15, 17, 21–38, 38n2,
45, 47 Yakabi Osamu, 9, 12, 19n5
United States Forces, 42; in Japan Yokohama Art Museum, 151
(USFJ), 40 Yonaha Jun, 19n4
University of the Ryukyus, 66, 68, Yanbaru, 81
76–77, 92, 147n2, Yonahara Setsuko, 26–27
U.S. Department of Defense, vii Yuichiro, Onishi, 82–83
U.S. Empire, 22, 34; U.S. 5th Air Force, Yuk Young-soo, 94
84; U.S. 7th Fleet, 84; U.S. 8th “Yun Geum-I case,” 90
Army, 97
U.S.-Japan peace treaty, 11, zainichi Koreans, See mixed-race
U.S. Occupation Forces, 40, 49 identities
USCAR. See United States Civil Zohar, Ayelet, 155–6, 167n20
Administration of the Ryukyu
Islands 1955–system, 62
About the Editors and Contributors
Laura Kina is Vincent de Paul Professor of Art, Media, & Design and Di-
rector of Critical Ethnic Studies at DePaul University, co-editor of Queering
Contemporary Asian American Art (2017), co-editor War Baby/Love Child:
Mixed Race Asian American Art (2013), co-founder of the Critical Mixed
Studies conference and association, and a reviews editor for the Asian Dia-
sporic Visual Culture in the Americas. Her solo exhibitions include Uchinan-
chu, Blue Hawaiʻi, Sugar, A Many-Splendored Thing, Aloha Dreams, and
Hapa Soap Operas.
193
194 About the Editors and Contributors
Hiroko Matsuda has received a doctoral degree from the Australian National
University, and is currently an associate professor of Kobe Gakuin Univer-
sity in Japan. Her publications include “Becoming Japanese in the Colony:
Okinawan Migrants in Colonial Taiwan” Cultural Studies 26:5 (2012), and
“Whose Home? Cultural Pluralism and Preservation of Japanese Colonial
Heritage in Taipei City,” in Sites of Modernity: Asian Cities in Transitory
Moments of Trade, Colonialism, and nationalism, edited by Wasana Wong-
surawat (2016). She is the author of Liminality of Japanese Empire: Border
Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan (forthcoming).