Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

Myth, Protest and Struggle 

in Okinawa 

Okinawan people have developed a unique tradition of protest in their long 

history of oppression and marginalization. Beginning with the Ryūkyū Kingdom’s 

annexation to Japan in the late ninteenth century, this book charts the devastation 

caused by World War II, followed by the direct occupation of postwar Okinawa 

and continued presence of the US military forces in the wake of reversion to 

Japan in 1972. Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa challenges the unitary 

representation of Okinawan protest, by focusing on diversity and change in the 

postwar community of protest. It closely examines different protest groups and 

organizations that contributed to three conspicuous ‘waves’ of mass protest in the 

1950s, late 1960s, and mid-1990s. As in many other parts of the world, the centre 

of gravity in Okinawan radical political activism has shifted from the organized 

labour movement led by political parties and trade unions, to informally organized, 

smaller and more individual-based ‘new social movements’. With ever more 

fragmented organizations, identities and strategies, Tanji explores how the unity 

of the Okinawan community of protest has come to rest increasingly on the politics 

of myth and the imagination. 

Drawing on original interview material with Okinawan protestors and in-depth 

analysis of protest history, Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa will appeal to 

scholars of Japanese history and politics, and those working on social movements 

and protest. 

Miyume Tanji is a research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, 

Australia. Her main research interests are in protest and social movements in 

Okinawa and Japan, as well as international relations.

Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies/Routledge Series 

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Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa 

Miyume Tanji 

Nationalisms in Japan 

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Myth, Protest and Struggle 

in Okinawa 

Miyume Tanji

First published 2006 

by Routledge 

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada 

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©2006 Miyume Tanji 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted 

or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, 

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter 

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any 

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in 

writing from the publishers. 

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 

Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 

Tanji, Miyume. 

Myth, struggle and protest in okinawa/Tanji Miyume.– 1st ed. 

p. cm. – (Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies/Routledge series) 

Includes bibliographical references and index. 

ISBN 0–415–36500–7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Okinawa-ken (Japan)–History. 

I. Title. II. Series. 

DS894.99.O3785T36 2006 

952'.29–dc22 2005033076 

ISBN 0-203-01612-2� Master e-book ISBN 

ISBN10: 0–415–36500–7 (hbk) 

ISBN10: 0–203–01612–2 (ebk) 

ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–36500–0 (hbk) 

ISBN13: 9–78–0–203–01612–1 (ebk)

For Peter Makiko and Jun Tanji

Contents 

List of maps and figures x 

Acknowledgements xi 

Abbreviations xiii 

Glossary xiv 

1 Introduction: a community of protest in Okinawa 1 

2 Diversity and unity in the community of protest 11 

3 Annexation and assimilation: ambiguous origins 21 

4 The Battle of Okinawa and ‘Okinawan pacifism’ 36 

5 The first wave: opposition to US military land 

acquisition 53 

6 The second wave: towards reversion 77 

7 The anti-war landowners and the progressive 

coalition: the constitutional framing of protest 106 

8 Kin Bay and Shiraho: emergence of new social 

movements 127 

9 The third wave and beyond: the power of Unai and 

the dugongs 150 

Conclusion 177 

Notes 181 

Bibliography 208 

Index 227

Maps and figures 

Maps 

A Ryūkyū Islands, Japan and the Pacific xv 

B Amami and Okinawa Island Groups (Guntō) xvi 

C Yaeyama and Miyako groups (Guntō) xvii 

D US Bases in Okinawa Main Island xviii 

E Okinawa Main Island, Kerama, Ie, Kin Bay Area, 

Nago City, Naha, Futenma, and Henoko xix 

5.1 Maja hamlet 67 

8.1 Kin Bay Area 128 

8.2 Ishigaki Island and Shiraho 129 

Figures 

5.1 Beggars’ march in Naha – Heiwa Dōri 69 

6.1 Boat rally, 28 April 1968 87 

6.2 Okinawan citizens’ rally, 28 April 1965 89 

6.3 Demonstrators stop the Two Laws on Education, 

24 February 1967 92 

7.1 One-tsubo anti-war landowners protesting against the 

relocation of Naha Port in Naha central district, May 1999 118 

7.2 At a 28 April function, 1999 120 

8.1 Ōshiro Fumi and Sakihara Seishū 139 

9.1 Koe, Koe, Koe 171

Acknowledgements 

I feel extremely privileged and fortunate to have the opportunity of publishing this 

work. This book’s journey was only made possible by many people’s encouragement 

and help. First of all, I would like to express my greatest thanks to all the people 

who talked to me in Okinawa for their time and patience, especially Arasaki 

Moriteru, Arime Masao, Asato Eiko, Asato Hideo, Chibana Shōichi, Chibana Yōko, 

Ginoza Eiko, Carolyn Francis, Gotō Tetsushi, Iha Yōichi, Kawamitsu Shin’ichi, 

Koshi’ishi Masashi, Kunimasa Mie, Makishi Yoshikazu, Matayoshi Kyōko, Miyagi 

Kimiko, Miyagi Yasuhiro, Ōnishi Masayuki, Sakihara Seishū, Sakiyama Masami, 

Shiroma Masaru, Sunagawa Kaori, Takaesu Asao, Takaesu Ayano, Takazato 

Suzuyo, Terada Reiko, Uehara Seishin, Ui Jun, and Yamazato Setsuko. I have tried 

to do justice to their generosity, yet any imperfections in the work are mine. I also 

thank Egami Takayoshi, Gotō Satoshi, Shinjō Kyōko and Akihisa who assisted me 

during my field trip in Okinawa. Kinjō Chikashi helped me with transport. I have 

to thank him but also apologize for my driving skills, which were acquired in Western 

Australia and proved inadequate to the intricate roads in Okinawa Main Island. 

I am enormously indebted to the encouragement of Glenn Hook, the series editor, 

who has given me the necessary encouragement for publication and vital comments 

to improve the work. The book began life as a doctoral project at Murdoch University 

in Perth, Western Australia. The Asia Research Centre and the School of 

Politics have provided me with a home base and financial support. The Murdoch 

University Graduate Centre’s Writing Fellowship was also of great assistance. I 

would like to express my special thanks to Garry Rodan, Director of the Asia 

Research Centre. His support during and beyond the doctoral research has been 

the most constant feature of this journey and he encouraged me to be both disciplined 

and adventurous. I would like to thank all of my colleagues amongst others, 

long-term office Toby Carroll and administrative support of Tamara Dent at the 

Asia Research Centre for their understanding and support as well as a communal 

atmosphere, which helped me immensely. Also at Murdoch, I am grateful especially 

to Sandra Wilson and David Brown for helpful suggestions on my chapters. Since 

I first came to Perth in 1997, not knowing a single person, I have been supported 

personally by friends, especially Sid Adams, Fay Davidson, Peter McMahon, 

Patrick West, David Bourchier, and Elke Keiser. During my stay as a National 

Visiting Scholar in 1999, I received help from scholars at the Division of Pacific

xii Acknowledgements 

and Asian History at the Australian National University, especially Gavan 

McCormack and Julia Yonetani. More recently, this project has benefited from 

John Clammer and Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s detailed feedback and encouragement. 

I am grateful for the generous support and skills of Vivian Forbes in the preparation 

of maps. Valuable as was the help of all of those I have named, however, the 

responsibility for the final project is solely mine. 

I would like to express my deepest thanks to my parents, Makiko Tanji and Jun 

Tanji for their patience and various kinds of support. Finally, this book is dedicated 

to Peter Vintila who gracefully suffered the painful process of the book’s completion 

while, at the same time, offering generous intellectual, editorial, and emotional 

support. 

I would like to thank Kunimasa Mie for the permission to include a leaflet (Figure 

9.1) in this book. Parts of this book have been previously published in Japan and 

Okinawa: Structure and Subjectivity edited by Glenn D. Hook and Richard Siddle 

(RoutledgeCurzon, London: 2003) and Intersections: Gender, History & Culture 

in the Asian Context in no. 13 (2006). 

Japanese names are presented surname first and given name second, following 

the conventional Japanese fashion, except for the English-language quotations or 

otherwise ordered bibliographical references. Macrons are placed to indicate all 

long vowels, except in the case of well-known geographical names.

Abbreviations 

ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Union 

GRI Government of Ryūkyū Islands 

JCP Japanese Communist Party 

JSP Japan Socialist Party 

LDP Liberal Democratic Party 

OLDP Okinawa Liberal Democratic Party 

OPP Okinawa People’s Party 

OSMP Okinawa Socialist Masses Party 

OSP Okinawa Socialist Party 

OTA Okinawa Teachers’ Association 

SACO Special Action Committee on Okinawa 

SDF Self-Defence Forces 

SCAP Supreme Command for Allied Powers 

SOFA Status of Forces Agreement 

USCAR United States Civil Administration of the Ryūkyūs 

WWI, II World War I, II

Glossary 

Ampo US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty 

Beheiren Federation of Citizens for Peace in Vietnam 

fukki Reversion 

hinomaru The design for a de facto national flag, until the Diet passed the 

law that stipulated its official position in 1999 

Fukki-kyō Council for the Return of Okinawa to the Home Country 

Iken Kyōtō Okinawa Supporting Council for the Legal Actions against 

Unconstitutionality 

Jichirō All Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers’ Union 

Kankōrō Okinawa Public Office Workers’ Unions Council 

Kenrōkyō Okinawa Prefectural Labour Union Committee 

Minsei Democratic Youth League 

Okifuren League of Okinawan Women’s Groups 

Rengō Japanese Trade Union Confederation 

Sōhyō General Council of Japanese Trade Unions 

Tochiren Okinawa Federation of Landowners of Land Used for Military 

Purposes 

yamato Mainland Japan 

Zenchurō All Garrison Forces Labor Union Okinawa Division 

Zengakuren All-Japan Federation of Student Self-Government Association 

Zengunrō All Okinawan Military Workers’ Union 

Zenkyōtō All-Japan Joint Struggle Committee 

Zen-Oki Rōren All Okinawan Labour Unions’ Association

CHINA 

EAST 

CHINA 

SEA 

Taiwan 

Philippine Islands 

Kyushu 

Ryu - kyu - Islands 

Honshu 

PACIFIC OCEAN 

0 200 400 600 

Statute Miles 

120° 135° 150° 

Map A Ryūkyū Islands, Japan and the Pacific (Source: Pearson 1969: 2, courtesy of Richard 

Pearson) 

N 

Hokkaido 

Kurile Islands 

45° 

30° 

15°

Kume 

Okinawa Gunto - 

Oblique Mercator Projection 

EAST CHINA SEA 

Kerama 

Iheya 

Ie 

Okinoerabu 

128° 

Tokunoshima 

Okinawa 

Yoron 

Takara 

Kaminone 

Yokoate 

Amami O - shima 

O 

Kuchinoerabu 

- sumi Gunto- Suwanose 

Akuseki 

PACIFIC OCEAN 

Map B Amami and Okinawa Island groups (Guntō) (Source: Pearson 1969: 15, courtesy 

of Richard Pearson). The dotted line indicates the northern border of Okinawa 

Prefecture 

Kuchi 

Amami Gunto- 

Tokara Gunto- 

130° 

Yaku 

Kikai 

Kyushu 

N 

0 50 

Statute Miles 

Tane 

32° 

30° 

28° 

26°

26° 

24° 

22° 

20° 

CHINA 

Huian 

TAIWAN 

Lan Yü 

Lü Tao 

Oblique Mercator Projection 

Yonaguni Iriomote 

TROPIC OF CANCER 

EAST CHINA SEA 

Minna 

Tarama 

Ishigaki 

Yaeyama Gunto 

Hateruma 

PACIFIC OCEAN 

Miyako Gunto 

0 50 

Statute Miles 

Map C Yaeyama and Miyako groups (Guntō) (Source: Pearson 1969: 14, courtesy of 

Richard Pearson) 

Irabu 

N 

Miyako

1 Northern Training Area 

2 Okuma Rest Center 

3 le-jima Auxiliary Airfield 

4 Yaedake Communication Site 

5 Gesaji Communication Site 

6 Camp Schwab 

7 Henoko Ordnance Ammunition Depot 

8 Camp Hansen 

9 Ginbaru Training Area 

30 Tsuken-jima Training Area 

31 Army POL (Petrol, Oil, Lubricants) Depots 

32 Tori-shima Firing and Bombing Field 

33 Kume-jima Firing and Bombing Field 

34 Kobi Firing and Bombing Field 

35 Akao Firing and Bombing Field 

36 Desa-jima Firing and Bombing Field 

37 Okidaito-jima Firing and Bombing Field 

28 

3 

13 12 

19 

18 

27 

20 

23 

21 

26 

25 

4 

14 

15 

16 

17 

24 

10 Kin Blue Beach Training Area 

11 Kin Red Beach Training Area 

12 Kadena Ammunition Storage Area 

13 Senaha Communication Site 

14 Tengan Pier 

15 Camp Courtney 

16 Camp Mctureous 

17 Camp Shields 

18 Yomitan Auxiliary Airfield 

11 

22 

8 

34 

9 

10 

19 Sobe Communication Site 

20 Torii Communication Station 

21 Camp Kuwae 

22 White Beach Area 

23 Kadena Air Base 

24 Awase Communication Station 

25 Camp Zukeran 

26 Futenma Air Station 

27 Makiminato Service Area 

28 Naha Port 

29 (Ukibaru-jima Training Area) 

Map D US Bases in Okinawa Main Island. Modified by the author from Asagumo 

Shimbunsha (2006) Bōei Handobukku (Defence Handbook), Tokyo: Asagumo 

Shimbunsha: 438 

6 

30 

35 

7 

( 29) 

5 

2 

32 

36 

33 

1 

31 

37

Iheya Island Yoron Island 

N 

27° 

Izena 

0 20 M 

0 20 Km 

Nago City 

Ie Island 

OKINAWA 

Aguni 

Henoko 

Kin Bay 

Futenma Base 

Kume 

Naha 

PACIFIC OCEAN 

Kerama Archipelago 

28°N 

127°E 128° 

Map E Okinawa Main Island, Kerama, Ie, Kin Bay Area, Nago City, Naha, Futenma, and Henoko (Courtesy of Vivian Forbes)

1 Introduction 

A community of protest in Okinawa 

In September 1995 three US Marines kidnapped and gang-raped a young Okinawan 

girl. Okinawa, a marginal Japanese prefecture located in a chain of islands linking 

Kyushu and Taiwan (Map A), briefly came into the international spotlight. The 

anachronistic colonial presence of the US forces in Okinawa from WWII was 

exposed to worldwide media coverage. It revealed the extraterritorial privilege 

given to the US military staff and families that excluded them from local 

jurisdictions. It also revealed the disproportionate concentration of US military 

bases on Okinawa – Okinawa Prefecture hosts 75 per cent of the US forces deployed 

in Japan, though it accounts for just 0.6 per cent of Japan’s land mass. A population 

of approximately 1.4 million live in 2,266 square kilometres (589 per square 

kilometre). The US military bases and facilities occupy approximately 10.4 

per cent of Okinawa Prefecture, and 18.8 per cent of Okinawa Main Island (226 

out of 1,204 square kilometres) (Okinawa Ken Sōmubu Chiji Kōshitsu Kichi 

Taisakushitsu 2005: 5) (Map D). In October 1995, 85,000 Okinawans expressed 

their unwillingness to endure any more of the abuse, outrage, insecurity, nuisance, 

or inconvenience imposed by this foreign military presence. 

The story of Okinawan suffering does not begin with US postwar military 

presence. Since the late nineteenth century, the inhabitants of the islands – once 

known as the small but separate entity of the Ryūkyū kingdom – have constantly 

been the victims of oppression, domination, dispossession, discrimination, and 

episodic violence. They were deprived of their independence, were economically 

impoverished, lost their language, and were colonized twice over – by Japan 

and by the US. During the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, the US forces’ ‘typhoon of 

steel’ devastated lives and landscapes. The locals were abused and murdered by 

the Japanese military and died of starvation and forced suicides. The Battle resulted 

in the death of almost one-third of the local population. It was briefly hoped that 

US victory over Japan would remedy war destruction. But the US had other plans, 

and abuse of the Okinwans has proceeded apace in the postwar period. After the 

war, the islanders were put under direct US military rule, and by force of bulldozers 

and armed soldiers were deprived of privately owned land needed to build military 

bases for US Cold War geopolitics. For 27 years after the war, Okinawans 

lived with an administration that stole their land, displaced and interned populations, 

disrupted and distorted economic development, and showed scant regard for civil,

2 Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa 

political, and labour rights and for the rule of law. To be sure, war has given way 

to peace – but it was and still is a peculiar kind of peace. It is not a civilian peace, 

not the peace one breathes on the streets or towns of busy cities or a productive 

countryside. It is the peace of intense preparedness for war in the nuclear age. It 

is the peace to be found in a colossal fortress or garrison ready to project power 

globally and at short notice. 

Okinawa has become a US garrison and is living, if not in its belly, then within 

its shadow. Contemporary garrisons of this kind and on this scale are hungry beasts 

– the biggest in the world – and the US military wanted unlimited access to land, 

water, coast, and sky. It also wanted cheap compliant human labour in bulk to 

support military personnel and prostitution on industrial scales to satisfy their lust. 

Needless to say, Okinawa’s damaged civil society frequently protested but civilian 

demands were things that got in the way of US forces’ concentration on war. 

In 1972, the administration of Okinawa was ‘returned’ to Japan, but the bases 

remained; so did their privileges, perpetuating the threat of rape and crime, accidents, 

nuisances, continuing occupation of land, environmental degradation, and a wide 

range of health hazards including explosive noise. Having said this, Okinawa has 

been the beneficiary of the Japanese government’s special industrialization plans 

that brought in enormous funding and subsidized public works projects and these 

have served as a form of compensation for accommodating the garrison. However, 

most of the benefits of these ‘developments’ have been channelled back to mainland 

Japanese construction and tourism industries. The bureaucratic controls imposed by 

these projects and programmes have also frequently damaged the natural resources 

and undermined the economic self-reliance of local populations. Okinawa has borne 

the heaviest physical and moral brunt of the US-Japan security alliance – simultaneously 

the victim of US military presence and Japan’s discriminatory treatment 

of a minority group. Okinawans, are, as a consequence, amongst the most and longest 

abused peoples of the twentieth century. 

The stories of suffering and discrimination, however, are accompanied by stories 

of protest and resistance. This book is about the Okinawans’ political responses 

to their abuse and marginalization. One of its larger intentions is to demonstrate 

that this response is more complex than is often appreciated, if not seamlessly 

continuous, stable, or constant in focus. And nor is the protest community a unified, 

homogeneous and single-minded collective subject. Indeed it is many-minded; it is 

fragmented, it is fractious, and it is diverse. To be sure, the community protest (as 

I, for all its fractiousness, still call it) is uniquely and distinctively Okinawan. But 

this identity arises as much from a history of protest which has evolved, adapted, 

refocused, and flexibly strategized over the half century or more of its existence as 

it does from harmony, continuity, and stability. It arises as much from debates within 

the community and from growing diversity as it does from consensus and unity. 

In recognition of this diversity, the Okinawan anti-base protesters have attracted 

external support from a wide range of international peace, environmental and 

feminist activists, scientists, journalists, and academics. My book is about the story 

of this complexity and it attempts to show, amongst other things, that collective 

identities, fraught and unstable though they become, can survive and encompass

Introduction 3 

change, disagreement, and diversity. Indeed, though I venture this as speculation, 

there is likely to be strength and resilience in surviving such challenges. 

The main forces that drive anti-base protest in Okinawa have been much 

more than NIMBY (not in my backyard) politics, 1 or demand for political and 

economic concessions. The most basic, the most potent and most enduring concern 

of Okinwan protesters has, not surprisingly, been war itself. This concern was 

originally from the collective and near-genocidal traumas of the Battle of Okinawa. 

At the same time, however, this concern about war has continually been reactivated 

by visible presence of the huge and hungry war machine gradually assembled by 

the US in the postwar decades. Anti-militarism was fed by three sources: memories 

of the Battle of Okinawa, the disruptiveness of the bases and a deep antipathy 

towards them arising from the ultimate purpose they would serve: war-making. Yet 

the main motivations for local protest against the US military bases have further 

expanded to environmental concerns, connections between militarism and structural 

violence against women that are globally relevant. This book emphasizes that many 

Okinawan anti-base activists are consciously taking up the task of addressing 

humanistic concerns aroused by global US strategies involving their bases on 

Okinawa. It understands the Okinawans’ protest – particularly after the reversion 

– as a constellation of multiple ‘social movements’, similar to other protest 

movements in the world that are studied more extensively (e.g. the civil rights 

movement, anti-nuclear movements, and the anti-base women at Greenham 

Common). 

In the long history of protest in Okinawa, the defining character has been internal 

diversity and differences. ‘Okinawa’ encompasses a socio-economically diverse 

multilingual and multicultural islands and regions. There are many different ways 

of defining Okinawa’s predicament today; protesters’ occupations, assets, place 

of residence, gender, age, and past experiences as activists being among those 

that influence this diversity. Today, for example, the US military bases affect 

regions and municipalities considerably differently in terms of noise, crimes, and 

importantly, economic benefits to the local economy. This includes variations of 

perception about what ‘Okinawa’ means, vis-à-vis mainland Japan: how separate 

an entity is ‘Okinawa’ from yamato? Inevitably, these differences are reflected in 

the varying priorities and modus operandi of protest. Moreover, particularly after 

Okinawa reverted to Japanese administration in 1972, protest groups have become 

smaller and less affiliated to established political parties or workers’ unions. Their 

number has also been increasing, addressing increasingly different areas of social 

concern that are not exclusively related to the marginalization of Okinawa vis-àvis 

Japan, but also concerning environmentalism and feminism. Okinawan protest 

actors are becoming more and more like ‘new social movements’ prevalent in 

post-industrial societies. Vibrant centres of protest in Okinawa are moving away 

from established leftist political parties and workers’ unions, and the means of 

protest are becoming more individually based and concentrated on informal political 

activities. Traditional actors, namely political parties and union activists, remain 

a routine protest sector, so that we see a deepening of the divisions within the 

community of protest rather than a smooth replacement of old for new.


Reading protest in Okinawa: focus on diversity 

On my first visit to Okinawa, I could not find an umbrella organization encompassing 

the whole of the locals’ anti-US military protest. As Matthew Allen first 

found on his field trip, it was also difficult to trace evidence of an ‘Okinawans’ 

movement’ committed to political action to demand secession from Japan (Allen 

2002: 3). 2 Rather, my impression was that the local activists tended to accept, and 

even appeared proud of, the chaotic complexion of organizations engaged in protest. 

Allen Nelson, a former US Marine and now a peace activist, frequently visits 

Okinawa, meets local anti-base and peace groups, and gives talks about his 

experiences in the military, of the Vietnam War, and about the actual war practices 

of the US military, in the bases located on Okinawa. 3 On his trip in 2002, I met 

Nelson at a private function where he gave a talk on ‘what the US forces really do 

in the training grounds in Okinawa’. He was physically exhausted and had been 

lying down until immediately before the talk. Nelson explained: 

When I come to Okinawa, I have an extremely busy schedule, because I give 

talks for so many different groups. I am asked to give a talk by this group and 

that organization and I don’t want to say no. The Okinawan peace groups are 

so splintered. Why can’t they all be together? Personally I don’t think they will 

have a substantial voice strong enough to move the US military unless all those 

small different groups are able to come together in one united front. 

(Personal communication, February 2002) 

A substantial body of research shows how, through an historical micro-focus on 

particular issues, periods, regions, and individuals in Okinawa, valuable insights 

into the complexity of today’s protest action can be gained in English-language 

literature. 4 The voices of Okinawan activists (Ōta Masahide, Carolyn Francis, 

Miyagi Yasuhiro, Arasaki Moriteru, and Medoruma Shun) have demonstrated the 

diverse backgrounds and perspectives of the activists (JPRI Staff 1998b). Work of 

this kind is especially useful for revealing the diversity which comprises ‘Okinawa’ 

and the dramatic social and political changes in postwar history contributing to 

this. It also helps to correct the mistaken perception that the local populace is 

uniformly opposed to the US military presence, as simpler accounts sometimes 

suggest. 5 

The protest actors today include anti-base labour unions, local socialist and 

communist parties who compose a local anti-base coalition, anti-war landowners 

who refuse to contract with the US military, women’s organizations, and locally 

based groups against the relocation of the Futenma Air Base to the eastern region 

in Nago. 

The ‘Okinawa struggle’: persistent representations of unity 

All of that said, in the context of national and international politics and analysis of 

the US, Japan and Okinawa relationships, internal differences within Okinawan


protest community tend to be underrepresented. When the discussion of Okinawa’s 

marginalization by Japan or the US (or both) is set within these larger frames, there 

is a tendency to represent the ‘Okinawan’ protesters, again, as a unified collective 

subject responding continuously and uniformly to externally imposed oppression. 

Even the JPRI literature that represents ‘Okinawan protest’ on US–Japan relations 

in the post-Cold-War era exhibits this tendency. 6 For example, when the Okinawan 

economy’s dependence on the Japanese government’s special subsidies are tied to 

the US military presence, ‘Okinawan protesters’ usually appear in JPRI analyses as 

a singular, homogeneous subject (Johnson 1999a, 2002, JPRI Staff 1998a, 1998c, 

McCormack 1998, McCormack and Yonetani 2000, Smith 1998). Barrel and Tanaka 

refer to the Okinawans not just as a singular subject but as a subject bound by a 

unifying consensus ‘the consensus is that as far as the military presence is concerned 

– either US or Japanese – Okinawans have decided ‘enough is enough’ (Barrel and 

Tanaka 1997: 5). As a macro and outsider’s perspective this is understandable: detail 

becomes less visible as distance increases. 

But distance is not the whole story and, what is more significant, Okinawan 

protesters often represent themselves as a unified actor in relation to the Japanese 

government and the US military. For example, in 1995, a veteran anti-base activist, 

Uehara Kōsuke (see Chapters 4 and 5), noted that ‘a new battle is beginning, in 

order to clear the suffering of the “Okinawans” in the last 50 years’ (Okinawa 

Mondai Henshu Iinkai 1995: 41). 

From an academic perspective, Allen suggests that the insider appeal to unity is 

‘legitimate’ and ‘relevant’ in strategic terms: ‘in opposing the bilateral exploitation 

of the prefecture, quite understandably, protesters have placed the concept of 

Okinawa at the forefront of resistance movements’ (Allen 2002: 4). At the same 

time, however, Allen is cautious of ‘the focus on the ‘base problem’ (kichi mondai) 

because it ‘elides much of the complexity that underscores the production and 

reinvention of identity within Okinawa today’ (Allen 2002: 4–5). 

In any analysis of the ‘Okinawan base issue’, the unified representation of 

‘Okinawans’ is inevitable; there is a danger of neglecting the internal differences 

and complex dynamics within Okinawa, even among different protesters. This 

danger makes one shy away from this subject for fear of doing violence to the 

immense complexity of the subject. This is part of the reason why the unity– 

diversity problem must be tackled first, for the further study of the ‘Okinawan 

base issue’. 

The idea of a unified and coherent, even if not continuous, ‘movement’ is 

registered most forcefully in the work of Okinawan activist historian Arasaki 

Moriteru – specifically in his concept of three waves of ‘Okinawan Struggle’ 

(Okinawa tōsō) in the post-WWII period. The first wave refers to the series of 

Okinawans’ protest activities against draconian US land policy in the 1950s. The 

second wave of protest occurred at the end of 1960s, with a series of mass protests 

against the US military administration, mainly demanding reversion to Japanese 

administration. Then, after an interval of 25 years, came the period of mass protests 

following the rape case of September 1995. This was ‘the third wave of the Okinawa 

Struggle’ (Arasaki 2000). By using the expression ‘Okinawa Struggle’, Arasaki


describes and reaffirms the reality of ‘a comprehensive people’s movement (minshū 

undō) against the current marginalization of Okinawans’ voices – an experience 

resulting simultaneously from US military bases, the Japan–US security alliance, 

and the US global military strategy’ (Arasaki, Interview, February 2002). Most 

significantly, perhaps, Arasaki’s use of the term gives shape and a name to numerous 

and diverse events, and renders them as a struggle of a single group of people that, 

as noted above, has peaked three times. 

The idea of ‘three waves’ certainly captures periods of more intense political 

conflict, often now also called ‘the island-wide struggles’ (shima-gurumi tōsō)in 

Okinawa. These have been exceptional periods when the population put aside its 

differences and collectively expressed widely shared demands. Importantly, 

temporary unification in these periods briefly enhanced the ‘Okinawan’ bargaining 

power vis-à-vis the state authorities (US and Japan) in securing their demands. 

These periods were also unquestionably threshold events and Arasaki’s ‘three 

waves’ provide important chronological markers – a temporal framework – 

extremely useful for analytical purposes. This book makes use of Arasaki’s waves 

in this way. 

It is also important to note that Arasaki’s unity has been a relatively rare and 

episodic phenomenon occurring only three times in more than 50 years. And this 

immediately prompts some pressing questions: Why has unity been so rare? And 

what about the very large stretches of time falling outside or between the waves? 

Does something bind the waves together and establish a larger coherence over time 

– and not just at (separate) peak times, so to speak? Can we speak of latent or hidden 

unity existing beneath the turbulent surface of the fragmented and multivocal 

movement between the waves? And conversely what happens to difference and 

diversity when they are overtaken or swamped by waves of unity? Is something 

lost as well as gained? Arasaki does not adequately answer these questions; he does 

not adequately reconcile the diversity of protest groups – of which he is aware – 

with the overarching concept of a wavelike ‘Okinawa Struggle’. Indeed the idea 

of three waves of ‘Okinawa Struggle’ in the post-WWII period is meant to explain 

the rises and falls of protest momentum in the tripartite US–Japan–Okinawa relations, 

and therefore cannot do full justice to the complexity, the diversity, or the 

turbulence of the community of protest. It sustains a conception of unity which 

often works to conceal differences – differences which are at play between Arasaki’s 

three waves and more significantly, perhaps, while they are peaking. 

Community of protest and myth 

Here, by way of prelude, it must suffice to say that the many voices of Okinawan 

protest are bound informally by common values, shared experiences, and collective 

memories that lend themselves to the ideas of continuous struggle and one people. 

At the same time, however, the meaning of these values, experiences, and memories 

is constantly in contention, constantly undergoing revision and reinterpretation. 

Among the protesters who share these common, invisible elements constitute what 

I call the ‘community of protest’ in Okinawa. Likewise and accordingly, these


common, invisible elements are sometimes more encompassing and cohesive and 

sometime less so, sometimes more able to outbid competing claims on loyalty 

and sometimes less so, sometimes more single-minded and sometimes less so. 

The ‘community of protest’, however, is always there, always a virtual presence; 

always, as Arasaki’s image suggests, able to become real and visible in the form 

of a wave. But this image is not so much an explanation as it is a way of restating 

the problem: How is this complex and shifting social constellation possible? And 

more specifically, what sustains the sense of a unified Okinawan community of 

protest and what sustains the idea of its invisible presence? 

As will be more fully explained in Chapter 2, this book bases much of its inquiry 

on constructivist currents in social theory – particularly new social movement theory 

– in anthropology and, to a more limited extent, contemporary history. The often 

interwoven ideas of collective identity, myth, and the political imaginary are central 

to these answers. Briefly, I will explain that Okinawa’s community of protest 

(conceived of as a unified entity) has important mythic qualities. The meaning of 

this perhaps provocative claim will be more fully explored in Chapter 2 but here 

I want to briefly emphasize what it does not mean. 

It does not mean that expressions such as the ‘Okinawan movement’ (Okinawa 

no undō) or the ‘Struggle of Okinawa’ (Okinawa no tatakai), frequently used 

by protesters, are empty. It is not the movement’s existence but its mode of existence 

that is in question here and the single most important characteristic of the 

movement’s life is its informality: undocumented experiences and memories, shared 

stories transmitted orally, and unwritten histories. It is these which give the 

movement its mythic character. 

It is important to note that my appeal to the notion of ‘myth’ is predicated on 

the suspension of questions of truth or falsehood. Thus, I certainly do not mean 

that the abuses or experiences of marginalization experienced by the Okinawans 

were fictional as opposed to factual. The myth of an ‘Okinawan Struggle’ does not 

refer to the series of actual events that took place, but to the ways in which they 

are described and told, and redescribed and retold. 

In myth are expressed the thought patterns by which a group formulates selfcognition 

and self-realization, attains self-knowledge and self-confidence, 

explains its own source and being and that of its surroundings, and sometimes 

tries to chart its destinies. By myth man has lived, died and – all too often – 

killed. 

(Puhvel 1987: 2) 

Myth in this book means a story or a narrative that resonates in the community of 

protest. It connects present action to the collective remembrance of the past of a 

group of people, in this case, the ‘Okinawans’. Historical experiences of marginalization 

and discrimination, in particular of the Battle of Okinawa, and of the 

experiences and legacy of protests such as the all-island struggles against the US 

military regime, shared by different generations, locations, and sectors within 

Okinawa, again, are important strands in this myth. ‘Myth’ is to be taken seriously


for its powerful political effect in summarizing the long and complicated string of 

historical events into a collective memory. It makes the past manageable and useful 

for it orients and motivates individuals in ways which both permit and legitimize 

collective action. 

Chalmers Johnson describes Okinawa as an exceptional region in Japan in 

that it has a strong tradition of residents’ participation in deciding their political 

fate: ‘Okinawa is the only Japanese community whose residents have fought for 

the democracy they enjoy’ (Johnson 2000: 52). This recognition of a tradition of 

popular struggle specific to Okinawa is central to what I refer to as a ‘myth’. But 

it is the accumulation of many and varied struggles of the Okinawan people against 

marginalization in many forms that constitute the larger reservoir of memory from 

which the myth draws. Drawing on this reservoir, the myth generates stories, and 

in ongoing iterations and interpretations these give shifting definition to the 

community of protest. The myth of an ‘Okinawan struggle’ refers not to events but, 

as Roland Barthes might have put it, to their successive telling and retelling. 7 

Following the task of establishing theoretical frameworks in understanding social 

movements and their diversity and unity in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 moves on to 

engage with more empirical issues. That is to say, it examines key events in the late 

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that have contributed to and reinforced the 

making of the history of Okinawa’s mistreatment and marginalization. These events 

include forced annexation to mainland Japan; delayed reforms and subsequent 

economic hardship; and involvement in WWII and the Battle of Okinawa. This 

exercise is important for understanding the historical narrative of marginalization 

as a significant – albeit not the only – component of the myth of an ‘Okinawan 

struggle’. These historical events give foundation to the idea of a continuous struggle 

of Okinawans as a united ‘movement’. The ‘myth’ has its origins here. However, 

in this period, internal division, regarding how to define who ‘Okinawans’ are, is 

already visible. The emerging ‘Okinawan’ identity entails affinity with mainland 

Japan and even stronger sense of distinctiveness from it. Jahana Noboru’s ‘People’s 

Rights Movement’, and the debate on how to understand it, characterizes this 

ambiguity. 

Chapter 4 discusses residents’ experiences in the Battle of Okinawa, which 

generated an Okinawan-specific ideology of ‘absolute pacifism’. The memory of 

the Battle provides an important solid ground to the myth of an ‘Okinawan struggle’ 

that can be shared by potentially all Okinawans. However, internal differences 

and disagreements still exist, on how the war experiences should be remembered. 

Importantly, some Okinawans reject the application of the historical narrative of 

victimization as a basis for Okinawa’s struggle. 

The next two chapters examine the first two ‘waves’ of the island-wide struggle. 

Initially they emerged with the people’s protest against the US military’s land 

policy, and then developed into a popular movement towards reversion to Japan. 

Chapter 5 examines the 1956 Okinawans’ mass uprising against the US military’s 

forced acquisition of privately owned land. This ‘all-island’ uprising is popularly 

understood as the first of the three ‘waves’ of postwar, island-wide struggle. Also 

remembered as the ‘land struggle’, the images and episodes from the popular


protests and uprisings from the early to mid-1950s have been, ever since, represented 

as important evidence of the Okinawans’ ability to organize and act against 

the US authorities to demand changes. As such, the all-island land struggle is one 

of the most important components of the myth of a unified ‘movement’ of the 

Okinawan people. This chapter examines the diversity and unity in a wide range 

of protest actors including the landowners, local political parties, teachers’ unions, 

students, and others within the community of protest. Amongst others, the farmers’ 

disobedience in Ie-jima is especially important for the legacy of a uniquely 

‘Okinawan’ non-violent pacifism immediately following the Battle of Okinawa 

experience. 

Chapter 6 then examines the ‘second wave’ of the postwar island-wide mass 

protest. Vis-à-vis US military’s direct administration, a relatively powerful islandwide 

coalition was formed and a sense of unified ‘movement’ emerged, referred 

to as ‘the Okinawa Struggle’ (Okinawa tōsō). However, although the scale and 

power of the island-wide coalition was exceptional, this unity was also a fragile 

one. I will examine how a temporary unity betrayed the internal diversity and 

tension, and why it eventually crumbled. Importantly, the unified coalition, although 

it led to the repatriation to Japanese administration, failed to express the locals’ 

opposition to the US military presence regardless of whose administration they 

are subjected to. 

The subsequent two chapters examine the ‘low’ cycle of protest after the 

reversion and the rise and fall of the ‘third wave’ island-wide struggle. Following 

Okinawa’s ‘return’ to Japan, the myth of an ‘Okinawa Struggle’ – once a strong 

basis for coalition during the reversion movement – had to be significantly redefined. 

The politically active Okinawans questioned the old ways of their own protest in 

terms of collective identity, repertoires of collective action, and what the ‘struggle’ 

was ultimately about. However, self-reflection and redefinition of an ‘Okinawan 

struggle’ were done in so many different ways, and the community of protest was 

ever more diverse and divided. 

Chapter 7 mainly focuses on the struggle of the anti-war landowners and their 

supporting organizations, comprised of the One-tsubo anti-war landowners, 

Okinawan anti-base political parties, and workers’ unions. These actors managed 

to re-establish an anti-base coalition, albeit a much weaker one than previously. 

The central claim of the anti-war landowners is that the violation of individual 

property rights, justified by the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty, is unconstitutional. 

The anti-base coalition redefined the myth of an ‘Okinawan Struggle’ by 

reinforcing the strong attachment to the democratic and pacifist principles of the 

postwar Japanese Constitution. This special attachment to the non-belligerent clause 

of the Japanese Constitution is connected to the ‘Okinawan’ experiences, in 

particular the Battle of Okinawa, and experiences of oppression under direct US 

military administration. 

Chapter 8 examines the major transformation in the community of protest that 

marks the emergence of ‘new social movements’. It focuses on the rise of residents’ 

movements, as an alternative to the previously dominant workers’ and socialist 

movements. It undertakes two case studies of residents’ protest against the oil


refinery industry development in Kin Bay and the construction of the New Ishigaki 

Airport in Shiraho that emerged after reversion in 1972. These two struggles paved 

the way for the ‘local’ framing of protest, which attaches great significance to the 

conservation of local marine resources that have supported residents’ traditional 

lifestyle and ‘Okinawan’ identity in unique localities within Okinawa. What directly 

gave meaning to the act of protest in these case studies were specific life experiences 

in local contexts within Okinawa. The emphasis on the ‘Okinawanness’ of the 

environment seriously questions preoccupation of the ‘Okinawan struggle’ with 

integration to Japan. Furthermore, expressions of regionally diverse forms of life 

within ‘Okinawa’ also put the idea of a single ‘Okinawan struggle’ under critical 

reconsideration by the activists. 

Chapter 9 focuses on the rise and fall of the third-wave ‘Okinawan Struggle’. 

The third ‘wave’ of postwar mass uprising of the Okinawans in 1995 was a historical 

event that contributed to the US and Japanese governments’ official announcement 

to return the Futenma Air Station. This ‘wave’, however, is characterized by the 

always ephemeral moment of unity of the anti-base groups and organizations. That 

is to say, the anti-base coalition quickly dissipated into regional strife at regional 

levels, represented by the Nago plebiscite in 1997. The anti-base protest actors 

became splintered regionally and organizationally. Now protesters against the 

US military bases included anti-war landowners and their supporters, country and 

urban activists concerned with protecting local ‘Okinawan’ lifestyle, and women’s 

groups. This chapter examines how unity was temporarily possible after a rape 

incident in September 1995 by focusing on the role of the ‘myth’. It particularly 

focuses on the role played by women’s groups. These signified diversification in 

the community of protest, which now included plural, qualitatively different social 

movements. Finally, it examines the trajectory of the campaign against the proposed 

heliport in Nago (and for a ‘no’ vote in the 1997 Nago plebiscite). The anti-base 

coalition dissipated. 

Three lines of enquiry are pursued in this book – often simultaneously. The first 

explores the internal diversity and differences in the trajectory of postwar Okinawan 

protest. Why are there so many different protest groups in Okinawa? What explains 

their differences? The second explores the ways in which a coherent ‘movement’ 

emerges, develops, and is sustained out of a collection of diverse protest groups. 

In large measure this becomes the question of how the myth of a unified ‘Okinawan 

anti-base movement’ referred to immediately above has developed. The third line 

of enquiry centres on the implications and continuing relevance of the idea of 

an Okinawan struggle to contemporary protests. Has the myth helped protesters 

in achieving their goals? Alternatively, has the intense diversification of the 

community of protest weakened the power and appeal of the myth of an ‘Okinawan 

struggle’ – or even rendered it obsolete and counter-productive?

2 Diversity and unity in the 

community of protest 

Introduction 

One of the broad aims of this book, again, is to shed light on the paradoxical quality 

of Okinwan protest as outlined in Chapter 1: its simultaneous unity and diversity. 

How can a movement or protesting community be both unified and diverse? Building 

on the earlier argument, Chapter 2 attempts to establish more complete theoretical 

foundation for the argument that follows in the remainder of the book. It begins by 

reflecting briefly on arguments which provide insight into the question of social 

movement development and collective identity formation. These arguments and 

the theories they embody have emerged in response to the proliferation of social 

movement activism across the industrial world since the 1960s. Okinawa has shared 

in these global social trends, and two bodies of argument, in particular, may be 

helpful in illuminating the Okinawan experience: new social movement theory and 

resource mobilization theory. 

Theories on social movements tend to shed more light on protest diversity than 

they do on the understanding of more distinctive features of the Okinawan protest, 

most notably its persistent experience of unity as this is implied by the idea of 

an inclusive Okinawan struggle. Even though it is difficult to pin down the existence 

of a single organization, expressions such as the ‘Okinawan movement’ 

(Okinawa no undō) or the ‘Struggle of Okinawa’ (Okinawa no tatakai), used by 

the protesters interchangeably, are not empty references. Common experiences and 

shared memories, stories, and histories do bind a diverse collection of different 

protesters together into a community of protest of some kind. Understanding this 

phenomenon, this unity is more challenging – and more challenging still given the 

manner in which it survives an ongoing process of diversification. 

A number of different arguments are called upon to meet these challenges. 

Notwithstanding the caveats noted above, social movement theory addressing itself 

to the problem of collective identity formation is of some use. But perhaps more 

important is theoretical work on the role of myth and imagination in the context 

of protest. The application of this work to the case of Okinawa seems worth 

attempting.


Understanding diversity: social movement theory 

For the past four or so decades industrial countries the world over have become 

home to proliferating protest organizations known collectively as ‘new social 

movements’. Moreover, a vast and conflicting literature now seeks to explain this 

new social phenomenon. This chapter seeks to review and highlight contributions 

to this ongoing debate most useful and relevant to the discussion of protest life in 

Okinawa, particularly after its reversion to Japan in 1972. 

One feature common to many explanations relates to growing disenchantment 

with and cynicism towards traditional political parties as vehicles of authentic 

political participation. Sometimes the result of this cynicism has been political 

apathy – but not always. Sometimes the declining credibility of party politics and 

formal democratic representation has generated new levels of interest in neglected 

issues and alternative forms of political activity. Thus, the rise of student revolts, 

civil right movements, and feminist and peace movements as well as environmentalist 

and other movements increasingly provided alternative modes of political 

participation within civil society in the 1960s and 1970s. 

The term ‘new social movements’ came into regular use to capture the momentum 

and the prominence of these actors whose distinguishable features included 

informality, a conscious avoidance of hierarchy and bureaucracy in organizational 

structures and decision-making, a focus on culture, lifestyle, and value-oriented 

issues, and the expression of identity. The theatre of political activity also changed: 

greater use was made of the mass media and consciousness-raising strategies in 

the social sphere, and less of formal state institutions (Crook et al. 1992: 148, Nash 

2000: 102–3, Scott 1990). 1 

The concept of a ‘new social movement’ provides a useful platform for 

explaining many of the recent changes in Okinawa’s community of protest. In 

Okinawa, as in many other places, new social movements sought particularly to 

distinguish themselves from the ‘old’ labour movement of the industrial working 

class. The local trade unions and leftist political parties that once provided a more 

solid basis for a coalition 2 became less effective for an Okinawan struggle against 

the state. As elsewhere in the world, the Okinawan labour movement cultivated 

connections and cut deals with the state institutions such as political parties, local 

governments, and the judicial system – and thereby compromised itself. After the 

reversion, traditional labour movement organizations had difficulty in defining 

the next stage of their ‘Okinawa Struggle’. 

New social movements are said to be ‘new’ because they are ‘manifestations of 

some qualitative shift in the nature of capitalist or, more generally, industrial, 

society’ (Scott 1990: 7). They are markers of change in social and economic 

conditions in late capitalist society. Claus Offe (1985), for example, connects the 

emergence of the ‘new middle classes’ and new social movements, linking 

the former with the rise of educational levels and the increase in service-sector 

employment in late capitalist economies. The characteristic of these new classes 

is their critique of the malaise inherent in late capitalist societies, particularly 

manifested in the environmental, anti-war and anti-nuclear movements. In post-

Diversity and unity 13 

industrial societies, an ‘increasing sense of political obligation’ and a preference 

for expressive participation among the ‘young, educated white-collar categories’ is 

observable (Crook et al. 1992). While Okinawa may have undergone its industrial 

development under exceptional conditions induced by the US military presence, 

the same general observations apply. Habermas (1981, 1987) has also provided 

accounts for the significance and democratic possibilities of new social movements 

in post-industrial society. According to his typical account of new social movements, 

new conflicts 

no longer arise in the areas of material reproduction, they are no longer 

channelled through parties and organizations, and they can no longer be alleviated 

by compensations that conform to the system. Rather, the new conflicts 

arise in areas of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization. They 

are manifested in sub-institutional, extra-parliamentary forms of protest . . . In 

short, the new conflicts are not sparked by problems of distribution, but concern 

the grammar of forms of life. 

(Habermas 1981: 33) 

Though with some qualifications, these observations, I will argue in the course of 

this book, hold good for Okinawa – particularly since reversion. 

In Okinawa, during the first – and second – ‘wave’ of postwar mass protest, major 

concerns driving collective action were directly connected to ‘materialist’ demands, 

such as land repatriation and base workers’ working conditions. American rule was 

easily identified as the source of Okinawa’s impoverishment. However, reversion 

to Japan changed this. Since reversion, the Japanese government has provided 

material benefits to supporters of US military presence in Okinawa. Short-term 

material advantages of acceptance were obvious: rent for the use of private property 

by the US military, employment opportunities on bases, goods, and services catering 

for the military, and construction projects that the Japanese government-subsidized 

public works generated. On the other hand, the focus of protest against structural 

economic dependence today relates to fears of pollution, hazards such as noise 

and militarism that lower the quality of life, and grievances towards the insufficient 

protection of local rights against crimes and other hazards caused by the US military 

under the current Status of Forces Agreement. The presence of ‘post-materialist’ 

values in much of the protest against the US bases today is significantly greater 

than in previous decades. This question will be dealt with in more detail in Chapters 

8 and 9. 

In a Japanese context, Kurihara (1999) explains the emergence of new types of 

social movements in relation to the decline of the organizing power of the labour 

unions and political parties in the Japanese people’s opposition to the dominant 

conservative sector. According to Kurihara, new social movements in Japan are 

heterogeneous and amorphous, yet can be understood in terms of three generic 

types – ‘citizens’ movements, residents’ movements and people’s movements’ – 

although many are also hybrid in form. Kurihara understands the anti-military 

base movements in Okinawa as an example of a ‘people’s movement’, characterized


by marginal social positions, vernacular communication modes, and challenging 

visions to the dominant social system (1999: 17–19). This understanding poses one 

of the key questions with which this book is concerned: What holds Okinawa’s 

disparate protest actors together as one ‘people’s movement’? 

The ‘constructivist’ view of collective action, and the concept of ‘collective 

identity’ developed by Melucci, provide useful point of departure in seeking an 

answer to this question. Collective identity formation is the process in which a 

collective actor – ‘we’ – is formed. This process takes places in the context of 

developing ‘an interactive and shared definition’ (Melucci 1989: 34) of ‘the ends 

of the actions’, ‘the means’, and ‘relationships with the environment’ (Melucci 1995: 

44). Melucci (1995) has emphasized that invisible and shared definitions of ‘we’ 

that gives a sense of unity among multiple actors do not exist from the start in a 

fixed and visible form. It is, rather, the end result of mutual interactions among protest 

actors in the process of collective action: ‘what was formerly considered a datum 

(the existence of the movement) is precisely that which needs to be explained’ 

(Melucci 1996: 70). 3 Focusing on collective identity draws attention to the ideas 

shared collectively among the subject (‘we’) of social movements, to the purpose 

of their activities, and to what is at stake, by what means, and in what external 

(political, social, and cultural) context. 4 The concept of collective identity helps to 

illuminate the fact that ‘Okinawa’ as a subject of protest is constantly constructed, 

redefined, changed, and sustained. Constructing collective identity for the Okinawan 

protesters is about defining who ‘Okinawans’ are and what their ‘struggle’ is about. 

But new social movement theories remain incomplete. Generally speaking, 

concepts of collective identity help in the understanding of why one protests. 

However, as Scott points out, the ‘new social movement’ approach is limited in 

analysing the actual effectiveness of social movement organizations in representing 

themselves, especially in the formal political sphere. And this also, obviously, has 

critical implication for their survival and growth. Here resource mobilization theory 

(RMT) helps in providing tools for understanding how a protest is conducted: the 

organization and strategy of protest involved in bringing political pressure to bear 

effectively. To be sure, RMTs often understand behaviour in abstraction from the 

specific historical, geographical, social, and cultural context in which ‘a movement’ 

was born and maintained but, used cautiously, it can be useful nevertheless. 

RMT has also challenged the classical sociological approach to ‘collective 

behaviour’, 5 with emphasis on the rational capabilities of social movements, such 

as the calculation involved in action, goal-setting, dealing with information, 

strategy, and the ability to learn from past experiences. A number of RMT scholars 

advanced the study of rational aspects of social movements particularly in participation, 

6 organization, and processes of mobilization. Zald and McCarthy (1977), 

for example, have established the significance of professional organizations capable 

of attracting staff and raising funds by establishing connections with private 

and government sectors (Zald and McCarthy 1987). This focus on organization 

focuses on understanding how organizations are made and work, including 

differential access to resources such as funding, staff, experience, and connections 

with influential institutions within the orbit of the state.


RMT can arguably complement the sociological and cultural focus of ‘new 

social movement’ theory. As Scott points out (1990: 109), an ‘adequate theory of 

social movements would have to recognize the problematic and effortful nature 

of mobilization and the consequent organizational constraints’. RMT addresses 

these issues and the following discussion briefly considers some RMT concepts 

useful for the central questions of this book. 

Because protest against the US military presence in Okinawa seriously challenges 

the existing security policy the state elites wish to maintain, the difficulty in 

mobilizing resources multiplies. Tilly (1978) has explained the importance of social 

movements’ organizations and their relations with the state. According to Tilly, 

success in achieving social movements’ goals depended on political opportunity 

structures, that is changes in the cost of collective action linked with external 

situations, especially when ‘the government suddenly becomes vulnerable’ against 

the mobilization of collective action that challenges the state (Tilly 1978: 100–1). 

Understanding social movements requires taking into account both internal factors, 

such as resources of organizations, and external factors, that is the environment in 

which collective action is generated and unfolds. 

Tarrow also stresses the importance of political opportunity structure: ‘dimensions 

of the political environment that provide incentives for people to undertake 

collective action by affecting their expectations for success or failure’ (Tarrow 

1994: 85). Not only in terms of increase and decrease in participation, political 

opportunity structure explains why collective action sometimes produces unusually 

effective results in influencing the state, but at other times does not (Tarrow 

1994: 85). 

Closely related to political opportunities are ‘cycles of protest’ as conceptualized 

by Tarrow (see also Swidler 1986, Brand 1990). When political opportunities are 

favourable for the protesters to challenge authorities, the frequency and intensity 

of collective action rise. Furthermore, innovative forms of protest increase quickly, 

and participant actors with differential resources and organizational structures 

interact more vigorously. Cycles of protest are ‘sequences of intensified interaction 

between challengers and authorities’ (Tarrow 1994: 153). Tarrow stresses 

interactions among protest organizations as an important factor that affects the 

fluctuation of a cycle. Protest actions stimulate other actions by spreading new types 

of strategies, organizational structures, and knowledge. These can be imitated by 

other actors, change popularly accepted ideas, and increase the momentum of 

protest (see also Oliver 1989). Formation and dissolution of alliances among 

organizations and external support are also key factors that affect the dynamics 

of protest during a cycle, ‘which can end in reform, repression and sometimes 

revolution’ (Tarrow 1994: 153), or simply decline. 

Okinawan activist historian Arasaki has identified three ‘waves’ in the history 

of the ‘Okinawa Struggle’ that are discussed in more detail later in this chapter. 

These can perhaps be better understood as three cycles of protest in the sense noted 

above. 

Mutual learning and the sharing of strategies and knowledge can play a crucial 

role in generating a sense of unity among different organizations. The eminent


social historian Charles Tilly has coined the term ‘repertoire of collective action’ 

to refer to the accumulation of experience resulting from collective actions 

shared by different organizations, through mutual interactions and learning. Shared 

learning and understanding have in the past included such matters as forms of 

collective action, the conduct of demonstrations, how to organize and what to do 

in a mass rally, how to use and learn from the media, ‘several varieties of strikes, 

petitioning, the organization of pressure groups, and a few other ways of articulating 

grievances and demands’ (Tilly 1978: 152). 

The ‘Okinawan struggle’ as a ‘movement’ is often constructed through establishing 

distinctive ‘repertoires of collective action’. These repertoires have become 

incorporated within popular accounts – stories told and retold – of major Okinawan 

struggles, including the ‘all-island’ struggle against the US land policy, the struggle 

against the US military ‘bulldozers and bayonets’ that forcefully dislocated 

the farmers from their own land, the base workers’ struggle against the discriminatory 

working environment, and more. Equally, however, ‘repertoires of 

collective action’ can point to differences among protest actors. Depending on 

the activists’ experiences and definitions of who ‘we’ are, preferred strategies and 

codes of conduct in protest can vary. Thus, there is not one ‘movement’, but many 

‘movements’. 

This book uses the term ‘framings of protest’ – a term indebted to the concept 

of ‘framings of collective action’ (Snow and Benford 1992). Framings of protest 

assist in identifying different but recognizably generic sets of characteristic meanings 

that various social movement organizations attach to collective action. 

‘Frames’, like collective identity, highlight how collective actors look at their 

own activities and interpret them to establish ‘meanings’ of collective action ‘by 

selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and 

sequences of actions within one’s present or past environment’ (Snow and Benford 

1992: 137). 7 

The concept of ‘collective action frames’ or ‘frames’ arise from the RMT school 

of social movements noted above. As such, it rests upon the foundations of a rational 

individualism, which tends to view mental dimensions of meaning production as 

‘resources’ for successful mobilization and participation of a social movement. 

Though ‘frames’ give certain solidity to the set of meanings attached to collective 

action after they are produced, they also allow room for examination of the ways 

in which frames of protest, once produced, are reassessed and renegotiated by the 

actors (Snow et al. 1986). Where the process of constructing collective identity 

addresses the question of who ‘we’ are (Okinawans, in this case), different protest 

framings address the question of how we see the world (Okinawa and its 

‘predicament’ in this case). 

As previously indicated, this book takes the view that representations of the 

‘Okinawan anti-base movement’ often fail to capture the diversity of its many 

protest actors. New social movement theories offer potential correctives to this 

unbalanced view but so, too, can resource mobilization theories – as they highlight 

varying reform agendas, motivations, priorities and definitions of what is at stake, 

framings, and so on.


But how, if we reverse the perspective, can we account for the sense and 

experience of unity? How can we account for the belief in a single Okinawan 

movement (Okinawa no undō) and a coherent Okinawan struggle (Okinawa no 

tatakai) that remains real for many Okinawan protesters even while they are living 

with and negotiating their sometimes radical differences on a daily basis? More 

curiously still, the same people will often hold both views. How is this possible 

and how are the tensions between these opposed perceptions of the protest world 

resolved? 

A part of the answer is provided by the logic of constructivist social theory briefly 

described above. Collective identity formation (Melucci 1996), the shared learning 

involved in developing ‘repertoires of collective action’ (Tilly 1978) and the 

development of ‘frames to establish agreed upon meanings of collective action’ 

(Snow and Benford 1992) all, in various ways, lend support to the idea of a world 

in which meaning – whether of the future, present or even the past – is permanently 

contestable and open to negotiation. It is as much made as it is given. This 

constructed world can much more easily accommodate contradictions. 

Thus, unity is not to be understood as an abstract category or even objective state 

of affairs. It is not a social condition that happens somehow to come and go, peak 

and trough in accordance with its own rhythms. Rather, ‘unity’ figures in this book, 

as a more or less fragile political accomplishment, a negotiated outcome, or a social 

construction. Crucially, however, it stands permanently in need of the ongoing 

organized collective labour of cultural reproduction – in need, as indicated above, 

of the work which creates and sustains what Melucci calls ‘collective identity’. The 

unity or identity in question shifts on a larger – and looser – scale. 

But, having said this, scale is a very important issue. It means, for example, that 

the Okinawan community of protest can, unlike many of the smaller social movement 

organizations of which it is composed, take only limited advantage of 

face-to-face human contacts in forging unity and identity. This, although important 

in itself, is also an indicator of the absolute centrality communication issues in the 

present context. It is a truism, but one easily overlooked, that the work of community 

building rests fundamentally on effective means and media of communication – 

ideas, values, and beliefs must become shared and before they can be shared they 

must first be successfully transmitted and received. 

This point is made with force by Benedict Anderson in his global study of 

nationalist movements covering three centuries. We see how nationalist movements 

succeed – or fail – in dealing with these challenges, first in the new world of the 

Americas, then in the old world of metropolitan Europe, and, finally, in the colonial 

worlds of Afro-Asia. The success of Anderson’s new nationalist movements 

rests on the development of synergistic links between vernacular language, print 

technology, and print-based media – newspapers linking remote places in the case 

of the pioneering eighteenth-century nationalisms of the new world. Later in 

successive waves of nationalism, new media and institutions of literacy – such as 

colonial school systems working to establish common languages, imposing 

common curricula (and incidentally creating personal networks that would otherwise 

not have been possible) would work to the same effect. But shared languages


and effective means of communication provide basic platforms for collective 

identity formation and unity building everywhere. 

A second fundamental point registered by Anderson relates to the extraordinary 

power of these instruments. They can build unity that is as tough and tenacious as 

that forged by ties of blood (Anderson repeatedly points to the willingness of 

citizens not just to die but to mass kill for their countries). Their range, however, 

is so much greater. The whole process is testimony not just to the power of language 

and print but also to the power of the human imagination in which language, 

literature, and the institutions of literacy are rooted. Hence the title of his book – 

Imagined Communities (1991). 

To be sure, this analysis cannot simply be applied to the experience of the 

Okinawan community of protest. To begin with, that community is just that of 

a protest and not a nation. The fact that protests in Okinawa lack the overt political 

struggle for national independence has always entailed more limited political 

horizons. And this, in turn, has meant restricted access to resources – including 

the resources to communicate. Protest movements are also self-limiting in another 

crucial respect. Unlike nationalist movements, they aim typically to influence 

government, not to become an alternative government. The implications of 

this point, of course, are profound and go ultimately to questions of forceful and 

violent means of struggle. The Okinawan community of protest does not have a 

military to protect its sovereignty; rather, it challenges the legitimacy of the state’s 

military. 

Yet the two very different kinds of communities have something important in 

common. In both cases, language and means of communication – energized by 

human imaginative faculties – provide basic platforms for collective identity 

formation. (Indeed, unable or unwilling to use violent means, this often applies 

with greater force to protest movements.) But that issue to one side, in both 

cases these platforms are used to construct worlds of shared origins, beliefs, and 

aspirations. And it is impossible to overestimate the importance of this common 

ground – the basic platform. That is why it has been emphasized so heavily here. 

The work of campaigning, of winning hearts and minds, rests more heavily on 

informal and episodic modes of communication, on brief opportunities to 

‘broadcast’ which are improvised or seized opportunistically. This is how shared 

experiences, memories and visions are created and, if I may adapt Charles Tilly’s 

term, the Okinawan community of protest does this with ‘repertoires of storytelling’ 

that are limited. An incomplete list of ‘items’ in that ‘repertoire’ would include (1) 

face-to-face conversation, anecdotal exchange, and joking, (2) rallies, demonstrations, 

sit-ins, blockades, chants, and speeches (3) public lectures; (4) discussions 

and workshops, (5) ephemeral publishing, press-releases, posters, and limited 

circulations newsletters; (6) the performing arts – music, song, theatre, street theatre, 

poetry reading; film and television; (7) the purely visual arts – graffiti, posters 

photography painting, etc; and (8) now, also, the exploding new multimedia world 

of the internet and telecommunications more generally. 

The most striking feature of this list of communicative media (a repertoire of 

storytelling) relates to its limited reliance on the printed word. Language is almost

everywhere but most often it ‘presents’ orally, a spoken medium Only item (5) 

covers forms of expression which are print-based in the first instance. 

It is certain that we come from a past less dependent on the written or printed 

word. Indeed, stories were or have been told – or sung or acted – long before the 

invention of handwriting. At some point in these poorly lit recesses of our past 

humans also began to reflect on the past, the future and meaning of life generally. 

As they did so they created myths – and it is important to appreciate what this means 

to the protest community in Okinawa in a little more detail. 

Storytelling, myth-making, and unity 


Thus it is worth turning briefly to anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and his 1978 

lectures on the meaning of mythology (1979: 34–43). Myth, according to Lévi- 

Strauss, is to the preliterate world what history is to its literate counterpart. Myths 

construct a common past – and origin – and, often, a common future or fate as 

well. In meeting these ends, myths also serve as repositories for memory, embody 

beliefs and values, provide vehicles for their transmission, and are vital to the 

formation of stable collective identities. Put simply, they assign individuals places 

in a microcosm and group a place in the larger world or cosmos. Although often 

less colourfully, history also serves these purposes. 

Lévi-Stauss notes that the most fundamental difference between them is not that 

the former deals in facts and latter in fiction or fantasy. Indeed, the most significant 

difference between them relates to the media of their expression. The major media 

of myth are spoken words. History, by contrast, rests overwhelmingly, even if not 

exclusively, on written words – and records. (The conventional distinction between 

‘history’ and ‘prehistory’ tells us this – and the human prehistoric is, by definition, 

the mythic.) However, another point made by Lévi-Strauss is equally important: 

the need, partly practical and partly methodological, to suspend questions relating 

to the truth or falsity of myth or history. Practically truth questions must often be 

suspended because sufficient facts are not available to the investigator. Methodologically 

truth questions can interfere with ethnographic procedures and deflect 

inquiry. Here one simply needs to appreciate that the effectiveness of stories in 

forging collective identity often has little to do with its truth or falsity. Anderson 

registers this point in pointing out the numerous occasions on which successful 

nationalist movements invented fictional but compelling ‘histories’ for their ancient 

lives. 

This book makes use of the term myth, both in its title and in its working argument 

because of the significance of oral communication (often less formal) in 

the Okinawan community of protest. Of course, and as previously indicated, the 

Okinawan community of protest is not preliterate. But two observations – one of 

a more general nature and one more specific to Okinawa – are worth making here. 

First, myth-making survives the advent of literacy and print and even telecommunications. 

Whether the truth as we know has been unmasked or not, the 

printed word has not replaced the spoken word and, in this sense, myth and history 

co-exist. At this level of argumentation it is reasonable to propose that the Okinawan


community of protest sustains its collective identity by mythic means – or that this 

could be the case. 

This brings us then to the second and more specific point. As a matter of fact, 

the Okinawan community of protest lacks the formality of many larger 

organizations. Its life as a unified entity is therefore largely informal. This expresses 

itself in many ways but most strikingly in its reliance on the oral, episodic, and 

ephemeral forms of communication. 

Thus the Okinawan community of protest lacks an overarching organization with 

a written constitution, rules or bylaws and exclusive membership, bank accounts, 

reliable meeting calendars, or minute proceedings, and so on. Like the myths to 

which Lévi-Strauss refers, the Okinawan community of protest lives much of its 

life in the creative but imprecise world. Human memory and imagination and 

its interpersonal sinews, again, are formed by informal and unrecorded forms of 

communication – which now include the telephone but also, increasingly, the 

ephemeral text media of email and SMS. All of this explains why it can be difficult 

to find ‘hard’ evidence of a coherent movement. And all of this points, even if only 

suggestively, to the appropriateness of the language of myth in the present context. 

By using the word ‘myth’ in this context, I do not intend to convey any sense 

of falsehood or fiction. On the contrary, myths embody and express powerful social 

and cultural forces and the process of constructing myths can itself be empowering. 

Applied as I am attempting to apply it, the idea can shed useful light on the character 

of grassroots political activism – and social movement life – in Okinawa, and 

perhaps beyond Okinawa as well. 

More specifically, the idea of the myth of a united struggle helps understand how 

a movement can simultaneously become more diverse and plural and yet also retain 

both an (external) image of and an (internal) sense of unity. It can shed some 

light on this paradox. When the experience of unity is understood as mythic, that 

experience makes itself felt on a different plane, in a different theatre. The shared 

objects (memories) in this theatre or world are often pliable – hence the perpetual 

telling and retelling, interpretation, and reinterpretation of stories. So understood 

the world of unity can avoid collision with the experience of diversity. At the very 

least, tension between these opposite yet defining experiences is reduced. 

In the creation of the ‘myth’ of an ‘Okinawan struggle’, interpretation and 

understanding of one’s own past are, again, particularly important: the myth connects 

the contemporary activists to past struggles. For example, the residents’ direct 

participation in mass collective action that brought the end to the US military 

dictatorship, repatriation to Japanese administration, and the formal entitlement to 

the postwar Japanese Constitution and democracy – despite the fact that the US 

military presence remained – stand out as a proud achievement of locals’ own 

political activism. The past achievements such as those of the reversion movement 

are a particularly crucial component of the myth of an Okinawan people’s struggle. 8 

For this reason, it is necessary to value the ways the past struggles are understood 

by the protesters, in the context of ongoing, contemporary protests. The next chapter 

starts this task, dating back to the end of the Ryūkyūkingdom in the late nineteenth 

century.

3 Annexation and assimilation 

Introduction 

Ambiguous origins 

What is the historical background against which we should understand the meaning 

of the US military presence on Okinawa Main Island and the local protests it 

provoked? This background has been most usefully illuminated by the idea of a 

‘historical narrative of victimization’, which focuses not on a single event or period 

but on a succession of marginalizing events 1 

that stretches back to the days of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. This dominant narrative 

. . . is punctuated with keywords like Ryūkyū Shobun, sotetsu jigoku (palmtree 

hell – the starvation period of the 1920s), tetsu no arashi (the Typhoon 

of Steel: Battle of Okinawa) and fukki (reversion). This historical narrative of 

victimization culminates in the kichi mondai (base issue) and Okinawa’s unfair 

treatment at the hands of the central government. 

(Hook and Siddle 2003: 11) 

In the postwar Okinawan community of protest, this narrative provides an important 

‘ideational resource’ for Okinawa’s political struggle as a minority group (Hook 

and Siddle 2003: 11). The Ryūkyū dynasty ended and was annexed to Japan as 

a prefecture, under the new name ‘Okinawa’. In the postwar period, the narrative 

becomes an extremely important asset inherited by the Okinawans, imposing 

unity and accessibility on complex series of struggles. The ‘Okinawans’ and 

the ‘struggles’ are of course not one; nevertheless, the historical narrative of marginalization 

provides a common interpretive framework. The ‘myth’ has its origin 

here. 

This chapter examines the birth of the idea of a continuous struggle of the 

Okinawans as one people following the annexation to Japan, 2 which was still on 

its way to being consolidated as a modern sovereign nation-state. However, it first 

reviews the key events in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The chapter 

highlights Okinawan people’s experiences, in particular loss of the Ryūkyūan 

sovereignty, the Japanese government’s discriminatory policy that delayed political 

and social reforms, and the ensuing impoverishment described as ‘palm-tree hell’. 

In this period, a distinctive ‘Okinawan’ identity gradually formed. However, this


collective identity has also been a site of contention. Okinawan intellectuals 

and elites, such as Iha Fuyū and Ōta Chōfu, made the conscious choice to emphasize 

‘Okinawa’ as part of Japan, that is, the sameness rather than distinctiveness. 

The campaign for Okinawans’ political rights led by Jahana Noboru exemplifies 

the Okinawans’ strategic assimilation to Japan for political reasons. At the same 

time, however, this assimilationist position did not sit comfortably with Okinawa’s 

‘uniqueness’ or ‘distinctiveness’ from Japan. This indicates the origin of an important 

source of tension among concerning the most fundamental of questions: who we 

are and why we protest? 

The ‘Ryūkyūdisposal’ 

Until the late nineteenth century, Ryūkyū (Okinawa) was under the authority of 

the Satsuma domain (han) in southwest Kyūshū. This state of affairs had persisted 

since Satsuma soldiers, mainly from the Shimazu family, invaded and took over 

the Ryūkyū Kingdom in 1609. Ryūkyū was, at the same time, one of China’s 

tributary states, since a formal tributary relationship was established with Ming 

China at the end of the fourteenth century. 3 Under Satsuma’s rule, Ryūkyū was a 

direct part of neither Japan nor of China; however, the independent status of the 

kingdom was only notional. 4 Satsuma’s control over Ryūkyū was much harsher 

than that of China, which hardly interfered with Ryūkyū’s domestic affairs. The 

Ryūkyū kings had to pay onerous taxes to Satsuma, but these were confiscated by 

local authorities who were dominated by the Shuri court, the royal court of the 

Ryūkyū kingdom. Thus, people in Ryūkyū were doubly subjugated by Shuri and 

Shimazu. 5 Tax burdens on the residents in remote islands were even greater than 

on Okinawa Main Island. 

In East Asia, the tributary system formed a different kind of international order 

from that of the sovereign states first established earliest in Europe. The centre of 

the East Asian order was hegemonic China. 6 It is also important to note in this 

context that Ryūkyū’s tributary relations with China were direct, and separate from 

those between China and mainland Japan; the special ties in the form of distinguishable 

Chinese cultural influence and customs have been a source of 

contemporary Okinawan identity that mark differences from mainland Japan. 

Japan imitated China and assumed a morally and culturally central position in 

relation to the Ryūkyūans, the Ainus, and the Ogasawara islands (Morris-Suzuki 

1996: 50). Until the late nineteenth century, the boundary of ‘Japan’ was commonly 

thought to be ‘a series of frontiers marking gradually increasing degrees of difference’ 

rather than ‘the frontier as a single, unequivocal line marking the boundary 

between one nation and another’ (Morris-Suzuki 1996: 54). The status of Ryūkyū 

(current Okinawa) in relation to ‘Japan’ was not quite domestic or foreign but 

ambiguous. This was the case at least until the Meiji government constructed the 

sovereign body under ‘Japan’ in 1868. 

However, this view ceased to be dominant among the Meiji elites who came to 

see that the world order was transforming into one composed of capitalist economies 

and sovereign nation-states with clear geographical boundaries. By the late

Annexation and assimilation 23 

nineteenth century, Japan was positioned at the periphery of this new international 

order. By leaving its ‘domestic’ border undecided, it was under a grave threat 

of territorial loss – as rival colonial powers expanded. In order to face a new 

international relations paradigm with a clearly defined territorial border backed by 

substantial military power, Japan started to expand its territory overseas, whilst 

protecting itself from being colonized by Western imperial powers. The future 

status of the Ryūkyū kingdom became a serious subject of deliberation among 

the Meiji leaders. Owing to drastic reforms, the financial condition of the Meiji 

government was not able to provide the remote islands with public services such 

as police, military, and education. Also, completely incorporating Ryūkyū into 

Japanese territory involved the risk of producing a diplomatic conflict with China. 

Moreover, the opposition to accepting the Ryūkūans as Japanese was made by quite 

a few leaders, who mentioned that the Ryūkyū people were ethnically different 

from the Japanese (Oguma 1998: 20–1). 7 

By the 1870s, however, the Meiji government became aware of Ryūkyū as a 

strategic fortress in East Asia because of its proximity to China, Korea, Southeast 

Asia, and other islands in the Pacific. In 1871, a fishing vessel drifted from 

Miyako Island, a southwestern island of Ryūkyū. It landed on the Taiwanese shore, 

and 54 of the 66 crew members were slaughtered by the indigenous Taiwanese. 

The Japanese government seized this opportunity to send troops and a punitive 

expedition to Taiwan in 1874. 8 While settling this incident, in October 1872, Japan’s 

foreign minister gave the Ryūkyūan envoys an emperor’s order to create the domain 

of Ryūkyū (Ryūkyū han) and to make King ShōTai domain king (han-ō). In 1879, 

a dispatch from the Meiji government brought in 400 soldiers and 160 police officers 

to formally abolish the Ryūkyū kingdom. King Shō Tai was captured and forced 

to live in Tokyo. This action was called the ‘Ryūkyū disposal’ (Ryūkyū Shobun), 

which ended the Ryūkyū kingdom: Ryūkyū was now formally annexed to Japan 

and turned into Okinawa Prefecture (Okinawa ken). 9 

During negotiation with China over the status of Okinawa after the ‘Ryūkyū 

disposal’, the Japanese government offered to cut off Miyako and Yaeyama islands 

from Okinawa Prefecture, and to give them to China in exchange for the most 

favoured nation status in trade, equivalent to that enjoyed by European and 

American powers. 10 Ōta stresses that the Japanese authority took advantage of the 

marginalized positions of Miyako and Yaeyama within Okinawa, where people 

were oppressed with the onerous poll tax by the central Ryūkyū authorities (Miyako 

and Yaeyama’s position in relation to the central Ryūkyū court paralleled the 

position of Okinawa vis-à-vis mainland Japan). This plan to divide Okinawa, Ōta 

Masahide argues, encapsulates the marginalized position of Okinawa as a result 

of the Ryūkyū disposal: to mainland Japan, Okinawa was now a pawn that could 

be ‘moved’ wherever necessary for the survival of the state (Ōta 1972: 115). The 

Ryūkyū disposal marks the opening of Okinawa’s history of humiliation and 

marginalization by the modern Japanese nation-state. To the present, it has left a 

scar on the sovereignty, autonomy, and pride of the Okinawans as the descendants 

of the Ryūkyūans. It is in this historical context that the idea of a continuous struggle 

of Okinawans is embedded.


Preserving old customs 

Between the Ryūkyū disposal and WWII, the Meiji government sent mainland 

Japanese administrative officers to Okinawa. All prewar governors of Okinawa 

were from outside the prefecture and appointed by the central government. Senior 

positions were closed to Okinawans in public administration, the police force, 

schools, and local businesses. The members of the former ruling class in Ryūkyū 

society feared that their privileges and social power were being eroded. Hundreds 

of Ryūkyū aristocrats and former samurai fled to China. These people formed a 

group called the kōdōkai, headed by a former Ryūkyū prince, and engaged in 

petition activities in order to bring about the restoration of the old order of the 

Ryūkyū kingdom. The group ‘garnered 72,767 signatures, and a delegation of 

nine went to Tokyo to present their proposal to Interior Minister Matsukata, who 

rejected it immediately’ (Smits 1999: 149). 

The Japanese state attempted to appease the former Ryūkyū ruling class by 

preserving an old institutional and legal framework (called the ‘preserving old 

customs’ policy), which deliberately delayed the introduction of new political 

institutions and reforms. 11 This policy of ‘preserving old customs’ had a significant 

impact on the local economy. 

The non-aristocrat Okinawans benefited little from the reform that was introduced 

after much delay. Land tax reform enabled farmers to own land and pay tax in 

cash, not in kind. However, as a result, sugar farming, which the farmers quickly 

became dependent on, was widely introduced to meet the tax demands. After the 

turn of the century, many farmers converted rice paddies and sweet-potato fields 

into cane fields, obtaining immediate cash to buy food and household products. 

However, most of the goods were made in mainland Japan, brought in by the old 

aristocrat merchants – including the royal Shō family – who preserved exclusive 

commercial trading rights with mainland Japan and dominated the Okinawan 

market. This hindered the growth of a local commercial and industry sector and 

promoted an over-dependence on small-scale sugar farming. 12 Before WWI, the 

Okinawan economy had developed its structural vulnerability (Tomiyama 1997: 

77–8). 

Then the price of sugar fell on a worldwide scale to devastating levels, following 

WWI. Many farmers were forced to sell their lands, or their children as future 

servants, to a handful of wealthy landowners. In the 1920s, Okinawan peasants 

faced a severe famine described as a ‘palm-tree hell’ (sotetsu jigoku) because many 

died eating the starch taken from wild-grown cycad (sotetsu) palms, which is fatally 

poisonous if not processed extremely carefully. As Tomiyama explains, it was 

obvious that the vulnerability of the Okinawan sugar farmers to the price fall 

was due to the ‘preserving old customs’ policy: the persistence of oligarchic 

domination of the local market by a small expatriate commercial class limited the 

locals’ commercial development. Manufacturing activities had not benefited from 

the boost in the sugar price before the crisis either. Moreover, the government put 

in place no protective policy – with tariffs and subsidies as were common in 

the European countries – for Okinawa against the low sugar price in the global

economy. Indeed, Japan turned on its own dependent territory by doubling the 

imports of cheaper sugar from Java (Tomiyama 1997: 76–82). The ‘palm-tree 

hell’ and the ‘preserving old customs’ policy symbolize the Japanese government’s 

mistreatment of the Okinawans. 

Finally, the impoverishment of the Okinawan population was regarded as a 

problem in parliamentary discussions in 1932. The Diet passed a 15-year Okinawan 

Industrial Promotion Plan (Okinawa Keizai Shinkō Keikaku), a specifically 

designed programme to rescue the Okinawan economy. 13 The Plan allocated special 

governmental budgets for improving roads, ports, hospitals, and other public infrastructure. 

This scheme of 15-year special governmental subsidies and aids has 

been repeated four times over since 1972 when Okinawa reverted to Japan from 

the post-WWII US military occupation, and continues today. 

Interestingly, Ōta argues that the main purpose of this special promotion plan 

was to entrench Okinawan co-operation for Japan’s militarization (Ōta 1972: 276). 

The governmental economic aids created the Okinawan economy’s dependency 

by exercising multiple controls over the use of assistance, which in many ways 

made sustainable indigenous development difficult. In Tomiyama’s view, ‘palmtree 

hell’ marks the birth of an Okinawan status as a constant ‘applicant’ for the 

government’s economic rescue. He emphasizes, however, that this status represents 

a choice made at gunpoint, or ‘at the edge of the threat of violence’, that is, under 

the enormous pressure to accept military occupation and dominance. Rescue, 

industrial promotion, and developmental subsidies by the government have come 

at the inevitable ‘cost’ of the military bases. This is why it is misleading to 

understand the US military presence as the outcome of a fair economic transaction, 

as balanced by economic benefits paid by the government (Tomiyama 2002: 

272–82). ‘Palm-tree hell’ marks the origin of this structural violence inherent in 

the relationship between the Japanese government and the Okinawans, and is a 

significant part of the historical narrative of marginalization. 

Assimilation policy 


The delay of political and social reform compared to elsewhere in Japan was 

allegedly based on the ‘low level of civil maturity’ of the Okinawan public (Morris- 

Suzuki 1998: 27–8). The logic the government used was that modern institutions 

and civil rights would be introduced when the Okinawans were considered 

sufficiently assimilated. Morris-Suzuki points out that Japan’s dealings with the 

Ryūkyūans (and the Ainu and Ogasawarans) were framed by a view that equated 

the spatial distance of these places from the mainland (naichi) to lower stages of 

civilization (bunmei): 14 

So the vision of a world made up of concentric circles, where foreignness 

increased the farther one moved from the centre, came to be replaced by a 

vision of a single nation where ‘development’ and ‘modernity’ diminished 

the farther one moved from the capital toward the geographic extremities. 

(Morris-Suzuki 1998: 29)


That is, geographically isolated Okinawa was considered to be in a stage of 

civilization lower than central Japan. 15 The affinities and differences between the 

Okinawans vis-à-vis Japanese became a point of debate among anthropologists, 

archaeologists, and other scholars (Siddle 1998, Yonetani 2000, Tomiyama 2002). 

However, Siddle notes that in contrast with the Ainu inhabitants, who ‘remained 

completely outside history’, contemporary scholars tended to see that Ryūkyūans 

were on their way to becoming Japanese (Siddle 1998: 125, Tomiyama 1998). 

The assimilation policy in Okinawa was underpinned by the view that Okinawaspecific 

cultural artefacts embodied backwardness. This extended through a range 

of traditional Ryūkyūan manners of dress and lifestyle matters such as young 

people’s beach parties (moashibi), male hairstyle (kata-kashira), and female hand 

tattoos (hajichi). 

In contrast to the much-delayed political and social reform, military conscription 

was introduced in 1898, preceding other reforms. At the same time, a new education 

system with the greatest emphasis on nationalism was introduced to Okinawa. 16 

Meiji was the period, particularly in the 1880s, when nationalism based on collective 

worship of the emperor as a divine being was steadily being formed. Education was 

one of the most effective vehicles, together with newly introduced rituals, the 

construction of shrines, increased publications, and community events, to introduce 

this cult. The ‘emperor-centred moral education (kōminka)’ was introduced across 

the newly acquired Japanese territories and colonies such as Taiwan and Korea 

(Christy 1993: 608). The government campaigned for the use of the Japanese 

language – the Tokyo dialect was adopted as the official ‘national standard’ – instead 

of the distinct Okinawan language and dialect. During this period, the government 

opened ‘Japanese conversation schools’ all over Okinawa, just as there are ‘English 

conversation schools’ everywhere in Japan today (Oguma 1998: 35). 

The most important signifier of assimilation was how much Okinawans adjusted 

to the notion of becoming ‘the emperor’s people’. The new educational system 

placed most value on the importance of turning ‘Japanese’ and ‘the emperor’s 

people’ over any other practical kinds of knowledge. The greatest effort was put 

into raising primary education enrolments. When standard Japanese was introduced 

in Okinawa initially, for the majority of Okinawans speaking Japanese was not 

considered a particularly useful social skill because most people spoke the local 

dialect in the late nineteenth century. However, it took only a generation for 

the new educational policies to take effect in Okinawa. In 1907, 93 per cent of 

Okinawan children were enrolled in Japanese language-speaking primary schools 

(Oguma 1998: 39). 

Early development of ‘Okinawan’ identity 

Despite formal annexation in 1879, most Okinawans lived as members of smaller 

communities in the villages and hamlets where they were born, worked, and died, 

without seeing the world beyond it. The idea of a separate Okinawa or Ryūkyū as 

a larger nation based on common distinguishable attributes such as geographical 

coherence, history, culture, and language developed much later (Siddle 1998b:


124). But this delayed nationalism was also due to geographical diffusion and 

linguistic differences extending across islands remote from Okinawa Main Island 

as well as class divisions within the population as a whole. 

However, by 1895 when Japan ended its war with China in victory, most 

members of the Okinawan community – especially the elite – supported the urgent 

need to adjust to the new Japanese rule, in order to maximize Okinawans’ interests 

through assimilation with mainland Japan. Included in this voice for assimilation 

were former aristocratic members who initially opposed the Ryūkyū disposal and 

the new order, but who were later mollified by the ‘preserve old customs’ policy. 

Ōta Chōfu, for example, a Ryūkyū aristocratic descendant, eagerly promoted the 

benefit of becoming like the Japanese, and even preached to imitate their sneezing 

(Ryūkyū Shimpō 24 September 1917 quoted in Ōta 1972: 122). 17 

The ‘House of the Peoples’ incident at the Fifth Industrial Exhibition in 

Osaka in 1903 reveals how an increasing number of Okinawans were eager to see 

themselves as ‘proper Japanese’, distinguishing themselves from ‘other Asians’. 

Thus: 

a man with a whip presided over a display of Koreans, Ainu, Taiwanese 

aborigines, and two Okinawan women . . . Okinawan newspapers reacted to 

the display with rage, claiming that lining up Okinawans with primitives and 

inferior ethnic groups was a slur against the Okinawans, who were ‘real 

Japanese’. 

(Christy 1993: 608) 

The strong reaction from the Okinawan public to this ‘incident’ suggests the 

possibility that Okinawan identity as ‘Japanese’ was constructed not only by 

authoritative enforcement from above, but also voluntarily from ‘below’ by those 

favouring identification with the modern and powerful Japanese state. 

Socially influential local figures such as schoolteachers and a local newspaper 

Ryūkyū Shimpō emphasized the importance of the Okinawans’ participation in the 

Japanese military; 18 they saw it necessary to entitle Okinawans to equal political 

rights and reforms within Japan (Yoshiwara 1973: 196–7). On the other hand, many 

Okinawans refused or escaped conscription by fleeing to remote islands or to China, 19 

migrating overseas, or pretending to be ill or disabled. Young Japanese men, 

especially in rural communities also avoided military service in these ways. An 

additional reason for the Okinawans to refuse conscription was that most Okinawans 

could not speak fluent standard Japanese and were still attached to Qing China 

(Yoshiwara 1973: 201). Even though Okinawan soldiers had been educated 

with an overwhelming emphasis on loyalty to the emperor and in the standard 

Japanese language, they faced discrimination within the military. Many Okinawan 

soldiers tried to prove they were ‘Japanese’ by dedicating themselves to combat 

activities, often at the expense of their own lives (Arakawa 1973: 190, Arashiro 

1997: 172). 20 The local elite severely attacked conscription avoidance, especially 

in the Ryūkyū Shimpō columns and articles (Yoshiwara 1973: 196–7, also see Ōta 

1995). The conscription issue shows how Okinawans’ attitudes were divided


between supporting assimilation to mainland Japan (referred to as yamato or naichi) 

and resisting it. 

As a major consequence of the devastating poverty and famine caused by falling 

sugar prices, thousands of Okinawans went to mainland Japan and emigrated 

overseas, to places such as the South Pacific Islands, Hawaii, and South America 

in search of jobs and cash incomes. This was promoted by government policy as 

a solution to the economic crisis. Thousands of Okinawans moved to mainland 

Japan as factory workers in the chemical and other manufacturing and textile 

industries (Tomiyama 1997: 94–8). In mainland Japan, Okinawans were called 

‘Ryūkyū-jin’ and similar names. They also faced discrimination, for example in 

employment and housing. These temporary workers usually settled and lived in 

certain residential areas with other Okinawans. The experience of migration 

and discrimination in yamato following the ‘palm-tree hell’ has been passed 

down in an Okinawan history textbook used by local high schools (Arashiro 1997: 

179). 

Okinawan migrants to Osaka following the sugar price fall in the 1920s 

established the Kansai Okinawans’ Organization (Kansai Okinawa Kenjin-kai) 

(Tomiyama 1997). Tomiyama explains that the organization provided general 

pastoral care for, and facilitated mutual communications among, the Okinawans 

who came to live in the area. This included facilitating communication between 

Okinawans finding accommodation and work. In this movement, the organization 

was engaged in ‘a social movement’. It also functioned as a labour union by 

promoting the interests of workers from Okinawa, focusing especially on their 

working conditions and labour rights. Initially, the Kansai Okinawans’ Organization 

encouraged self-expression of members as ‘uchinanchu’ (Okinawans), and the pride 

in being ‘Okinawan’. 

However, as Okinawan labourers’ difficulties were explained in terms of 

discrimination – being from Okinawa determined where they would live and work, 

their standard of living and working conditions (group employment for Okinawans, 

segregated dormitory rooms, different meals and schedules for Okinawans etc.). 

This meant that the main mission of the Kansai Okinawans’ Organization shifted 

towards improving the treatment of Okinawans, by encouraging them to become 

‘competent workers’ and rewarding those who did. Tomiyama points out that 

the yardstick of ‘competent workers’ was the extent to which they shed their 

‘Okinawan’ characters and became more ‘Japanese’. 

For these Okinawans in yamato, what did it mean to ‘become more Japanese’? 

According to Tomiyama, it meant ‘correcting’ physical and behavioural aspects 

of lifestyle that are associated with being ‘Okinawan’. These included, among other 

things, clothing, hygienic practices, tendency to stay up late, enjoying Okinawan 

music, dramas, and dancing, and speaking in Okinawan dialect. But there were also 

positive ‘Okinawan’ characteristics including obedience. Obedience facilitated 

‘Japanization’. It promoted ‘Japanization’, which was also understood as a process 

of ‘awakening into a class consciousness’ (Tomiyama 1997: 167). ‘Becoming 

Japanese’ for Okinawans in this period involved physical and emotional selfdiscipline. 

In the 1930s, the self-correcting effort of the assimilation-oriented


Okinawans developed into a so-called ‘life improvement movement’ (Seikatsu 

Kaizen Undō) among the emigrants in Japan in general. 

But attitudes were not uniform. Tomiyama stresses the gap between the elite 

Okinawans who eagerly advocated Japanization and other non-elite Okinawans 

who were more reticent. Many Okinawans hid their feelings about the destination 

of Okinawan culture, but these were nevertheless expressed occasionally. Thus, 

in one incident among many, an episode of a group of female Okinawan workers 

at a spinning mill annoyed factory managers by singing an Okinawan folk song, 

calling it ‘the Okinawan kimigayo’ (Japan’s national anthem) (Tomiyama 1997: 

150–1). 21 This incident clearly reflects important divisions in the Okinawan 

community. 

In academia, scholars, by contrast, tended to emphasize common cultural 

origins with Japan. ‘Okinawan studies’ (Okinawa gaku) played an important role 

in exploring differences and commonalities between Japan and Ryūkyū in ancient 

local literature and culture. Meiji Japanese scholars, in particular anthropologists 

such as Tashiro Antei, Torii Ryūzō, and Tsuboi Shōgorō (see Yonetani 2000a), 

and later Iha Fuyū argued that there was evidence to support the view that 

Ryūkyūans were ethnically an integral part of Japan (Siddle 1998: 124–5, also 

see Tomiyama 1998). From the early twentieth century, Okinawan intellectuals 

including Iha, Higashionna Kanjun, and Nakahara Zenchū published their work 

on Okinawan indigenous cultural history and literature, represented most notably 

by Iha’s study of the Omoro sōshi, a collection of local folk verses written during 

the early Ryūkyū period. 22 Iha, often referred to as the ‘father of Okinawan 

studies’, 23 emphasized the common heritage of the Okinawan and Japanese 

languages. 24 

But the political standpoint of Iha was often contradictory. Iha’s work basically 

supported the Okinawans’ evolutionary path of ‘becoming Japanese’. In his study 

of Ryūkyū’s linguistic, historical and cultural ancestry, Iha had an ulterior motive: 

to promote the interest of Okinawans in general, by stressing the ‘same’ elements 

between Ryūkyū and Japan. Yonetani (2000a: 17) explains that the expression of 

Ryūkyūan identity in terms of homogeneity with Japan was infused with what 

she calls a ‘politics of sameness’, since the underlying intent was to minimize 

discrimination of Okinawa based on distinctiveness from mainland Japan; interpreted 

as rationalization for further discrimination. Difference was a double-edged 

sword: from one perspective it provided a platform for the assertion of an 

independent Okinawan identity; for the Japanese, however, it could provide a 

rationale for discrimination. 

Iha, on the other hand, developed a strong commitment to establishing a clear 

sense of ‘Okinawa’ being one entity on its own right, which had yet to be developed 

at the end of the nineteenth century. In this sense, the ‘politics of sameness’ allowed 

Iha to take arbitrary positions. Iha contributed to what Oguma calls the emergence 

of ‘Okinawan nationalism’, transcending internal regional differences within the 

Ryūkyū archipelago (Oguma 1998: 293). Tomiyama (1998: 170) emphasizes that 

Iha was on ‘the quest for “a common ancestor” as a third category that is neither 

“Japanese” nor “Ryūkyūan”’. This common ancestor was neither ‘Japanese’ nor


‘Ryūkyūan’, and permitted dissimilarity to live alongside commonality. Importantly, 

an Okinawan identity could be established here. 25 Iha attempted to establish 

‘Okinawa’ as a unique entity within ‘the pluralist vision of the Japanese state’, 

which consisted of many nations and peoples in Asia (Siddle 1998: 126). Through 

his work, Iha attempted to provide ‘evidence of Ryūkyūan cultural achievements 

upon which a sense of local pride could be based’ (Christy 1993: 624). His wish 

was to establish a strong sense of a ‘Ryūkyūan’ subject, to be reproduced by 

generations to come in modern Okinawa. This subject, importantly, is a flexible 

one, in the sense that, once again, it allows for flexibility in stressing ‘sameness’ 

with Japan and unique ‘distinctiveness’ of Okinawa. 

Influential as Iha’s work and his arguments were in Okinawan studies, his version 

of ‘Ryūkyūan’ identity has had its critics. Shimabukuro Zenpatsu (1888–1953), 

an Okinawan intellectual who came after Iha, called attention to the ‘ethnic selfperception’ 

of the people themselves. 

Ordinary Ryūkyūans call mainland Japanese people ‘yamatonchu’ (yamato 

people) and differentiate them from ‘uchinanchu’ (Ryūkyūans). This sense 

of distinction has existed since early Meiji. Isn’t it sensible to think Ryūkyūans 

are quite intimately connected to the yamato people, but nevertheless belong 

to a different ethnicity? 

(Shimabukuro quoted in Yakabi 1998: 121) 

Giving credit to Iha and others’ ‘objective’ findings from wide-ranging ‘scientific’ 

research in anthropology, linguistics, ethnology, religion, and history, Shimabukuro 

stressed the importance of the ‘subjective’ element, that is, what ordinary locals 

normally felt and perceived about who they were (Yakabi 1998: 122). Shimabukuro’s 

view highlights the difficulty in forming a consensus among critical 

local intellectuals and activists, even today, regarding the self-definition of 

‘Okinawans’: 

despite the rhetoric of many anti-base activists and the emotional power of 

their message, Okinawans are not themselves united in their understanding of 

the past and have not succeeded in forging a ‘nation’ in Okinawa . . . [T]hese 

divisions are a continuation of an older discourse on colonialism and 

modernization, identity and history, that stretches back to the early days of 

Okinawa Prefecture. 

(Siddle 1998b: 133) 

Iha defined ‘Ryūkyū’ as a nation, to build a sense of an historical ‘Ryūkyūan’ 

subject that is equal to that as yamato. However, the emergence of an ‘Okinawan’ 

identity was such that it perpetuated ambiguity and internal contention: how can 

Okinawa be different from yamato, but, at the same time, be treated as an integral 

part of Japan?


Jahana Noboru’s People’s Rights Movement and the myth of 

an Okinawan struggle 

Following the formal annexation of Okinawa, more people slowly started to realize 

the existence of more powerful political authorities than the Ryūkyūan royal court 

or the local Okinawan government. This became a trigger for voluntary political 

activism (Arakawa 1973: 105). In 1893, the farmers in the Miyako Islands protested 

against the Japanese government’s policy to preserve the old customs in Okinawa 

in order to appease the pro-Chinese former ruling class. This included the preservation 

of the three-hundred-year-old poll tax system in the remote islands of 

Miyako and Yaeyama. Therefore, even after the end of the Ryūkyū kingdom, the 

poll tax required each person to pay punishing duties each year in order to provide 

rice, traditional hand-woven fabric and other products as well as labour service 

for the local officials. The leaders of the farmers’ protest were Gusukuma Seian 

from Naha and Nakamura Jissaku, two Japanese mainlanders who had moved 

to Miyako Island. The slave-like lives of the Miyako farmers shocked these two 

outsiders, who organized the farmers into directly appealing to the Japanese 

government. A delegation from Miyako was sent to Tokyo, to lobby Members of 

Parliament and the newspapers, appealing to end the poll tax and introduce a land 

tax system in remote islands (for details see Arakawa 1973: 119–58). In the end, 

even though the new land tax system continued to burden the farmers, the movement 

was successful and the poll tax was abolished (Arakawa 1973: 158, Yoshiwara 

1973: 113). 

The People’s Rights Movement led by an agronomist, Jahana Noboru, also 

lobbied the central government against the ‘preserve old customs’ policy. In 

comparison to the Miyako protest, Jahana’s movement has been given greater credit 

for initiating the tradition of indigenous political activism in Okinawa. Jahana came 

from a farmer’s family in Kochinda village in the southern part of Okinawa Island. 

In 1865 he was selected to be one of five government-funded university students 

to study in Tokyo. He was the only one from a non-aristocratic background. In 

Tokyo he majored in agriculture, in particular fertilizing in sugar farming. Returning 

to Okinawa, he became a high-rank officer in charge of agricultural issues in the 

local government. This was, again, an unprecedented achievement for someone 

with a non-aristocratic background. 

Ōsato Kōei’s influential biography, Gijin Jahana Noboru Den (Jahana Noboru, 

a righteous man), first published in 1938, depicts a heroic image of Jahana as a 

representative of the peasant class. Jahana is famous as an Okinawan activist who 

worked hard and died for the political rights of the Okinawan people, battling 

against the aristocratic oligarchy in the local government and Narahara Shigeru, 

an infamous mainland Japanese governor (1892–1908) of Okinawa Prefecture. 

Narahara had strong connections with the central government, and ‘ruled with such 

a firm hand that he earned the nickname “King of Ryūkyū”’ (Smits 2002: 103). 

Jahana resigned his position in the local government in 1898 after serious disagreements 

with Narahara’s plan to privatize traditional communal forests (called 

somayama) in northern Okinawa. The plan was to distribute the land to unemployed


former lower officials of the Ryūkyū court who were struggling economically. 

Yoshiwara (1973: 41–66) explains that the somoyama development allowed 

Narahara and his aristocratic acolytes to gain more wealth, while depriving the 

peasants of essential resources such as timber and water. Jahana was opposed to 

impoverishing the farmers and advocated peasant ownership of somayama. 

This image of Jahana as representative of peasants’ interest has, however, been 

disputed by Arakawa Akira (1996: 204–6). Arakawa argues that the historical 

records strongly suggest that Jahana was initially the promoter of the somayama 

cultivation with Narahara, and the land issue was not his main concern. In 

Arakawa’s view (1996: 207), Jahana was no longer acting as a ‘peasant’s son’ by 

this time, and his primary concern was overcoming the class-oriented old regime 

with extremely limited room for promoting someone like him up the social ladder. 

This was the reason why he resigned from his post, and his ultimate goal was 

winning his battle, not only with Narahara, but also with a group of other conservative 

local bureaucrats of Ryūkyūan aristocratic descent, including Ōta Chōfu, 

who had once been sent to Tokyo with Jahana to study, and leader of Kōdōkai 

(Smits 2002: 106). Arakawa’s critique was directed at the romanticized interpretation 

of Jahana’s persona as a political activist. It is also directed at the 

contemporary Okinawans’ political views that find ancestry in Jahana, which needs 

further explanation. 

Following the annexation, the conservative former aristocratic elite group 

attempted bringing back the last Ryūkyūan king (Shō Tai) as Governor by 

unsuccessfully petitioning the Parliament in Tokyo. Consequently, the members 

concentrated on enhancing their power in local politics by forming an alliance 

with the Narahara administration. Jahana opposed the Kōdōkai from the vantage 

point of the non-aristocratic local elite, then opposed the conservative alliance 

between Narahara and the former Kōdōkai members and, eventually, became 

isolated in the local government and resigned in December 1898. However, in 

November 1898, Jahana was elected one of the directors of the Okinawa Agricultural 

Bank, a public bank set up in each prefecture. At the same time, Jahana 

and his colleagues made trips to Tokyo to appeal to Diet members for Narahara’s 

resignation and land reform in Okinawa. They succeeded in gaining the sympathy 

of Home Minister Itagaki Taisuke (Isa 1998: 192). In January 1899, Jahana also 

formed Okinawa Kurabu in Tokyo with several young colleagues from peasant 

families, and published a journal, Okinawa Jiron. The journal criticized the 

domination of social privilege in Okinawan society by Narahara and his local 

aristocratic allies, and their protection by the central government’s ‘preserve old 

customs’ policy. In response, Ōta Chōfu, who worked as an editor of Ryūkyū 

Shimpō, also constantly attacked Jahana’s movement in his newspaper. 

In Feburary 1899, Jahana and another Okinawa Kurabu member, Uema Kōsuke, 

submitted a petition to the Lower House to introduce suffrage to allow Okinawans 

to elect representatives to the Diet. Delayed introduction of suffrage, like delayed 

land reform, represented another of the central government’s attempts to preserve 

the interests of the former Ryūkyūan aristocrats. The members of the former ruling 

class were opposed to suffrage. Okinawan delegates in the Diet would lead to


fundamental political and social change that favoured merit-based promotion to 

powerful positions. This would in turn result in the former ruling class members’ 

losing inherited positions of influence. By the same token, Jahana and his colleagues 

realized that participation in national politics and having access to power in the 

central government were important, in order to remove Narahara and the old 

conservatives’ domination in Okinawa. 26 

However, their political campaign yielded disappointing results for the Okinawa 

Kurabu members. The Lower House decided to introduce the election of two Diet 

members from Okinawa by issuing an Imperial Edict ‘when the time arrives’. 

However, ‘the time’ was slow in coming. Even though Okinawa’s political participation 

had been agreed upon in the Lower House in 1899, Parliamentary elections 

did not commence formally in Okinawa until 1912. And only two members, as 

opposed to five from other prefectures, were to be elected from Okinawa. 

Furthermore, the Miyako and Yaeyama regions were excluded from national 

elections until 1919. 27 

In March 1900, Jahana proposed an increase in rural representatives to counter 

the domination of Narahara and his allies in the Bank and, as a result, was removed 

from the director’s position at the Okinawa Agricultural Bank. Some of his Okinawa 

Kurabu members switched sides to co-operate with the conservatives (Ōsato 1969: 

225–6). This development isolated Jahana. Unable to find employment because of 

Narahara’s influence, he no longer had a place in Okinawa. Jahana died at the age 

of 43 in 1908. 

Smits provides an important analysis in English, which regards Jahana’s struggle 

as revealing Okinawa’s ambiguous relations with Japan, as well as the unsettled 

status of ‘Japan’ as a nation in the late nineteenth century. Importantly, Smits also 

points out that Jahana’s struggle was a struggle against class divisions within 

Okinawan society (2002: 112) – which was far from being an all-encompassing 

‘Okinawan’ movement. His isolation was mainly due to his conflict with members 

of the former aristocratic elite, who preserved the old Ryūkyūan social order 

and delayed the establishment of non-aristocratic elite. Furthermore, Jahana’s 

progressive movement was significantly detached from the rest of the society. The 

Okinawan People’s Rights Movement was basically an elite movement, which 

had knowledge of and access to the academic and political world of mainland Japan. 

In this sense, Arakawa argues, Jahana’s ‘Okinawa Struggle’ was isolated from 

the ordinary mass Okinawan population, in particular, the farmers in Okinawan 

villages where he had his roots (Arakawa 1973: 207). Arakawa himself (1973, 

1996, 2000b) has most intensely opposed the political strategy of attaching Okinawa 

both institutionally and emotionally to the body politic of Japan – the strategy of 

Jahana and Okinawa Kurabu’s movement. 

It is important to note here that Arakawa’s criticism of Jahana’s movement was, 

at the same time, criticism of the political thought and strategy of the reversion 

movement that became dominant in the community of protest in Okinawa during 

the 1960s. At the time, Arakawa was a leader of a group of Okinawan intellectuals 

who opposed the strategy of demanding institutional integration with mainland 

Japan. He likewise opposed relying on the notion that further institutional and


mental assimilation with mainland Japan would alleviate Okinawan predicaments. 28 

To be sure, the predicament was different in the 1960s but the modus operandi 

was the same: demanding Okinawa’s inclusion in the political system of mainland 

Japan, as if the bigger power – yamato – were the way to escape the undesired rule 

of the US military administration. 

Jahana’s movement is a critical presence in the early tradition of political activism 

in Okinawa. Indeed it is a cornerstone of the myth of a unitary ‘Okinawan’ struggle. 

Some even regard Jahana as the ‘origin of the Okinawa Struggle’ – for example, 

Kohazu Eikou, editor of the Okinawa Minken newsletter (Kohazu 1971 cited 

in Arakawa 1996: 207). Also, Ōe Kenzaburo, during his sojourn in Okinawa in 

1969–70, observed at the time that ‘the image of Jahana Noboru was revived, which 

in turn re-defined the outline and shades of the Okinawans’ reversion movement 

to the Homeland’ (cited in Ōsato 1996: 623). 

Isa comments that only a few articles on Jahana were published each year until 

1968. However, the number increased to 16 in 1969, 20 in 1970, and 38 in 1971, 

reflecting the heightening public concern about reversion, the reversion movement, 

and what it meant to Okinawans. However, by the late 1990s, only low levels 

of interest in Jahana were demonstrated (Isa 1998: 252–4, Ōsato 1996). The rise 

of interest in Jahana during the reversion movement period during the 1960s 

indicated that the idea of the struggle of an Okinawan people as a singular entity 

was being reconsolidated. At the time, Jahana’s struggle to extend Okinawans’ 

political rights as ‘Japanese’ citizens was similar to the goal of the struggle for 

reversion to Japan. Arakawa and his ‘anti-reversionist’ colleagues, nevertheless, 

refused to identify the strategy of Jahana’s movement with the strategy of the entire 

‘Okinawan Struggle’. Significantly, Arakawa’s iconoclastic (Molasky 2003) attack 

provides evidence of disagreements among ‘Okinawans’. Arakawa does not regard 

equal political rights with mainland Japan as an achievement. 

Most importantly for the theme of this book, the contentiousness of Jahana’s 

legacy illuminates the mythical character of the very point of its ambiguous origins. 

Conclusion: the ‘Ryūkyū Disposal’, the ‘palm-tree hell’ and 

the myth of a united Okinawan struggle 

This chapter has focused on the pre-WWII period since Okinawa’s annexation. 

Many Okinawans came to actively accept the need to overcome their ‘backwardness’ 

as perceived in the context of the new special and temporal imagining 

of the Japanese nation. The ‘assimilationist’ orientation of the Okinawans, which 

emerged in this period, was later expressed more aggressively by the reversion 

movement in the 1950s and 1960s (Tomiyama 1997: 270). Even after reversion to 

Japan, this orientation has influenced the content and strategy of protest, especially 

in seeking to share in the jurisdiction of the Japanese Constitution. 

Nevertheless, the idea of Okinawa as a separate entity from Japan with unique 

‘Okinawan’ denominators was gradually emerging. To what extent Okinawans 

should assimilate into Japan remains a source of disagreement. Self-perception of 

‘Okinawa’ as distinct from mainland Japan continues to provide an important


fissuring point amongst the actors of contemporary political struggle in Okinawa 

today. The contention over defining ‘Okinawa’ dates back to the historical development 

of the Okinawan subject, as evidenced by the views examined in this chapter. 

However, in so far as discrimination, disadvantages, and hardships in this period 

were explained as a result of being ‘Okinawan’ – different from Japanese – they 

contributed to the development of a historical narrative of Okinawa’s marginalization. 

These experiences are the basis of common narrative for different kinds 

of struggle within the community of protest. Jahana’s struggle for equal political 

rights, in particular, was important in forming the myth of an ‘Okinawan struggle’.

4 The Battle of Okinawa and 

‘Okinawan pacifism’ 

Introduction 

Along with the Ryūkyū ‘Disposal’ and ‘palm-tree hell’, the Battle of Okinawa in 

1945 is the most significant event in the history of Okinawans’ suffering. Recalled 

by the US military as the ‘bloodiest battle in the Pacific’, it killed at least one-quarter 

of the local population apart from the US and Japanese war participants. Most 

Okinawan survivors’ lives were severely interrupted in one way or another by losing 

members of family and houses, and having to relocate after the Battle. 

This chapter examines the Battle of Okinawa and ‘Okinawan pacifism’, and how 

both relate to the myth of an ‘Okinawan Struggle’. Grassroots groups such as the 

Okinawa Peace Network and the Okinawan Historical Film Society have engaged 

in the activity of preserving, representing and promoting the learning of the local 

civilians’ war experiences from ageing survivors, as well as from the remains of 

war. Such activities have generated a fundamental disbelief in the nation-state 

(especially Japan) as a protector of civilian population in war situations. They have 

also continued to form an Okinawa-specific brand of pacifism, distinguished from 

that of mainland Japan. In the community of protest, this Okinawa-specific ‘absolute 

pacifism’ – absolute rejection of war and war-related acts of the nation-state – has 

naturally expressed itself as an uncompromising protest against militarism and US 

bases in the contemporary context. 

In wider Okinawan society, however, collective mourning for the war casualties 

does not necessarily result in political opposition. Representation of the past has 

been particularly controversial in relation to the contemporary presence of the US 

bases on the island. Okinawans’ critical disbelief in the state, and animosity towards 

military bases, is not expressed – explicitly – by all Okinawan citizens. This was 

clearly demonstrated by the 1999 new Peace Memorial Museum debate. Governor 

Inamine and other conservatives censored or played down references to mainland 

Japanese aggression towards Okinawan civilians. Peace activists, academics, and 

anti-base politicians attacked this attempt to silence the atrocity committed by the 

state and military towards Okinawan residents. Therefore, the citizens’ groups’ 

unyielding criticism against the state’s attempt to smother its past aggression 

towards civilians in the Battle of Okinawa is also pitted against those within their 

own society who sanction this attempt.

In relation to the wider theme of this book, the almost unquestioned connection 

– between the attempt to represent residents’ historical experience and the longterm 

struggle against the military presence – is important to stress. This chapter 

argues that the stories and narratives of the Battle of Okinawa (nurtured within 

the community of protest through the effort of diverse social movement organizations) 

have become a resource for those opposing the state, the military, and 

the bases. In particular, the Okinawa-specific pacifism has provided diverse 

and plural anti-base organizations with a source of unity. Representation of 

local residents’ experience in the Battle of Okinawa is also essential to maintaining 

a historical narrative of marginalization, that is, to establishing a common 

idea about what the Okinawan people have been struggling for. Okinawa-specific 

pacifism, in other words, is crucial to keeping the myth of a unified struggle of 

the Okinawan people alive. It does not, however, provide a basis for an organizational 

coalition that unifies diverse groups engaged in different agendas including 

local war history education, class struggle, environmental protection, opposition 

against gender violence, or opposition to the military use of privately owned 

land. 

The first section reviews the stories and narratives of the Battle of Okinawa, as 

told and understood in the community of protest. The second section examines 

specific examples of Okinawan peace movements: preserving and passing down 

residents’ experiences in the Battle of Okinawa; challenging the idea of ‘collective 

suicides’, and collecting and viewing audiovisual records on what the Battle of 

Okinawa was really like. In the third section, the recent debate on the alteration 

of the new Peace Memorial displays will be examined. The fourth section analyses 

the Okinawa-specific ‘absolute pacifism’, and how it provides an ideological basis 

of the myth of a unified struggle of ‘Okinawans’. The overarching aim of this 

chapter is to examine the locals’ past war experiences commonly embraced across 

the diverse protest groups in the community of protest. 

Okinawan residents in the Battle of Okinawa 

The Battle of Okinawa 37 

If the Okinawans had not experienced the Battle of Okinawa (the only WWII land 

battle on Japanese soil), the meanings of the act of contemporary anti-base protest 

would be quite different. That is to say again, the stories and narratives inherited 

from the direct experiences in the Battle of Okinawa have been an ideological 

resource for postwar political opposition against the military bases. Former 

Governor Ōta Masahide (1990–8) was conscripted as a student soldier and later 

has become a historian of Okinawa. As Governor, Ōta has advanced a basically 

anti-base stance and, at the same time, a ‘peace promotion policy’, highlighted by 

the construction of a monument called the Cornerstone of Peace (Heiwa no Ishiji). 1 

So how, more generally, is the war represented in the community of protest? What 

specific stories and narratives explain the determined rejection of war and warrelated 

activities seen in the Okinawan community of protest? The timeline and 

key events of the Battle of Okinawa described below follow those of local historians, 

and especially Ōta and other anti-base and peace activists.


The overseas settlers were among the first Okinawan war casualties in WWII. 2 

In 1942, the South Sea Islands came under severe attack by US forces, forcing 

Japanese retreat. In retreat the Japanese killed a considerable number of civilians, 

including many Okinawans. Alternatively, they were forced to commit suicide by 

the Japanese military authorities, before being captured by the enemy. More than 

twelve thousand Okinawans died in the South Sea Island colonies. In August 1943, 

Tsushima-maru, a ship with 1,700 people on board (including 800 schoolchildren), 

which had left Naha port to escape possible US air attacks, was sunk by a US 

submarine near Amami Island killing 1,500. This remains a particularly tragic event 

in the local history. 3 In March 1944, the 32nd Okinawa Defence Troop was established 

to defend the Southwest Islands (Nansei Shoto) of Japan, including Okinawa. 

In July, combat soldiers were brought into this region from mainland Japan, and 

local houses, schools, and community centres were occupied by the military and 

turned into barracks. In October, US B-29 planes raided and burned down 90 per 

cent of Naha City. 4 

The safety of Okinawa was given low priority from the beginning. 5 For the 

civilian political leaders in mainland Japan, the mission of the Okinawan Defence 

Troops was to delay the allied advance towards Japan. Consistently throughout 

the event, extremely little attention was paid to the defence of Okinawa, and there 

was no joint planning between the military and the civilian leaders in Tokyo to 

prepare an overall combat strategy in the case of a US landing. Japanese troops on 

Okinawa were composed of no more than about 86,400 soldiers and 10,000 sailors 

from the mainland, plus locally recruited Okinawan adults and middle-school 

children. The latter received only the briefest combat training and very primitive 

weapons. To put these figures in perspective, 548,000 US soldiers in 1,500 warships 

landed on the tiny Kerama Islands on 26 March 1945. The total population of 

Okinawa was 450,000 at that time. 

One of the most tragic aspects of the Battle of Okinawa emphasized in local 

stories of the Okinawan ‘peace guides’ and anti-base activists is the collective 

suicides. The Japanese military commanders and the imperial education had 

indoctrinated the non-combatant citizens to end their lives ‘bravely’, rather than 

be captured by the enemy. In the small islands of Kerama, the imperial education 

and assimilation policies had ensured that the virtue of self-sacrifice had prevailed. 

In Tokashiki Island and Zamami Island, in the Kerama archipelago, only a small 

fraction of Japanese forces were deployed. The local Japanese troop leaders ordered 

about seven hundred islanders to commit suicide ‘with determination, so that the 

combat activities of the troops would not be disturbed by the non-combatants’ 

(Ōta 1996b: 92). The villagers accepted the order, and killed their own family and 

village members, and themselves, using household objects such as axes, razors, 

hoes, rat poison, and wooden rods. However, the leaders and core members of the 

Japanese troops survived and surrendered to the US soldiers after the villagers 

died (Ōta 1996b: 96). Most villagers believed dying for the emperor and the state 

was the right thing to do. The residents also believed they would be raped and 

killed if caught by the US soldiers. A member of the Okinawan Women Act Against 

Military and Violence, Miyagi Harumi, writes that in Zamami Island soldiers had


told the residents their ‘hero stories’ (buyūden) of raping and killing in the Chinese 

battlefields (Miyagi 2000: 146–7). Similar individual and group suicides took place 

in other parts of the islands of Okinawa. 

On 1 April, Americans landed on Okinawa Main Island. Central and southern 

regions of Okinawa Island turned into a combat zone, but only 30,000 people 

managed to flee to the northern region. Most of the 450,000 inhabitants were left 

behind and caught in the face-to-face combat zone where the American and Japanese 

soldiers were fighting. The residents, a majority of them females and adolescents, 

seriously engaged in combat training with bamboo sticks picked from the surrounding 

islands immediately prior to the US landing (Ōta 1996b: 83, 86). 

The American raids intensified, and bullets destroyed almost everything, an 

experience remembered as the ‘typhoon of steel’. The residents took refuge inside 

family tombs, 6 and in natural or emergency caves (gama) that they had dug in 

between their farming and construction obligations. Some accommodated more 

than a thousand people and were also used as hospitals. In May, the Japanese forces 

were reduced by 80 per cent, and the officers and soldiers desperately escaped into 

these caves and tombs. The officers usually occupied the least dangerous and most 

comfortable areas inside; scarce food was kept and cooked for them; many residents 

were assigned tiny areas next to the entrance, and were exposed to the explosives 

and fire attacks of the US soldiers. It was common for non-combatant residents to 

be refused entry into the emergency caves and left to die in the middle of US 

machinegun and bomb attacks. Concerned that the Americans would locate the 

caves, soldiers immediately killed crying children with their swords, or ordered the 

parents to stifle children under three. 

Many Okinawans believed that it would be safer to stay close to the soldiers, 

and remained on the central-southern Okinawa Island. They were wrong. 

‘Okinawa Defence Troops’ looted, raped and killed ordinary people whom they 

were supposed to be defending. The residents soon came to see the Japanese 

soldiers as a much greater threat than the enemy US soldiers. 

(Ōshiro 1998: 479) 

Contrary to the image of US soldiers as brutal murderers and rapists spread by 

Japanese war propaganda, Ōta recalls the US forces’ well-planned rescue activities 

to provide the local non-combatant residents with safety, materials for surviving, 

and equipment to maintain basic hygiene. US wartime policies towards noncombatants 

did save thousands of residents’ lives, even if only with long-term 

strategic interests in mind: in controlling the residents and in managing the islands 

congenially to their strategic advantage (Ōta 1996b: 106). 

Because of the lack of agricultural land and rapid population growth, Okinawans 

had been dependent on imported foodstuff from other parts of Japan before the war. 

Since all the ships were taken by the military and used for military purposes, food 

was in desperately short supply. 7 In this critical situation, when everyone was 

starving, the Japanese military staff had free access to food. They ordered the 

residents to provide what small amount they had, such as brown sugar saved for


emergencies. Thus, a significant number of the non-combatant population died of 

malnutrition and malaria. Deaths from eating poisonous sotetsu palm-tree extract 

had become too common to shock anyone (Ōta 1997: 50–1). 

The military also justified the need to provide for the sexual needs of the soldiers. 

Some of the officers took ‘comfort women’ into the caves with them. The military 

set up as many as 130 official brothels (‘comfort stations’) all over the archipelago. 

Local Okinawan women were recruited, and approximately 1,000 Korean women 

were transported by sea, to be subjected to violence and sexual slavery (Takazato 

1998). 

While encouraging and forcing residents to choose mass suicide for the sake 

of honour but also their loyalty to the emperor, the Japanese soldiers saw that 

Okinawans were essentially different and, hence, inclined to be disloyal. There 

were a considerable number of returnees from emigration to Hawaii, South 

America, and other places and this added to the perception that the Okinawan 

population contained ‘non-Japanese’ elements. 8 After the US landing, the Japanese 

Defence Troops announced that the use of any language other than standard 

Japanese was banned and communication in Okinawan language would be regarded 

as spying, and would be punished accordingly (Ōta 1996b: 179). Mainland soldiers 

and officers privately and officially executed many local civilians for ‘spying 

activities’ on essentially this contrived basis. 

After Japan surrendered on 15 August, the Japanese navy also executed several 

locally conscripted Okinawan soldiers as spies, because they had simply urged a 

cessation to futile attempts to fight on. In most cases, all the family members of 

the soldiers, including infants, were suddenly attacked and killed. The ‘spies’ in 

many cases were locals who were caught and released by US soldiers. The Japanese 

soldiers shot them from behind when they were found surrendering to US soldiers 

(Ōta 1996b: 127–30). In one such incident on Kume Island in June 1945, a post 

office clerk was executed as a spy, for being captured by the US troops, and for 

carrying the American letter recommending capitulation to the Japanese navy troop 

hiding in the mountains (Ōta 1996b: 133–46). These stories highlight how much 

was demanded of the Okinawans and how little trust or protection was given in 

return. 

Officially, the Battle of Okinawa commenced on 1 April 1945, when US troops 

landed on Okinawa Main Island, and ended on 23 June when the commanding 

officers of the Japanese defending army committed suicide. These dates exclude 

the important events that happened before and after the supposed beginning and 

end of the Battle. ‘Collective suicides’ of the residents in the Kerama Islands, and 

resident killing in Kume Island, instigated by Japanese military personnel, both 

happened after the US landings on 26 March and 26 June. Resistance against the 

US forces by the armed Japanese and local officers, soldiers and local noncombatant 

citizens continued until 7 September (Ōta 2000b: 13–15). According 

to the record of Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, 9 between 

8 September 1931 and 7 September 1946, more than 148,610 Okinawan residents 

died – nearly a third of the whole Okinawan population. The names of the dead 

are inscribed in the Cornerstone of Peace, completed and opened on 23 June 1995,

a 17,900-square-metres space with 118 granite stone plates, forming the shape of 

concentric waves (Peace Promotion Division, Okinawa Prefecture 2005). 10 

‘Absolute pacifism’ as a framing of protest 

The collective memory of the locals’ wartime experiences is the spiritual basis of 

the Okinawan aversion to war. It is likewise the basis of contemporary protest action 

against the military bases. This pacifism also makes anti-base protest in Okinawa 

a social movement, rather than just NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) opposition to 

facilities that nobody wants. 

Many local activist recollections of the Battle of Okinawa presented in local 

newspapers, in anti-war literature, and in the arts 11 are simultaneously protest 

expressions against the US military bases on Okinawa. Miyagi Yasuhiro, a leading 

figure of the protest movement against the construction of a new sea-based US base 

on the east coast of Nago City, reflects as follows: 

My mother raised my brother and me running a small daily necessity shop 

and a tempura shop. Only in her 20s at the time, she had survived the Battle 

of Okinawa and the difficult days after the war, with my brother in her arms. 

Soon to turn 70, my mother has always avoided showing her political position 

to society to protect her small business. But she does not hesitate to express 

publicly her absolute opposition to the construction of another military base 

in Okinawa. Okinawan survivors like my mother all make fun of themselves 

as being the leftover of the warship bombardments in the Battle. After these 

people go, Okinawa is bound to change. I don’t know in a good way or 

otherwise. But as long as they are alive, I am determined to do what I can do 

with them, to stop the pathways to war [my emphasis]. 

(Miyagi 1999) 

The Battle of Okinawa punctuates and articulates meanings of protest against war 

and further war preparation, and against the existence of US military bases (or any 

military bases and war equipment, for that matter) on Okinawa. I call this response 

to the Battle of Okinawa ‘absolute pacifism’ and it is highlighted here because it 

forms a kind of framing experience, 12 and a gathering point for different Okinawan 

protesters. The discourses of the Battle of Okinawa operate as a ‘frame’ of protest 

that gives meaning to the act of anti-war collective action. At the same time, 

residents’ past experience in the Battle of Okinawa serves as a marker of collective 

identity of an ‘Okinawan struggle’ as a movement. 

‘Peace guides’ 


World War II memorials and old battle sites concentrated in the southern region 

are treated as important public historical and cultural assets in Okinawa. The 

Okinawan tourist industry, non-government organizations, and municipal 

governments provide special tours for groups and individuals travelling to Okinawa


from outside to learn about the only ground battle on Japanese territory in WWII. 

Often called the ‘peace study (heiwa gakushū) tours’, these educational tours 

involve taking participant groups on buses to selected sites of the Battle of Okinawa 

including bomb shelter remains, battlefields, war memorials, and survivors’ 

testimonies of lives under fire related to particular war sites. 

These tours are promoted by the Okinawan prefectural government, particularly 

after the construction of the new Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum 

(Heiwa Kinen Shiryōkan) in 1999. They are organized by non-government 

organizations including the Okinawa Prefecture Tourist Volunteer Guides’ Society 

(Okinawa Ken Kankō Borantia Gaido Tomo no Kai), 13 and also by some government 

organizations such as the Okinawa Foundation (Okinawa Kyōkai) and the 

Naha City Council. 14 The ‘peace guides’ are mostly volunteers or workers at 

the City Council. Targeted visitors on the other hand include secondary schools 

who choose Okinawa as a school excursion destination, 15 workplace unions, and 

citizens’ groups with a strong interest in war and other social issues. 

War site tourism in Okinawa has gone through significant transformations in 

assuring its current shape. Itokazu Keiko is a respected anti-war figure in the 

Okinawan community of protest. Since 2004, she has been an Upper House member 

of parliament of the Japanese Diet, and a long-term OSMP member. She was a 

pioneer ‘peace guide’ before being elected as the only female member of the 

Prefectural Assembly in 1992. Since 1966, Itokazu had worked for a tourist bus 

company as a ‘bus guide’, working on buses wearing a uniform and holding a 

microphone, giving tourists explanations and stories related to the war remains. 

During this period, however, it was a standard practice of the bus companies in 

Okinawa that organized tours for Japanese tourists to provide stories emphasizing 

the heroic deaths of mainland Japanese soldiers in battle sites concentrated in 

southern Okinawa. Itokazu heard accounts of her mother’s experience in the Battle 

of Okinawa only after she died. When evacuating to the northern region to escape 

gunfire, Itokazu’s late mother lost her two small children from malnutrition, lost 

her sanity, and held her dead son’s body for days. Itokazu, born in 1947, remembered 

her mother only as a cheerful person who, like many other war survivors, 

never talked about war. It was at this point that she started to question the ways in 

which battle sites and war memorials were being presented at tourist destinations 

in Okinawa. Her feelings synchronized with emerging local critical voices in 

the late 1980s – voices protesting against the inadequate recognition given to the 

civilian Okinawans’ experiences in the Battle. 

In the early 1980s, Monbushō (Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture) 

redrafted history textbooks leaving out accounts of Japanese atrocities directed at 

Okinawan residents. 16 Such criticism was also directed at the local ‘bus guides’ 

for glorifying mainland Japanese soldiers and local residents’ deaths in the Battle, 

and for failing to address the responsibility of the state. At one of the local discussion 

groups, Itokazu gained support from Ishihara Masaie, history professor at the 

Okinawa International University, who had been working on establishing residentscentred 

history of the Battle. Itokazu and her colleagues started a study group on 

Okinawan residents’ experiences and the Japanese military’s behaviour. They also


staged a campaign to change Okinawan war site tourism by introducing stories 

about Okinawan residents about the Koreans who engaged in forced labour and 

also about ‘comfort women’ in the Battle. The campaign included fighting resistance 

from the bus companies to such change. 17 

In 2004, Itokazu was elected an Upper House member of the Japanese Diet, after 

serving three terms as legislature member of the Okinawan Prefectural Assembly 

since 1992. She is also one of two representatives of the Okinawan Women Act 

against Military and Violence, a local women’s protest organization against the US 

bases (see Chapter 8). Her political platform centres on peace, environmental 

protection, and women’s rights (Barrel and Tanaka 1997: 10–15). Being a peace 

activist and an opponent to the military bases is accepted in the community of 

Okinawa as a natural combination – it does not require explanation. 

Many other volunteer ‘peace guides’ belong to the Okinawa Peace Network, a 

non-governmental association. Its approximately 180 members share a common 

interest in learning and promoting education on residents’ experiences in the Battle 

of Okinawa. The main activities of the members are operating as ‘peace guides’, 

holding talk sessions on war experiences given by survivors, and engaging in other 

activities related to preserving historical assets such as war remains (Okinawa Peace 

Network member, Interview, February 2002). According to a founding member, 

Kawamitsu Akihiro, the Network is a loose association. Its membership also 

cuts across differences of social status, age, gender, occupation, and political and 

ideological views. 18 However, according to Kawamitsu, the minimal guideline 

of the Network is ‘not to glorify “voluntary” deaths for the victory of Japan as 

courageous or honourable. We do not endorse views that romanticize the aestheticism 

of civilians’ deaths, for example, those in the Himeyuri Troop, 19 which we 

sometimes encounter’ (Interview, February 2002). 

The ‘peace guides’ are those who are committed to the task of learning and 

educating people about the Okinawan residents’ experiences in the Battle. They 

are dedicated to providing alternative historical accounts of war, which do not 

involve the glorification of the war dead referred to as ‘Yasukunification’ by the 

Okinawa Peace Network, inspired by the deification of former Japanese soldiers 

at the famous shrine in Tokyo (Figal 2003: 73). These initiatives have been helped 

by greater efforts made by local historians, war survivors, and their families to 

record stories that place emphasis on the Okinawan citizen experiences. 

A typical itinerary of a peace education tour designed for high-school students 

includes visiting major caves (gama), such as Itokazugō, Garabigō, and Chibichirigama, 

where civilians and soldiers were accommodated away from the US 

attacks. Other popular sites include the Cornerstone of Peace; the Okinawa Peace 

Memorial Museum; the Himeyuri Peace Memorial Museum; the Shuri Castle; 

Kakazu Hill (a major battle site); the Kadena Air Station and Torii Station (US bases). 

At these sites, war survivors and anti-war landowners talk to the participants about 

the experiences of the local residents being deprived of food and shelter by 

the Japanese (Okinawa Heiwa Network 1998: 153). It is not by accident that the 

destinations of ‘peace education tours’ organized by the Okinawa Peace Network 

include major US military bases, such as the Kadena Air Base (albeit viewed only


from outside the fences and guarded gates). The site of actively operating military 

bases with ongoing jet noises has both ironic and chilling effects after walking 

through the dark and narrow dungeon of gama, seeing the remains of broken 

crockery, the bloodstained shirt of a baby stabbed by a Japanese soldier, and the 

traces of people who suffered and died against diseases, fatal wounds, and ‘collective 

suicides’. 

Challenging the idea of ‘collective suicide’ 

The ‘screening’ of Japanese school history textbooks by Monbushō in the early 

1980s caused considerable dispute in Okinawa. The ‘screening’ initially provoked 

protests from the Republic of Korea and the People’s Republic of China for deleting 

references to Japan’s aggression against civilians during WWII. 20 Subsequently, 

however, the dispute shifted to Okinawa: because Monbushō also ‘screened’ 

descriptions of Japanese behaviour during the Battle of Okinawa, significantly 

reducing the number of civilian deaths, and removing references to residents 

murdered by Japanese troops. Historian Ienaga Saburō took Monbushō’s screening 

of his history textbook to court. 21 Amongst other matters, he emphasized that 

the textbooks should have made clear that the collective suicides of the civilians 

were imposed by the Japanese military (Taira 1999: 39–40). The local newspaper 

Okinawa Taimusu featured this debate on the front page on 4 July 1982, and the 

Okinawan Teachers’ Union and other citizens’ groups, as well as the Village 

Assembly of Kitanakagusuku village in central Okinawa, made a protest statement 

against Monbushō (Arasaki 1992a: 184). 

The ways in which ‘collective suicides’ were officially depicted were misleading, 

and perhaps the most frustrating and painful topic for the war survivors and families 

of war casualties in Okinawa. Taira explains that using the word jiketsu (suicide) 

for civilians’ collective suicides distorts the meaning of it: ‘To call someone’s suicide 

jiketsu is to honour and glorify the person who had the extraordinary courage to 

kill himself or herself in this manner’ (Taira 1999: 42). Descriptions endorsed by 

Monbushō chose to separate the death by suicide from other forms of civilian 

deaths, particularly from murders committed by the military. Monbushō insisted 

on collective jiketsu ‘being added to any description of the Battle of Okinawa’ (Taira 

1999: 44). This way, the state’s culpability of imposing deaths is smoke-screened 

by the volunteer act of ‘nobility’ and bravery of jiketsu, making ‘civilian deaths 

comparable to military death’ (Field 1993: 63). Field emphasizes, ‘the civilian 

atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese army and the collective suicide committed 

by Okinawan civilians are inseparable’ (1993: 66). 22 Thus, it has been common 

among Okinawan war survivors not to wish to talk about the suffering they experienced 

during the Battle. The survivors have experienced having their testimonials 

being distorted and misrepresented, which explains their reluctance to talk (Taira 

1998: 2). However, the textbook dispute contributed to the rise in the early 1980s 

of citizens’ movements in Okinawan civil society to investigate and publicize 

residents’ experiences in the Battle in a manner more faithful to the residents’ 

perspectives.


In 1983, Chibana Shōichi, a villager of Yomitan, for the first time conducted 

in-depth research on the case of a collective ‘compulsory suicide’ that happened 

in Chibichiri gama in Yomitan village, based on the stories of the survivors. 

Villagers and families of the dead knew what happened in the gama, but the topic 

had been taboo in the village ‘because everyone knew that talking about it would 

hurt someone’ (Chibana 1988: 140–1). 23 Chibana hosted more than five hundred 

visitors to the gama in one month in 1988, and re-enacted the event of ‘compulsory 

suicide’ that happened (Chibana 1988: 144). 

Chibana, at the time a supermarket owner, also burnt the hinomaru flag at the 

Annual Sports Event in 1987 held in Yomitan village, in protest against the pressure 

exerted on the villagers to use the flag for the event, ignoring the sentiment of 

the villagers (Field 1993). The villagers’ silence on the subject of ‘compulsory 

collective suicide’ was in the background of the 1987 flag-burning incident. 

Particularly, many in Asian regions invaded and occupied by the Japanese military 

have considered the hinomaru flag the symbol of war, invasion, and murder of 

the Japanese Empire. For Okinawans, too, Chibana explains, the flag represents the 

old Japanese Army and the Emperor’s (Hirohito’s) military, which forced the Battle 

of Okinawa on the people (Chibana 1988: 181). He was a student activist engaged 

in the campaign for reversion, and is an anti-war landowner, who has been 

demanding the return of an inherited private property inside a US communication 

facility in Yomitan. Chibana has engaged in multi-faceted protest: the ‘peace guide’ 

activity; the campaign against the hinomaru flag; and against the US military bases, 

which in his life naturally appear to converge into one struggle: the ‘Okinawan 

Struggle’. 

The ‘one foot’ movement (Okinawa Historical Film Society) 

Nakamura Fumiko is another citizen activist who is committed to proselytizing 

opposition to war, by publicizing Okinawan war survivors’ experiences in the Battle 

of Okinawa. In 1983, even 11 years after reversion to Japan, Nakamura recalls, 

the survivors ‘firmly kept their silence about their own experience’ (Nakamura 

Fumiko, Interview, February 2002). As Secretary General of the Okinawa Historical 

Film Society, Nakamura has engaged in raising funds to purchase film images 

of Okinawan residents in the Battle stored in the National Archive in Washington, 

DC. The purchased footages have been made into movies and videos, and have 

contributed to reviving and maintaining the image of the Battle of Okinawa from 

an anti-war perspective. 

The Okinawa Historical Film Society has a small office on the fourth floor of 

a tiny building in a back street of the central district of Naha. This office is filled 

with films, books, and videotapes. A part-time receptionist answers the phone 

and fax inquiries, and deals with interview requests from the media. Nakamura, 

an eloquent and vibrant 88-year-old retired schoolteacher, 24 says the movement 

started from a more general campaign to promote first-hand retelling and recording 

of Okinawan war survivor experiences in the Battle of Okinawa before they 

die out.


The group was formed on 8 December 1983. Nakamura says, ‘8 December is a 

very important day for our group. The Battle of Okinawa was the product of 

the war Japan started against the US with the attack on Pearl Harbor. But many 

Okinawan children do not know about this day’ (Interview, February 2002). 

Nakamura was vice-president of the Okinawan Women’s Association, affiliated 

to the Japanese Women’s Association, which held an Annual General Meeting in 

Naha in December 1983. At this meeting, the Japanese Women’s Association 

expressed official support for the Okinawan Historical Film Society and for the 

campaign promoting WWII survivors talking about their war experiences. Only 

12 or 13 members are on the executive committee of the Film Society today; most 

of them are prominent members of the Okinawan community, including the 

president of the local newspaper, Okinawa Taimusu; university professors such as 

Ōta Masahide, Miyagi Etsujirō, Aniya Masaaki, and Ishihara Masaie, and Fukuchi 

Hiroaki, who has been the leader of the Okinawa Human Rights Council (see this 

chapter), as well as other long-time members of the Society such as folk singer 

Ōshiro Shinya. 

The idea of purchasing US film footages originally came from former exchange 

students who returned from US universities as well as local academics who knew 

about the large collection of film records of the Battle stored in Washington. 

Through informal communication, the idea was shared by the younger members 

of the Naha City Workers’ Union and the Okinawa Teachers’ Union, who did the 

actual work involved in the establishment of the Okinawa Historical Film Society. 

Nakasone Seizen, a well-known survivor of the Battle who experienced being a 

chaperone of the Himeyuri Troops, became the first Secretary General. The Society 

sent Ōta Masahide and Miyagi Etsujirō to the US National Archive in May 1984 

to choose the footage. The Japanese naming of the Society, ‘One-Foot Movement 

Organization’ (Ichi Feeto Undō no Kai), was inspired by the ‘Ten-feet Movement 

Organization’ (Jū Feeto Undō no Kai) in Hiroshima that similarly purchased 

footage from the US. But in Okinawa, Nakamura says, ‘the film records were to 

become the asset of all Okinawans, so we named the movement after the image of 

every Okinawan – including a small child – purchasing one foot of film for ¥100’ 

(Interview, February 2002). 

In May 1984, the film arrived from the US. The Society showed the footage 

with no sound or narration at the Naha Citizens’ Hall immediately. Despite the 

heavy storm and rain, the room was full and the audience spilled out into the 

corridor. Many elderly people – who would have known the war, but normally 

never say anything on the topic – were riveted to the screen. Nakamura still 

remembers the silence in the room and the eerie atmosphere. Films arrived one 

after another from the US. In due course, more than ¥5 million was raised and, after 

the first narrated movie was made, there was no need to raise funds because 

videotapes sold explosively. Interest came even from the US military stationed on 

Okinawa (Interview, February 2002). 

The fact that Nakamura was a schoolteacher for forty years is important. Not 

only have schoolteachers been the leaders of ‘peace education’ (Heiwa Gakushū) 

in Okinawan schools; they also led the reversion movement as well as the


anti-war and anti-base movements in postwar Okinawa (see this chapter). Most 

Okinawan schoolteachers, like their Japanese counterparts, supported Japan’s war, 

and taught pupils to be loyal and patriotic and to co-operate with the war effort. 

Nakamura herself recalls, ‘As a teacher I was responsible for instructing the children 

to respect and honour the country and the Emperor . . . I regret to this day that I 

had to say such things’ (Keyso 2000: 39). Nakamura says that, after she went back 

to teaching when the war was over, nobody looked after her children so she had to 

teach with her baby on her back, and on her way back home she had to find food 

in the field. Survival was difficult but, when she thought about the children who 

died in the war, the realization that they would never come back struck her like an 

arrow: she experienced intense remorse for encouraging them to die for the country. 

Many teachers throughout Japan share the same regret for encouraging dying for 

the state and victory, Nakamura believes. Then she explained the Japanese 

Teachers’ Union’s pacifist slogan, ‘We would never send another child to a 

battlefield’, and that the non-belligerent clause (Article 9) in the postwar Japanese 

Constitution was the most important element of her postwar anti-militarism 


The Okinawa Historical Film Society’s activities have been a major milestone 

for the peace movements in Okinawa, which is the ‘desire for peace, with action’ 

(Nakamura, Interview, Feburary 2002). The main strategy is telling the stories of 

atrocity and hardships caused by war, which is supposed to lead naturally to the 

idea that war must be avoided under all circumstances. The further corollary, of 

course, is that the US or any military bases cannot be accepted in Okinawa. Chibana 

(the Yomitan villager investigating compulsory suicides) also believes that resurrection 

of the gama stories and construction of the statue will help the Okinawans 

realize that, in the event of war, the first sufferers are the powerless, such as children 

and older people, and that war cannot be repeated ever again (Chibana 1988: 144). 

These peace activists’ practices are grounded in the assumption that most people 

naturally think this way. 

The Okinawa Historical Film Society’s role is not to oppose particular US military 

bases directly; however, the organization is very closely associated with the antibase 

community of protest in Okinawa. Some Historical Film Society members are 

simultaneously members of other anti-war and anti-base groups such as the Onetsubo 

Anti-War Landowners’ Organization (formed in the same year as the Society, 

see Chapter 6). Furthermore, the Society is one of 34 anti-war and anti-base citizens’ 

(non-party, non-union) organizations that joined the Citizens’ Council for Peace 

(Heiwa Shimin Renrakukai), formed in October 1999 in the lead-up to the 2000 G8 

Summit, in opposition to the central government’s scheme to relocate Futenma 

airbase to Henoko (http://www.jca.apc.org/heiwa-sr/jp). Nakamura is one of the 

representatives of this coalition, together with other prominent and regular activists 

such as Arasaki Moriteru, Sakihara Seishū and Taira Osamu (One-tsubo landowners). 

The participation of the Film Society in the group of anti-relocation organizations 

is mainly symbolic. Yet it continues to provide spiritual and historical background 

to the anti-base protest. The Battle of Okinawa is a connecting point in the community 

of social movements, bringing the past and the present together in the field of protest.


Victim-consciousness 

A victim-centred perspective has dominated mainland Japanese narratives of war 

and peace, most directly inspired by the cataclysmic experiences of the atomic 

bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Dower 1999: 198–9, Orr 2001). At the same 

time, Japanese nationalism in the postwar period has enshrined commitment to 

principles of democracy and peace in the 1947 Japanese Constitution (Dower 1999). 

It is arguable that both the trauma and the recovery have served to cover up the 

state’s responsibility for causing war and conducting invasions. It also had the effect 

of suppressing the hardships Japan’s war inflicted on non-Japanese civilians. These, 

again, included the forced labour and ‘comfort women’ brought from Korea and 

other colonies, and Okinawan civilians effectively removed from the mainstream 

memory of Japan’s war (Hein and Selden 1997, McCormack, 2001, Yoneyama 

1999). 

In some of its official expressions the Okinawan commitment to peace is built 

on the same uncertain foundations. In fact, the construction of the Cornerstone of 

Peace in 1995 elevated Naha into the league of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: one of a 

Japanese ‘triad of peace sites’ (Figal 2003: 71). With emphasis placed on the name 

inscription of the dead including those from the US and Britain as well as Koreans 

and Taiwanese, the Cornerstone of Peace is different from the commemorations 

that deify the dead as nationalist-patriotic heroes, as in the Yasukuni Shrine. 

Nevertheless, as Figal explains, the official commemoration of the Battle of 

Okinawa – exemplified by the opening ceremony of the Cornerstone of Peace – 

avoids articulating critical issues such as the ‘the role of the emperor system in the 

subjugation of Okinawa’; ‘the question of the emperor’s responsibility in the 

prosecution of the war’; ‘degrees of willing participation among Okinawans’ (1997: 

753). In other words, collective mourning for the dead, even in Okinawa, is converted 

into a vague, universal message of peace with no mention to specific details 

about who is responsible, who got killed first, what led to war, why Okinawa became 

the battlefield in the first place, and, most saliently, perhaps, how likely it is 

that Okinawans might be involved in another war, given the presence of the US 

bases. 

Ongoing controversy over the meaning of Peace Memorial Museum highlights 

this point: no critical inferences – whether in relation to the US bases or Japanese 

foreign policy – can be drawn from the memorialization and commemoration 

themselves. 

The ‘Peace Memorial Museum’ debate 

Several months into the new prefectural government’s inauguration, Okinawan 

Governor Inamine Keiichi and two Deputy Governors ordered the manufacturers 

to remove and change a significant number of historical materials prepared for 

display at the new opening of the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, 

planned for March 2000, a project inherited from the Ōta administration. Originally, 

the local supervisory committee, responsible for the Museum display contents


included dioramas of a Japanese soldier directing a rifle at an Okinawan family in 

a cave, and of a soldier forcing a wounded resident to drink poisoned milk to commit 

suicide. The rifle was removed from the soldier’s hands, and the soldier with milk 

entirely disappeared. Also, captions that specifically indicated the aggression of 

the Japanese military towards civilians were changed, for example, from ‘an old 

woman slaughtered by the Japanese military’ to ‘an old female casualty’ (Okinawa 

Taimusu, Evening Edition 3 October 1999). 

The Okinawan dispute over the 1999 Peace Museum issue is often discussed 

in the context of ongoing controversies in Japan. These include the justification 

of war through glorifying self-sacrifice and death, and the denial of Japanese 

aggression and atrocity directed at civilians (Angst 1997, Figal 2001, Hein and 

Selden 2000, Yonetani 2000b). Since 1996, some highly ranked Liberal Democratic 

Party (LDP) members have shown their commitment to the ‘revisionist history’ 

movement, which criticizes descriptions of the wrongs committed by the Japanese 

state and military, labelling them ‘prejudiced’ and ‘masochistic’ (See McCormack 

2000). 25 Nakakita refers to the ‘Peace Memorial Museum’ controversy in Okinawa 

in the context of a ‘national’ debate, to do with the ‘historical revisionist’ movement 

(Nakakita 2000: 234). Within the framework of a nationwide controversy, the 

Okinawan Peace Museum issue tends to be represented as a sideshow to the larger 

dramas of mainland Japan. 

In Okinawa, the background, not surprisingly, was quite different. That is to 

say, the Museum debate took place against the backdrop of the planned construction 

of a new US military base on the east coast of Nago. The protest against Inamine’s 

censoring of museum displays was, at the same time, a protest against his policy 

to ‘butter up’ the Japanese government and the LDP. Elected in place of Ōta 

Masahide in November 1998, the priority of Governor Inamine and his administration, 

supported by the LDP, clearly had been to keep the economic link with 

the mainland Japanese intact. In April 1999, Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo, to 

everyone’s surprise, selected Okinawa and Kyushu as the host of the G8 Summit 

Meeting in 2000. Nago City was also chosen to host the Summit’s main venue. 

As had been announced by the US and Japan, Nago was the preferred relocation 

site of the Futenma air base governments decided to close. This selection was 

understood as a scheme of the Japanese government to humour the Okinawans 

and the prefectural government into accepting the relocation. It was suitably 

veneered with the rhetoric of Obuchi’s ‘passionate compassion’ towards Okinawa. 

Consequently in December 1999, Nago mayor Kishimoto officially accepted the 

heliport construction in Nago (see Chapter 8). 

Thus, Okinawa was expecting a rush of visitors from overseas and mainland 

Japan, before and after the Summit (Okinawa Taimusu 7 October 1999). Because 

of this timing, Governor Inamine admitted to have ‘communicated his concern’ 

with the exhibitions of cruelty and aggression on civilians that he thought could 

be interpreted as ‘anti-Japanese’. However, he denied having given direct orders 

to change the contents of the Museum display (Okinawa Taimusu 6 October 1999). 

Okamato comments that the Museum issue was a consequence of Okinawa’s 

long-term, continuous dependence for economic survival on public works provided


by the central government (dialogue with Yakabi in Okamato and Yakabi 

2000: 20). 

The Governor and Deputies’ alleged alterations to the museum exhibits challenged 

the historical consciousness of Okinawans, who expect proper representation of 

residents’ experiences in the Battle. And this issue is fundamental, for Okinawan 

consciousness of the Japanese military’s past aggression and cruelty towards its own 

citizens underpins general opposition to war-related activities, and Okinawa’s unique 

‘absolute pacifism’. The Museum issue significantly tested the Okinawan-specific 

historical consciousness. 

The Museum issue also revealed, however, that some Okinawans were willing 

to ‘adjust’ this ‘Okinawan spirit’ to render it inoffensive to the Japanese government 

and to protect material and economic interests. The Okinawan prefectural 

government’s secret alterations of the Museum displays demonstrated that ‘peace’ 

can be presented from a quite conservative political orientation (Ishihara 2000, 

Yonetani 2000b). Governor Inamine stressed that there were a number of valid 

ways in which the reality of war can be perceived, interpreted, or represented, 

including ways that do not offend the general Japanese public and the LDP. Those 

favouring a more flexible understanding of peace stressed the need to project an 

image of Okinawa as ‘positive and bright’ (Yonetani 2000b: 158, 163), that is, as 

a tourist and investment attraction. The ‘Okinawan spirit for peace’, originating in 

the ‘“Golden Age of Trade” (from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century) when 

men from the tiny Kingdom of Ryūkyū travelled without weapons, armed only 

with words, consideration, and good nature’ (Figal 2001: 41–2), could be reduced 

to nothing more than a catch phrase to advertise Okinawa as an appealing 

destination. It could be reduced to a ‘spirit of muteness’ afraid to criticize the current 

state’s security policy. This internal dispute indicates the structural changes that 

have taken place in Okinawa since reversion in 1972, now that the population born 

after the reversion outnumbers the war survivors (Okamato and Yakabi 2000: 20). 

Living emotional connections to memories of the Battle count for a lot. 

It must be said, however, that the Museum issue caused a prolonged internal 

dispute to do with changing attitudes towards war among the Okinawan population. 

Yakabi points out that there were more than fifty articles on the Okinawan Peace 

Memorial Museum controversy in the two local newspapers in Okinawa. This 

indicates the significance with which the Okinawans regarded this issue. By contrast, 

there were only a few in the mainland Japanese media (Yakabi 1999: 18). 

Iha Yōichi, a member of the Okinawan Prefectural Assembly and mayor of 

Ginowan City since 2003, spearheaded the accusations against the Inamine 

administration by making critical statements in the Assembly. Iha was a member 

of Yui no Kai, made up of three Assembly members not affiliated to political 

parties. On the second day of the Assembly Meeting on 4 October, the opposition 

parties (the Japan Communist Party, the Japan Social Democratic Party, Kōmeitō, 

and the Okinawa Socialist Mass Party, Yui no Kai and other independent 

members) boycotted the meeting in protest against Inamine’s ‘false’ explanations 

concerning the alteration of the Museum displays made to the Assembly earlier. 

Inamine finally admitted, apologized for, and disclosed the content of the

alterations and the way in which they were made (Okinawa Taimusu, 6 October 

1999). 

Apart from the collective boycott at the Prefectural Assembly, local political 

parties (JCP, JSDP, Kōmeitō, OSMP), workers’ unions (such as Kenshokurō, the 

Okinawa Peace Centre), and other peace organizations (including the Historical 

Film Society and the Okinawa Peace Network) also engaged in protest activities. 

Importantly, these organizations acted separately, not in a prefecture-wide coalition. 

A member of the Okinawan Women Act against Military and Violence recalled: 

When the Museum opened in April, we held a protest rally in front of the 

Prefectural Hall. Other organizations (for example, the Okinawa Peace Centre) 

did the same, but on their own. Organizations in Okinawa, in general, do not 

mingle with each other. They protest on their own, separately, according to 

their own schedule. 

(Interview, March 2002) 

Even though the Museum issue was intertwined with the base issue, however, a 

unified protest was not staged by a unified coalition that formally addressed both 

issues. Nor did the Museum debate become a political opportunity to turn the base 

relocation issue around. The protest action at the Prefectural Assembly, and the 

controversy itself, demonstrated that the ‘Okinawan spirit for peace’ was at least 

shared among different groups and organizations in the community of protest 

against militarism in Okinawa. However, the unanimous opposition across the 

community of protest to Governor Inamine’s alteration of the Peace Museum 

displays did not translate into a united campaign against the Futenma relocation to 

Nago involving wider Okinawan society. Inamine was re-elected as Governor in 

2002 despite the Museum blunder that upset the community. 

Conclusion: ‘absolute pacifism’ and the myth of an 

Okinawan struggle 


This chapter has examined the Battle of Okinawa and the activities of citizen groups 

and organizations committed to representing the war experiences from the perspective 

of local residents’ experiences. Of particular importance is the connection 

between the acts of representing local residents’ war experiences on the one hand, 

and political opposition to the contemporary military presence in Okinawa on the 

other. 

The discussion has pointed out the problems inherent in this connection. Firstly, 

interpretations of Okinawans’ past experiences in the war are susceptible to 

censorship and adjustment, depending on the political climate. Part of the aim of 

the Okinawa Peace Network peace guides has been to oppose the glorification 

of death and sacrifice in wars. The debate over the Peace Memorial Museum in 

1999 has demonstrated that the Okinawan-specific commitment to ‘peace’ can be 

articulated in ways which avoid critical reflection on the state and the US and 

Japanese military presence. Emphasis placed on commemorating victims as heroes


in the war can also work to obscure crucial historical issues, such as the emperor’s 

responsibility, colonial subjugation of Okinawa by Japan, Okinawa’s economic 

dependency, and the danger of the continuing presence of the US forces for 

Okinawan citizens. In order to oppose war seriously in the contemporary context, 

past responsibilities of the state and the military for causing unnecessary deaths 

need to be constantly acknowledged. They are often suppressed in public 

commemorations of the Battle of Okinawa. 

The other important question is this: can ‘absolute pacifism’ itself be an effective 

vehicle of protest against the bases? The person who most clearly articulates this 

point is, again, the activist and historian Arasaki Moriteru. He urges that Okinawans 

should revisit the Battle of Okinawa because it is a method of anti-base struggle, 

‘though it may sound like a simplification and may create misunderstanding’ 

(Arasaki 1994: 17). However, Arasaki is still hesitant here about directly identifying 

the two struggles. This hesitation, perhaps shared in the community of protest, 

reflects the feeling that the activities of commemorating Okinawans’ loss in the 

Battle of Okinawa has not necessarily been successfully represented or understood 

publicly as opposition to the US military bases. 

This hesitation is in fact necessary for keeping the war experience at the heart 

of the historical narrative of Okinawa’s marginalization. The connection between 

the past experience and the present anti-war struggle is implicit in the activities of 

the citizens’ groups – and an important element of the myth of a unified struggle 

of the Okinawan people. Thus one commentator has observed: 

At least in Okinawan public discourse, to engage in the history and 

memorialization of the battle is – whether intended or not – to engage in (the 

politics of) peace promotion. These politics inevitably raise the issue of US 

bases regardless of one’s position on them . . . And this in turn has everything 

to do with past, present and future relations between Okinawa and the central 

Japanese government that has presided over a history of invasion, annexation, 

subordination, devastation and occupation of the Ryūkyū Islands. 

(Figal 2001: 65) 

The link between the past and present is left to the audience of a peace tour to figure 

out, which is, perhaps, more effective than relying on didactic political slogans. 

Peace guides, citizens’ groups, and concerned individuals are doing what they 

can, using the informal and personal connections to keep the memory of this 

experience alive. As a result, the legacy of the Battle of Okinawa and the ideology 

of ‘absolute pacifism’ as a contemporary protest frame are widely shared in the 

community of protest, if not in the entire Okinawan society. The unique Okinawan 

brand of pacifism remains inseparable from the protest against the continuing 

presence of the military bases in the island.

5 The first wave 

Opposition to US military land 

acquisition 

Introduction 

Barely ten years after the Battle of Okinawa, the US military threatened residents’ 

livelihoods yet again with bulldozers, tanks, and soldiers. Their forceful confiscation 

of privately owned properties for military base construction and training was added 

to the Okinawan historical narrative of marginalization. Local residents started to 

organize protest actions against the US military, and this gave rise to what Arasaki 

describes as the first-wave ‘Okinawa Struggle’. This cycle of protest is popularly 

known as the ‘all-island struggle’ (shimagurumi tōsō). It has been constantly recalled 

as the earliest, and perhaps the most powerful, evidence of the locals’ ability to wage 

collective action against the authorities. The ‘first-wave’ postwar Okinawa Struggle 

has been a source of inspiration and pride for the local tradition of grassroots political 

activism. 

In the immediate postwar period, workers, teachers, and landowners started to 

form political organizations, many of which are still active. Most local political 

parties were also born in this period. Of those involved, farmers were the most 

desperate protest actors but the goals of protest remained diverse. Initially this did 

not hinder the development of a wide sense of unity but the unity proved to be 

both temporary and fragile and the anti-US coalition soon collapsed. That said, 

the unity and power demonstrated by this island-wide mass protest against US 

land policy was, perhaps, most influential in helping to create what I have called 

the myth of a united struggle of the Okinawan people. 

This chapter responds to a number of questions: What were the main differences 

among the protest actors? What explained the fragility of the all-island coalition? 

What made the temporary unity possible? This chapter examines different protest 

actors, their social bases, strategies, priorities, and how they came to form a coalition 

for one struggle. 

As was often the case in Okinawa’s community of protest, multiple struggles 

occurred simultaneously in different geographical locations. One of the most 

famous of these is the farmers’ struggle in Ie Island (Ie-jima), a legendary struggle 

against forced US land acquisition, but it was one of many local struggles. The 

Ie-jima struggle, however, represents what is common to many Okinawan struggles 

– anti-militarism based on absolute pacifism and non-violent disobedience. The


Ie-jima farmers demonstrated the Okinawans’ capacity for collective action and 

for making political demands. Their legend continues to nourish diverse protest 

actors in Okinawa. 

Many other local political organizations committed to opposing the authoritarian 

US military administration surfaced alongside Ie-jima. These included political 

parties, workers’ unions, landowners’ organization, and teachers’ organizations, 

and the growth of the campaign for reversion. All of this went into the making of 

the ‘first wave’ island-wide mass protest, and the building of a temporary coalition 

among protest organizations against the draconian US land policy. This chapter 

analyses the implications of the land struggle, for the idea of a ‘movement’ of a 

unified ‘Okinawans’. 

Postwar US occupation 

Ie-jima is a small island (23 square kilometres) located only 9 kilometres northwest 

of Okinawa Island. Ahagon Shōkō, the most influential organizer of the Ie-jima 

struggle, died in May 2002 at 101 years of age having been born in 1901 in Motobu 

village on Okinawa Main Island. Ahagon was a farmer, but not by any means a 

typical peasant figure. He became a Christian at 17 but the life of a farmer did not 

appeal to him and he wanted an education. His family, however, did not have the 

money to send him to school. In the period when many Okinawans were encouraged 

by the government to migrate overseas after the ‘palm-tree hell’, Ahagon spent 

ten years in Cuba and Peru, still hoping to make money to study one day. He was 

finally able to return at the age of 32, moved to Ie-jima, started a small community 

shop, and bought a block of farmland in the Maja hamlet/district of Ie-jima – 

becoming a farmer after all. 

Ie-jima was among the most severely war-damaged areas in the Battle of 

Okinawa when the US Forces conducted some of the bloodiest raids. These raids 

killed about 1,500 villagers out of a population of 7,500, including Ahagon’s only 

son whom he dearly loved and looked forward to cultivating his family farm with. 

The hundred households in the Maja district were reduced to 75 and the Maja 

villagers were moved around many times by the US forces to other islands, not 

returning to their homes until March 1947. At that point, the residents tried to put 

the past behind and concentrate on farming (Ahagon 1973: 16–17). 

During the Battle of Okinawa, the US military evacuated local civilians in 

makeshift tents, away from their homes. 1 In the aftermath of the Battle, confusion, 

chaos, and depravation ruled immediate postwar life in the islands across Okinawa, 

Amami, Yaeyama, and Miyako. Okinawa was outside the US trusteeship for 

Micronesia passed by the United Nations in 1947 and, as the result of Japan’s defeat, 

lacked clear definition in terms of international law. Negotiation for a peace treaty 

started early but it was a lengthy process. 2 From July 1947, a division of the US 

Army which called itself RYCOM or the Ryūkyū Command took over civil 

administration. The US military at this stage regarded Okinawans as ‘the enemy’ 

(Warner 1995: 47), and seized land was considered American property. 3 The US

The first wave 55 

military basically viewed land in Okinawa as justly acquired by the sacrifice and 

casualties of American youth in the Battle of Okinawa. 

While residents and those who returned from mainland Japan were accommodated 

in internment camps, the US military occupied 45,000 acres of land for 

base construction. The area chosen was mostly farmlands, for the military required 

flat, open land surfaces, which were relatively scarce on Okinawa Main Island. In 

the central region of Okinawa Island huge land tracts were enclosed by barbed wire 

fences and many residents never returned to their original homes (Arasaki 1995: 

23). Ie-jima was out of this region but was one of the areas targeted by the US 

because of its relatively flat land surface – suitable for shooting ranges and airfields. 

In Ie-jima, Ahagon recalled that the farmers were so naive and ignorant that 

they believed that, if they co-operated with the US military, the Americans would 

help the villagers recover from the war. Maja farmers were first glad it was the 

Americans, not the Japanese, who won the war. The Japanese soldiers had treated 

Ie-jima residents with contempt, killed them, and subjected them to harsh labour 

during the war. ‘We thought of American democracy and Lincoln, and met with 

the US delegates in Ie-jima who seemed much more generous and civilised than 

what they had been told about the Americans before the war’ (Ahagon 1973: 21). 

In August 1948, RYCOM set up four locally elected legislatures and executive 

institutions and governors, representing each guntō (groups of islands) of the 

Okinawa, Yaeyama, Amami, and Miyako region (see Maps B and C). This was a 

move to prevent the locals’ discontent and limit growing communist influence, 

which was already prevalent (Miyazato 2000: 32–5). At the same time, RYCOM 

acted to limit further the civil and political rights of the residents and restricted 

their activities. A draconian criminal law was introduced. This restricted freedom 

of publications, travel, and any organized political activities. Navy commander 

Watkins famously compared the Okinawan local autonomy to that of a mouse, 

free only to the extent that the cat (the US military government) allows (Kano 1987: 

69). 4 When the Army took over from the Navy, US control over Okinawa was 

further upgraded. 

The US authorities defended the legitimacy of the acquisition of land that 

belonged to the locals by stressing the strategic importance of Okinawa’s location 

for defending regional security against the communist bloc. 5 By 1949, a consensus 

was reached within the US government on the vital importance of Okinawa as a 

US security outpost, should Cold War hostilities escalate (Eldridge 2001: 233). 

As the Cold War took clearer shape with the 1949 revolution and establishment of 

the People’s Republic of China, the US State Department and Congress approved 

the allocation of a $58 million US federal budget for base construction on Okinawa 

(Dower 1971: 193). From the newly constructed US bases in Okinawa, B-29s 

were already raiding North Korea, contributing to the Korean War that started in 

1950 (Miyazato 2000: 49). Initially, no compensation was paid to Okinawan 

landowners for their extensive land losses. 

As of 15 December 1950, the military government changed its name to the US 

Civil Administration of the Ryūkyū Islands (USCAR) and in April 1952 USCAR 

created a local executive administration, 6 the Government of the Ryūkyū Islands


– GRI (Ryūkyū Gyōseifu) – with Chief Executives directly appointed by the 

USCAR. The elected Parliament (Rippō-in) and the Judicial Branch, and the GRI 

constituted the central government representing the Okinawan residents. Their 

power, however, was subject to USCAR veto. In fact, the local government’s 

function was limited to rubber-stamping US military directives, proclamations, and 

ordinances (Miyazato 2000: 63–5, Warner, 1995: 87). Centralization also brought 

with it the abolition of the elected guntō governments. 

Birth of new political organizations 

Political parties 

The creation of a civil administration and elective offices, no matter how hamstrung, 

created new opportunities for political engagement. The activity which this 

engendered is briefly surveyed in this section. 

Amidst ruin left by the war, evacuated Okinawans were living in tents in 

internment camps under US curfew, and surviving on rationed food distributed by 

the US forces. Stealing US military goods and prostitution provided common means 

of survival. Nevertheless, a handful of locals – mostly young males – started to 

form political parties. Their immediate concern was securing food and subsistence, 

but the basic motivation was a deep concern about the delay of broader postwar 

recovery, economic and social. This concern was sharpened by comparison with 

rapid recovery in Japan. 7 These early organizers believed that the best way forward 

would involve obtaining autonomy and political representation under US control. 

The first of these political parties, the Yaeyama Labour Party, was formed in 

the Yaeyama region. On the Okinawan Main Island, the Okinawa Democratic 

League was formed in 1947, followed by the Okinawa People’s Party (OPP, 

Jinmintō) and the Okinawa Socialist Party. 8 The founding members of OPP were 

employees who worked for a local newspaper, Uruma Shimpō, which was initially 

funded by the US military. Ideological orientations within the OPP members varied 

significantly. It was only later that they became strongly influenced by Marxist– 

Leninist ideas and links with the Japan Communist Party (JCP), and would become 

the major target of US suppression. Its party members were mainly skilled and 

unskilled workers (many of them worked for the US administration and military), 

farmers, and business owners. 

It is important to note that, contrary to the later enthusiasm for reversion, the 

local political parties did not give priority to Okinawans’ return to Japan in the 

immediate postwar years. Indeed, initially the OPP welcomed the US military rule 

as an opportunity to free Okinawa from Japan. 9 At the OPP commencement 

ceremony, the Party expressed its gratitude to the US military, and described it as 

a ‘liberating force’ (Nakano 1969: 64). Other local political parties, including the 

Okinawa Democratic League, the Okinawa Socialist Party, and the Miyako Socialist 

Party in Miyako Island, also supported Okinawa’s independence from Japan, 

favouring a future as a republic under the guardianship of the US or UN trusteeship 

(Oguma 1998: 483–9).


Another major local political party, the Okinawa Socialist Mass Party (Okinawa 

Shakai Taishūtō OSMP), was established in October 1950. The Party’s chairman 

was Taira Tatsuo, who had also been elected the first Governor of Okinawa Guntō. 

The Party first started as an English study group consisting of elite Okinawan males 

who had graduated from Tokyo University. The members formed a new party, 

based on socialism but not class-based, to avoid hostility from the US military 

administration. 

The Okinawa Democratic League basically represented the conservative establishment 

of Okinawa, which gave priority to co-operating with the US administration 

and protecting its economic interests. The Democratic League was defeated 

severely by the OSMP in the election for Okinawa Guntō Governor. It briefly 

changed its name to the Republican Party in 1950, under the leadership of Nakasone 

Genwa, who advocated for Okinawa’s independence. In 1952, US-appointed GRI 

Chief Executive Higa Shūhei defected from the OSMP, and established the Ryūkyū 

Democratic Party (Ryūkyū Minshutō) in August 1952, which grew as a pro-US, 

conservative party. 

Schoolteachers’ union 

Okinawan schoolteachers also became politically active, forming teachers’ unions. 

Also, by the late 1940s, more than eighty local assembly members were teachers. 

The US military government placed extremely low priority on the education of 

Okinawan children (Warner 1995: 52). Destroyed in the Battle, there were almost 

no school buildings, books, and other essential materials such as paper and pencils. 

Teachers gathered children on the beaches and taught by writing on the sand, under 

the trees, and in the tents and barracks provided by the US military. Old textbooks 

were picked up from bomb shelters in the battlefields (Yara 1968: 16). 

The major difference between schoolteachers and the political parties related to 

the question of Japan. School teachers, in other words, formed the central force that 

led the campaign for reversion. From the first, the teachers continued the prewar 

nationalist educational emphasis on the development of Okinawan pupils as 

Japanese citizens. The teachers’ enthusiasm for reversion was also helped by 

their will to improve their working conditions to the level of mainland Japanese 

educators. As early as 1951, the Okinawan Principals’ Organization (Kōchōkai) 

resolved at one of its meetings to request Okinawa’s reversion to Japan. One of 

the principals present read a Ryūkyūan poem that received a standing ovation: 

‘Mushika America, nuchikandon ariba, uchina mangatami / yamato watara’ (‘If 

America does not listen to our request, let’s carry Okinawa on our shoulders and 

move across to yamato’) (Yara 1968: 28). Significantly, too, the teachers were the 

main promoters of cultural integration with Japan, expressed in the form of cultural 

assimilation. 

Yara Chōbyō, a former chemistry teacher, was a pioneer of the reconstruction 

of education in postwar Okinawa, and Chair of the Okinawa Teachers’ Association 

(OTA), formed in 1952. Yara, Kyan Shinei, and other members who travelled to 

the mainland for ‘educational field trips’ stressed how ‘rapidly the education system


was changing in mainland Japan, and that Okinawa is lagging behind’ (Yara 

1968: 27). Local principals and the Okinawa Guntō government Educational 

Section jointly requested USCAR to permit Okinawan teachers’ travel to participate 

in training programmes in the mainland (Yara 1968: 26–7). Yara and his 

OTA colleagues thus came to be regarded as the main instigators of the reversion 

movement on the education front. This allowed them to mobilize schoolchildren 

and parents for their reversion campaign. 

Workers 

As the US military accelerated construction of their bases in Okinawa, local 

unskilled workers started to organize political action. The construction companies, 

about half of which were from mainland Japan, employed local labour and workers 

from Amami Island, who migrated in search of jobs. Exploitation of local labour 

was essential to the speedy construction of US military bases and the conditions 

under which they worked were appalling. More than 250 workers at a time were 

accommodated in big buildings, which were described as ‘pigsties’ (butagoya)by 

the locals. The barracks were built directly on the ground without floorboards, and 

had leaky roofs and no basic facilities such as toilets (Nagumo 1996: 30, Senaga 

1959: 244). Workers were nevertheless charged for accommodation, food, and maid 

services. 10 They received extremely low wages after these deductions and these 

were often suspended arbitrarily. Indeed, their pay was frequently less than what 

was needed to sustain a living. Local Okinawan workers employed on bases also 

worked long hours and their workloads were extremely demanding. 

In 1948, local waterside workers organized strike action at the Naha Military 

Port, because of the demanding labour and low pay. In response, RYCOM closed 

the community grocery stores and threatened to stop the residents’ food rations, 

which worsened already serious material shortages. But the food ration incident 

had a predictably perverse effect: the demand for autonomy and protest activities 

against the US authorities dramatically increased. The OPP played a very active 

role here, organizing collective action, using speeches and small meetings in villages 

and towns across Okinawa to mobilize opposition to the food restrictions (Okinawa 

Henkan Dōmei 1969: 67). 

In 1952 and 1953, road workers and construction workers went on a series of 

strikes, demanding improvement of basic conditions such as decent accommodation 

and payment of suspended wages. In June 1952 local road workers staged a strike 

against the Nihon Road Company (Nihon Doro Gaisha), a subsidiary company of 

the Shimizu Construction Company (Shimizu Kensetsu). They engaged in another 

strike for similar reason in1953 at a macadamization site in Motobu, a northwest 

village in Okinawa Island (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 65). As soon as the strikes 

were publicized in newspapers, the issue of labour exploitation attracted strong 

empathy from the Okinawan public. Thus, one journalist noted: 

In public places, such as public baths, barbershops and pubs, people discussed 

the conditions of the workers: ‘They are treated like domestic animals’, ‘How


much money do they make, I wonder?’ ‘There are no toilets and at night they 

can’t sleep because of the mosquitoes’, ‘We must save the workers from the 

pigsty!’, ‘Let the workers breathe fresh air!’ 

(Senaga 1959: 246–7) 

The construction companies took advantage of Okinawan workers who were 

unprotected by labour laws. The Okinawan workers rightly attributed their predicament 

to the non-existence of legal means to protect themselves (Nakachi 1989: 68). 

On Okinawa’s first May Day celebration in 1952, the participants issued a statement 

requesting immediate reversion to Japan, as well as legislation to protect basic 

labour rights (Oguma 1998: 502–6). If they became ‘Japanese’ the Okinawan 

workers could receive more than twice as much pay than they did as Okinawans. 

The OPP and OSMP members of Parliament commenced the campaign for basic 

labour legislation. In November 1952, despite a USCAR warning, the Parliament 

passed bills to establish three labour-related laws, namely the Labour Union Law, 

the Labour Standard Law, and the Labour Relations Regulations Law. These laws, 

in mainland Japan, had been implemented by SCAP as part of postwar social reform 

during the occupation. The protagonists argued that the Okinawans deserved the 

same rights as the mainland Japanese to form labour unions and to bargain 

collectively. 11 

In response to the growing demand for labour rights, USCAR issued Ordinance 

No. 116, which stipulated that the three labour laws that were passed by Parliament 

would not apply to workers employed by the military bases. Moreover, Ordinance 

No. 145 made it an obligation to obtain permission from USCAR to form a union 

and obtain recognition for the union executives. The abolition of these ordinances 

became one of the most important goals of the workers, especially, of course, the 

Okinawan workers employed by the US bases. The labour movement grew to 

become the most active political sector in 1950s Okinawa, and the organizations 

that emerged from the workers’ struggle spread all over Okinawa. 12 

Landowners 

In central Okinawa, where the US land confiscation was most common, landowners 

who lost their land began to organize political action to demand rent. The first 

request to the US military to pay rent to landowners was made by newly formed 

local political parties, the Okinawa Democratic League and the Okinawa People’s 

Party (Uruma Shinpō, 11 May 1950). In November 1951, a landowner, Kuwae 

Chōkō (who was also a founder of the Okinawa Democratic League), placed an 

advertisement in the Okinawa Taimusu to call for the establishment of a landowners’ 

organization for all Okinawan landowners (Okinawa Taimususha 1997: 206). 

A land committee was set up in each village on the Rippō-in’s (the Parliament’s) 

suggestion, to represent the interests of the landowners of properties taken by the 

US military. In June 1953, these land committees all over Okinawa integrated into 

one interest group, Tochiren (Tochi Rengokai, the Landowners’ Union). The aim 

of Tochiren was ‘an amicable settlement of the land dispute’ (Hiyane 1982: 267–8).


It represented the landowners’ interests, and became the central force of the islandwide 

coalition for the land struggle in the 1950s. It has continued to represent 

landowners to the present, from the perspective of securing existing landowners’ 

rent incomes. Unsurprisingly, Tochiren has been a conservative, economic-oriented 

organization. Despite this, any objections to US land policies were labelled 

‘communist’ and provided the US administration with excuses for persecution. For 

this reason, the members of the Parliament and Tochiren limited their strategies to 

the refusal of lump sum payments and the protection of minimal land rights. Apart 

from the case made by the OPP, mainstream discourses of the land struggle in the 

early 1950s avoided criticizing the existence of US military bases in Okinawa or 

the US–Japan security alliance. 

The San Francisco Treaty and emergence of the reversion 

campaign 

Okinawa’s uncertain status as a territory, part of neither Japan nor the US – and 

its future as a nation – gradually became a major topic of Okinawan public debate. 

It is important to note at the outset that local perspectives on desirable paths for 

Okinawa were deeply divided. For example, the conservative Okinawan Democratic 

League members, who advocated independence, expected US patronage for 

economic benefits. On the other hand, schoolteachers, as indicated above, were 

the strongest advocates for Okinawa’s return to Japan from early on. 

In February 1950, Senaga Kamejirō, Chair of the OPP, articulated his party’s 

aims for ‘racial self-determination’ and democracy, and argued that ‘Ryūkyūans’ 13 

were Japanese, and they should return to Japan (Okinawa Jinminto 1985 in Nakachi 

1996: 34). However, it was the Okinawa Socialist Mass Party (OSMP) that most 

vocally appealed to the reversion supporters, in particular, to the schoolteachers 

(Nakano 1969: 36). 14 From its foundation in 1950, the OSMP stressed Okinawa’s 

reversion to Japan as the most important goal. 

Hiyane points out that the US administration was inherently vulnerable to 

legitimacy crisis in ruling people who were culturally, economically, and socially 

foreign (Hiyane 1982: 281). The US administration applied a ‘cultural policy’ 

to discourage Okinawans’ attachment to Japan and revived the premodern title 

‘Ryūkyū’ instead of ‘Okinawa’. It promoted traditional Ryūkyūan culture, such 

as local cloth-making, theatre arts, and pottery, through publication of community 

journals such as Konnichi no Ryūkyū (Ryūkyū Today) and Shurei no Hikari (Beam 

of Politeness) (Kano 1987: 176). The journals, however, reveal only the thinnest 

commitment to traditional ‘Ryūkyūan’ culture and are transparently vehicles for 

the dissemination of US propaganda. 15 Although they were reasonably popular, 

they clearly failed from the point of view of discouraging and containing political 

demands for reversion to Japan. 16 

The US authorities were aware of the connection between the JCP and the 

OPP. 17 The Okinawa Taimusu editorial noted that the impromptu speeches of 

the OPP members held all over the island in various local communities had been 

extremely popular: the audience responded with clapping and cheering the OPP


members’ speech attacking the US military’s authoritarian rule, ‘saying what the 

people dare not express in words’ (Okinawa Taimusu date unspecified 1954 cited 

in American Consular Unit 1955: 1). However, public support for the OPP grew 

weaker as the US authorities made ‘abundantly clear that support of the OPP would 

entail the displeasure of the American authorities and consequent economic losses 

for the people or communities involved’ (American Consular Unit 1955: 1). 18 

The option of Okinawa’s independence came to be interpreted as a ‘mistake’ by 

those who were more critical of the US military administration, such as the OPP 

and OSMP, landowners, teachers, and workers (Arasaki 1976: 38). In February 

1951, the Okinawa Guntō Assembly held a meeting specifically on the Okinawans’ 

future. The pro-US conservative Republican Party spoke for independence, the 

Socialist Party for a US trusteeship, and the OPP and the OSMP argued for reversion 

to Japan. In March, the Assembly made a resolution by majority expressing 

agreement on the members’ collective will for reversion (Nakano 1969: 70). 

In April 1951, the OPP and OSMP formed a coalition for reversion, the 

Preparatory Council for Promoting Reversion (Nihon Fukki Sokushin Kiseikai) 

aiming specifically to collect signatures from adult Okinawans supporting reversion 

to Japan. Taira Tatsuo, the OSMP Chair and Okinawa Guntō Governor, was the 

leader of this project. He depended on the younger OPP and OSMP members, public 

servants who worked for the Guntō administration, and community youth groups 

(seinenkai) to collect signatures by door-knocking day and night. The collected 

signatures totalled 276,677, about 72.1 per cent of the Okinawan adult population 

(Tōyama 1987: 394–5). On September 1951, the Guntō Assembly sent the list of 

signatures to the San Francisco Peace Conference, addressed to US Ambassador 

Dulles and Prime Minister Yoshida (Nakano 1969: 72). The petition did not 

affect the Treaty. However, it highlighted the massive popularity of reversion as 

a future option among the general population, over ‘independence’ and ‘trusteeship’ 

(Tōyama 1987: 395). The labour-intensive work of collecting signatures was 

established as one of the most enduring strategies in the Okinawan repertoire of 

collective action. 

The 1951 San Francisco Conference did result in a Peace Treaty affirming the 

US ‘right to exercise all and any powers of administration, legislation and 

jurisdiction over the territory and inhabitants of these islands’, while recognizing 

Japan’s ‘residual sovereignty’. The Treaty came into effect on 28 April 1952. The 

US–Japan Security Treaty, signed simultaneously with the peace treaty, assured 

the rights of the US forces ‘to be stationed all the time in and about Japan’, ‘to 

contribute to the security of Japan against armed attack from without (Article 1, 

US–Japan Security Treaty)’. 19 President Eisenhower proclaimed in his State of 

the Union Message, ‘The Ryūkyū Islands will be held for an indefinite period’ 

(Warner 1995: 96). Thus, Okinawa was separated formally and indefinitely from 

Japan. 

Alongside the growth of the Okinawans’ campaign for reversion, US President 

Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10713, which introduced the post of High 

Commissioner in the Ryūkyūs, starting with Major General James Moore in July 

1957 (Nakachi 1989: 93). Until 1972, six High Commissioners were successively


granted virtually unlimited rights over the administration of Okinawa. They were, 

for example, empowered to ‘force elected officials from office, block G.R.I. 

legislation, and overrule the judgments of its courts’ (Rabson 1989: 16). The aim 

of this order was to confine to one person the power to make decisions on any kind 

of military, legislative, judiciary system and administrative affairs. 20 

The severance of Okinawa from Japan on 28 April 1952 was another important 

episode in the historical narrative of Okinawa’s marginalization. The most 

important losses, as identified and stressed by the community of protest, included 

the exclusion of Okinawa from the entitlement to constitutional democracy, freedom 

of expression, local autonomy, gender equality, protection of basic human 

rights, and the renunciation of war, as stipulated in the new Japanese Constitution. 

Okinawans were placed outside the ‘peace clause’ of the new Constitution that 

renounced ‘war as a sovereign right of the nation’ for ever (Article 9). 21 The 

Japanese public supported the peace clause of the Constitution as a result of 

their experience of hardship during and after the War, but the outcomes secured 

in San Francisco on 28 April reminded Okinawans (among the most devastatingly 

damaged and exhausted by the war) that they were excluded from enjoying 

a ‘positive’ postwar change. In addition, Okinawa Main Island was surrounded 

by military bases and military officers controlled every aspect of life. Just as in 

war, the islanders were still surrounded by US bombs, artillery, shooting ranges, 

military vehicles, warships, and aeroplanes, and manpower training for further 

killing. 

In January 1953, OTA formed the Okinawa Islands Reversion to the Okinawan 

Islands Home Country Preparatory Council (Okinawashotō Sokoku Fukki Kiseikai), 

together with the Youth Group Council, the Parents’ Association, and the Women’s 

Association. The Council declined membership of the pro-reversion political parties, 

especially the OPP, in order to avoid being recognized as a political movement by 

the US authorities. The Association’s strategy was not to offend the US 

administration by avoiding ideological association with the OPP (Oguma 1998: 

560–1). Indeed, the teachers involved in the reversion movement were mainly 

driven by educational concerns. The only vaguely ideological view expressed by 

the teachers was their frequent argument that the Okinawans were originally 

Japanese, and that they should have the right to be educated as Japanese. Even then, 

the Preparatory Council could not sustain their activities under the draconian US 

policies against any activities connected to the reversion movement. The US 

authorities rejected Yara’s passport application to travel to Japan in 1954, preventing 

him from going to the mainland to collect school reconstruction aid and paralysing 

the Preparatory Council. 

The Ie-jima farmers’ struggle 

As of 1952, the USCAR realized the need to establish private land lease contracts 

when Okinawa ceased to be occupied territory, and after the US administration of 

Okinawa was formalized by the San Francisco Treaty (Arasaki 1995: 27). The 

amount to be offered to all the landowners together was $600,000 for the duration


of twenty years. An individual landowner would receive less than ¥2 per year 

for 3.3 square metres of land or ¥200–300 per year for average-sized landholdings. 

At the time, a box of cigarettes cost ¥23 and a bottle of Coca-Cola cost ¥10. 

Not surprisingly, 98 per cent of the landowners refused to sign leases (Tōyama 

1987: 360; Okinawaken 1996: 62). In response, the USCAR issued Ordinance 

109 on land acquisition in April 1953. This provision legitimized the military 

acquisition of land within 30 days of notification and basically amounted to legalized 

theft. On the basis of this Ordinance, the US military conducted further land 

expropriation. 

The US military did not hesitate to use force against resistant landowners to obtain 

de facto land access. Within ten days of the issue of Ordinance 109, armed soldiers 

‘invaded’and flattened farmlands and houses in Central Okinawan hamlets such as 

Aja, Mekaru, and Gushi, using tanks, bulldozers and tear gas. These villages had 

not yet completely recovered from the devastation of the Battle of Okinawa, and 

the local farmers were trying to reconstruct their livelihoods with what was left 

after the war. In the longer term and within the larger community of protest, images 

of US military bulldozers and soldiers armed with firearms and bayonets became 

durable memories burdened with enormous symbolic significance. ‘Bulldozers and 

bayonets’ became a protest slogan and the helpless farmers at their mercy became 

a potent symbol in the Okinawan’s historical narrative of marginalization. 

In Ie-jima, the US military took full advantage of the isolation and ignorance of 

the farmers. In July 1953, a US inspector first came to Ie-jima with documents he 

presented as survey forms. Later the farmers found that they had signed contract 

documents for evacuation. A US missile practice range was built, and the US Forces 

told them that the evacuees (of four households at the time) would receive plenty 

of compensation and could continue normal farming. However, the amount of 

compensation was startlingly low. As elsewhere in Okinawa, the amount paid by 

the US was only 2–3 per cent of the average revenue gained from growing crops 

(Arasaki 1995: 56). As soon as the missile practice started, the farmers’ crops and 

fields were damaged and farming became impossible. No compensation was paid 

for this collateral damage. 

In September 1954, a US inspector announced further land acquisition and a plan 

to evacuate 152 households and land within a 5,000-feet radius of the planned 

military site where Maja and Nishizaki Districts were located. The farmers realized 

they had been deceived (Ahagon 1973: 23). The villagers gathered to discuss their 

plight. They realized, of course, that part of the problem was they had no knowledge 

of the unilaterally issued USCAR ordinances and decrees related to land acquisition, 

such as Ordinance 109. More fundamentally, for many farmers, the choice was land 

or death. At the meeting, everyone agreed, ‘if we are taken away from our land, 

we will only die like fish taken out of the water’ (Ahagon 1973: 33). A Maja farmer, 

Namizato Seiji, lamented that his family could not drink tea or smoke any more 

because the military dug a hole in the middle of his field. He said when the winter 

came, ‘I will stand up against the bullets’. Another villager, Chinen Kokichi, 

declared that the farmers could not afford to be intimidated by bullets. Otherwise 

entire families would starve to death. This was the tough and uncompromising


reality of shared experiences etched indelibly into collective memory and 

memorialized in myth. 

Communication with other farmers who were going through similar ordeals of 

land acquisition, such as in Isahama and Oroku hamlets in Okinawa Main Island, 

encouraged the Ie-jima farmers. They gathered, talked, and read out poems to each 

other about their common experiences and exchanged knowledge on how to 

negotiate effectively, such as writing petition letters. ‘Interacting with other farmers 

made us confident and more determined to hang on to our land’ (Ahagon 1973: 

81–2). 

The Ie-jima farmers continuously negotiated with the military, USCAR, GRI, 

the Rippō-in, and Tochiren staff in Naha. Such negotiations, however, did not lead 

to any agreement between the US security interest and the farmers’ refusal to let 

their land go. After a prolonged stalemate, in March 1954, USCAR announced a 

plan to obtain permanent leases of the properties needed by the US Forces with 

lump sum rent payments made to individual private landowners at a rate arbitrarily 

set by the US military, 22 which virtually meant purchasing permanent land leases 

once and for all. This announcement deeply upset the Okinawan landowners and 

the general public. 

In October 1954, about eighty farmers, the mayor and Ie village council members 

travelled to Naha, and made direct petitions to the US authority not to evacuate 

the villagers. At the negotiation table, the USCAR officers responded to the mayor’s 

petition by indicating that they recognized the difficulties villagers were going 

through, and until further clarification villagers were allowed to work on their farms 

as usual. The mayor told other villagers ‘the USCAR and the Air Force basically 

allowed us to maintain our farms and houses. Perhaps the Air Force is searching 

for an alternative site.’ This sounded like a triumph to the villagers (Ahagon 1973: 

35–40). However, they were deceived again. Within a month, military staff visited 

Ie-jima for a land survey. The statement of petition the farmers sent to the US Forces 

had been left to languish at the GRI office, not even translated into English. Ahagon 

recalls, ‘local staff hardly knew anything about the Ie-jima land acquisition: 

obviously they were worried that their jobs were at risk if they showed any sympathy 

to the farmers’ (Ahagon 1973: 26). However, the farmers continued to appeal to 

the local GRI staff, including US-appointed Chief Executive Higa Shuhei, and elite 

Tochiren members, about the situation. 

Initially farmers across the whole of Okinawa were isolated, without connections 

or co-operative relations with political parties or other organizations representing 

common interests. The farmers themselves felt different from other Okinawans, 

including city-dwelling landowners, and those who worked for the US administration. 

At one meeting, Ahagon observed: 

the office workers in Naha and Tochiren landowners were all dressed in suits 

and ties, just like the Americans, whereas we were mostly barefoot, wore old 

secondhand, over-sized clothes obtained from US soldiers, and women had 

their hair tied with old tea towels. 

(Ahagon 1973: 34)


GRI Chief Executive Higa advised the Ie village mayor to trust the land dispute 

to GRI and not to consult with any political parties, because it would complicate 

the problem and delay the solution (Ahagon 1973: 40). Higa’s words highlighted 

the already evident division between the pro-US locals and the ‘progressive’ 

political parties such as the OPP and OSMP. 

There were also significant differences among the locals’ reasons for opposing 

US land acquisition. Arasaki implies that the conservative Democratic Party and the 

core members of Tochiren, which had formed a pro-US, conservative political 

grouping at the time, supported the opposition to land acquisition in order to gain 

bargaining power against the US to maximize the amount of rent (Arasaki 1976: 

137). These landowners were inclined to accept the US lump sum payment offer 

and military land lease that eventually destroyed the all-island coalition against 

land acquisition. Their main concern was to extract maximum profit by negotiating 

effectively with the US forces. In contrast, the OPP and OSMP members opposed 

land acquisition in order to block ‘the entrenchment of US colonialism in Okinawa’ 

(Arasaki 1976: 135). The OPP and OSMP slogan that land rights should not be given 

up for money appealed to the interests and sentiments of the Okinawan farmers. 

Despite political division and despite different motives, opposition to land 

acquisition by the US military was agreeable to all sectors of the Okinawan polity, 

including the conservatives. In April, all the Members of Parliament expressed 

support for ‘the four principles for land protection’: (1) no lump sum rent payment, 

(2) adequate compensation for the land already confiscated, (3) indemnity payments 

for forced land acquisition, (4) no additional land acquisition. The ‘four principles’ 

became a slogan of the opposition to US land policy for all political sectors, and 

provided a clear guideline for the residents’ demands and opposition activities. 

USCAR, however, refused to change its policy of lump sum payment and permanent 

purchase. 

At that point, to appeal to the mainland Japanese population, the Maja farmers 

wrote a letter to Japan, which addressed the Japanese as ‘Bokoku no Minasama’ 

(‘People in the home country’), and which was published in Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s 

biggest national newspaper. 23 The farmers emphasized their ‘blood connection’ 

with the Japanese in letters, speeches, and petitions. Leaflets and pamphlets 

contained sentences such as ‘there is no doubt that we are Japanese. We cannot 

put up with iminzoku shihai (foreign domination) any more, and wish to return to 

Japan as soon as possible . . . We ask for support from the Japanese government 

to make the Americans pay back the damage we suffered . . . We deserve the same 

right for a peaceful life and humane treatment as the Japanese’ (quoted in Arasaki 

1969: 99–101). 

The land struggle in Ie-jima generated a greater degree of sympathy for 

Okinawans’ hardship among the mainland Japanese public, which was until then 

almost non-existent, except from Okinawa-jin Renmei (the Okinawans’ Association). 

24 In mainland Japan, very little was known about the realities of the US 

administration in Okinawa: the Japanese government distanced itself from the 

matter, just as the government and the people in the US knew little about the 

islanders (Miyazato 1966: 91). 25 For the first time since the peace treaty, a major


mainland Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, covered the US land acquisition 

with titles including words such as ‘bulldozers and bayonets’, ‘exploitation of 

Okinawan labour’, and denial of Okinawans’ basic human rights under the US 

military administration in a series of articles from 13 January 1955. After Asahi 

Shimbun requested the government to take action to protect Okinawa, many 

Okinawans felt they ‘gained a million supporters’, and ‘a beam of light entered in 

the Dark Age’ (Arasaki 1976: 139–40). 

The Ie-jima farmers’ letters reveal general expectations many Okinawans had 

of the Japanese government and the people: if Okinawa returns to Japan, Okinawans 

will be free from US military domination. This expectation, however, was bitterly 

betrayed in the course of the development of the new US–Japan security alliance. 

Reflecting this change in perspective towards mainland Japan in 1969, Arasaki 

describes the letter-writing strategy as a ‘weakness’ of the Ie-jima struggle (Arasaki 

1969: 90). A few years later, however, as he acknowledges (1976: 142), the farmers 

and Okinawans in general felt isolated from the rest of the world under the US 

military authoritarian rule, and sympathy from the mainland population was the 

only hope. 

In January 1955, 15 Maja households were ordered to evacuate. Prior negotiations 

with the US military had significantly reduced the number of houses to be evacuated, 

from the initial 152 households in Maja and Nishizaki. The military shifted half 

of the training range from land to water, which ‘was the result of our persistent 

negotiation and pleading, in retrospect’ (Ahagon 1973: 66). At around 8am on 

11 March 1955, three large landing vessels suddenly appeared off the east coast 

of Ie-jima. 26 On 14 March, the bulldozers entered Maja, crushing 

the sweet potatoes, peanuts, sugar cane and pine trees that we had carefully 

grown. Our houses, furniture and water tanks, which were so crucial for 

survival were covered by soil. Soldiers took helpless people outside, and set 

some houses on fire. Namizato Seiji, the owner of one of the 13 destroyed 

houses, pleaded to stop in front of the bulldozers, but the soldiers beat him up, 

arrested him and sent him to the military prison. Soldiers took sick children 

outside and picked up the owners of the houses, grabbed their arms and forced 

them to receive some cash. 

(Ahagon 1973: 89–91) 

The US missile practice range had been built next to Maja hamlet, and the farming 

areas were inside the military fence (Map 5.1). 

Maja villagers started suwarikomi (a sit-in ‘though we did not know such a 

word at the time’) at corridors of the GRI office, requesting the payment of living 

allowances (Ahagon 1973: 98). After the local police tried to remove them, the 

villagers all went to the police headquarters and blocked all paths to the building. 

As a concession, the military allowed the farmers to work on their farm outside 

training hours, that is, in the early mornings, evenings, and on Sundays, and the 

GRI agreed to pay minimal allowances, lower than those of prisoners. While the 

concessions were weak, they at least registered recognition.

N 

Barbed wire 

fence 

0 1 km 


Map 5.1 Maja hamlet (Source: Ahagon 1989: 1, courtesy of Christian Conference of Asia) 

The land the US Forces offered as a substitute was mostly unarable. A total of 

75 Maja villagers’ houses and farmland, including Ahagon’s houshold, were moved 

to 13 tents in an open field. In the tents, residents suffered from heat, lack of drinking 

water, and water seeping from the ground. Famine and poisonous snakes constantly 

threatened the people, and 87 per cent of them became ill (Ahagon 1973: 92, 1989: 

22). The military government stopped paying living allowances because the farmers 

kept lobbying against the land acquisition in Naha by appealing to other military 

landowners. 

Maja farmers stressed they relied on non-violent negotiations, and that they were 

not associated with either communism or anti-Americanism. The farmers declared 

a ‘Code of Regulations for Petition Activities’ on 23 November 1954 at a Maja 

and Nishizaki District meeting with the basic principles of non-violence and 

politeness: 

Do not be anti-American, do not be angry or criticise, do not talk too much, 

never lie, always be truthful, sit down when having a meeting, do not bring 

farming tools when having a meeting, never put your hands above your ears,


do not shout, speak calmly, negotiate according to morality and humanitarian 

and religious values (these are beyond US decrees and orders), never be afraid 

of the military, we are superior to the military people, and we should be ready 

to guide them to the right way, and stick to these rules to the end. 

(Ahagon 1973: 50–1) 

The farmers employed non-violent forms of protest such as pleading and begging, 

because they knew that as long as they did not resort to violence the military could 

not hurt them. 27 Also, because their struggle had no supporting organizations, 

newspapers, or witnesses in an isolated, tiny island, there was no other alternative 

to protect their livelihoods from the US forces (Ahagon 1973: 54). When negotiating, 

the farmers often sought to make it clear that they had no intention to obstruct 

the American military and its missions. They focused on demonstrating their need 

to cultivate land in order to survive, and stressed their intention to co-operate better 

with the Americans. Ahagon, as a Christian, often relied on quoting the Bible and 

referring to ‘God’, appealing to shared religious understanding with the Americans 

(Ahagon 1973: 59). 

When two Maja women died of starvation, leaving behind ten children, the 

farmers decided to become beggars at a district meeting in July 1956. Twenty to 

thirty villagers, including some children, who were fit enough to travel went on a 

‘beggars’ march’ (kojiki kōshin) across Okinawa Main Island from Kunigami in 

the north to Itoman in the south. While they sought food and money, they were 

also publicizing the manner in which the US forces treated the Ie-jima people. The 

farmers carried a banner providing a chronicle of their predicament. They made 

speeches and read Ryūka (Ryūkyūan poetry) 28 to people in the street, obtaining 

food and money as they went. 

This was a remarkable event in the history of the Okinawan struggle. The march 

extended over a period of around five months and the twenty to thirty ‘beggars’ 

were, from time to time, joined by schoolchildren. The march and the campaigns 

of carefully considered passive resistance which preceded it drew attention to the 

often remarkable courage and creativity, resourcefulness, and resilience of the poor 

and powerless facing apparently all-powerful opponents. Okinawa’s dispossessed 

farmers, of course, confronted the most powerful adversary on the planet and yet 

were able to go on adding new strategies to their ‘repertoires of protest’ even when 

all options seemed exhausted and even when they were left with just their tired 

legs, undernourished bodies, and ragged clothes. This place of high protest, if we 

can call it that, was occupied by the Okinawan ‘beggars’ no less than by the grand 

architect of passive resistance, Mahatma Gandhi himself. Not surprisingly, the 

march effectively publicized the Ie-jima struggle and generated compassion in the 

Okinawan public (Ahagon 1973: 130–2). 

At the time, the US administration jailed many trade unionists and political 

activists (such as Senaga Kamejiro, the founder of the OPP), and all forms of publication 

were censored. Perhaps because the farmers did not attack the Americans 

and only described what happened, neither the military nor the police prohibited 

their activities. Children in the march attracted greater compassion, and often police


Figure 5.1 Beggars’ march in Naha – Heiwa Dōri (Source: Ahagon 1989: 75, courtesy of 

Christian Conference of Asia) 

officers and American soldiers secretly made contributions, asking bystanders 

to hand them to the farmers (Ahagon 1973: 130–2). The beggars’ march was a 

tactic that avoided being labelled and suppressed as ‘anti-Americanism’ and 

‘communism’ at the time. It was also a tactic to inform a wider public about US 

land policy (Arasaki 1995: 54–5). 

Other communities in Okinawa, such as Isahama and Oroku hamlets, and later 

Konbu hamlet in Gushikawa village, 29 experienced similar struggles for land against 

the US military. Many of these experienced desperate material conditions and/ 

or emigrated. The land struggle was primarily a struggle for survival, not about 

political principles or ideologies. Only in retrospect, in his later book, Inochikoso 

Takara: Okinawa Hansen no Kokoro (1992 [1998]), does Ahagon point out that 

‘absolute pacifism’ (predicated on the experiences of the Battle of Okinawa) was 

at the heart of the Ie-jima version of Okinawan anti-militarism. The Ie-jima struggle 

exemplifies collective action at its most desperate and symbolically powerful.


Additionally, Ahagon was an influential and charasmatic figure who significantly 

contributed to the legendary and myth-making status of the Ie-jima struggle in the 

community of protest. 

The unbearable lightness of Okinawans’ rights – land 

acquisition and rape 

In July 1955, one of the US military’s most brutal land seizures happened in 

Isahama, in central Okinawa. According to a former resident, 85-year-old Tazato 

Tomoyasu, the Isahama hamlet in Ginowan village in central Okinawa provided 

abundant water and used to have good rice paddies (Okinawa Taimususha 1997: 

230). Anticipating the forced acquisition of their hamlet, farmers had formed a 

landowners’ committee, and prepared for resistance (Okinawa Taimususha 1997: 

230–1). When the local council told the farmers to evacuate the paddy fields because 

of the danger of infection from mosquito spawning, thousands of supporters from 

all over the Island came to ‘protect’ the farmers in Isahama from the US forces. 

Kokuba Kōtaro, a former OPP member who was supporting the Isahama farmers’ 

struggle, recalls: 

At around 3am, when most supporters of the resistance had gone home, there 

were only 200–300 hamlet residents left. Slowly, one after another, bulldozers 

with their headlights off and military trucks filled with armed soldiers entered 

the hamlet. Off the coast, I could hear the sound of pipelines being connected 

to a military vessel to drain in the sand and water taken from the ocean. It was 

just like war. At dawn, all the supporters helplessly watched the paddy fields 

being destroyed by soldiers across barbed wires. Farmers were still inside the 

last 32 houses, but were finally dragged out at gunpoint. The bulldozers went 

over and flattened the houses, timbers and roof tiles of the houses were collected 

to be discarded in the ocean. Women were screaming at this sight, and I could 

not help my tears. 

(quoted in Arasaki 1995: 63–5) 

The Isahama farmers were relocated to the highland areas about ten kilometres 

away, where it was impossible to continue farming. Many of them moved to the 

Yaeyama region and, with some mediation of the US military, some emigrated to 

Latin America (Arasaki 1995: 65). These emigrants led difficult lives trying to make 

livelihoods out of often barren and uncultivated land in foreign countries, and many 

of them returned to Okinawa. 30 Ahagon was one of these. Others who lost their 

land commonly found jobs in the US military bases (Nagumo 1996: 28). Isahama 

also symbolized what the US land acquisition did to Okinawa, and deeply shocked 

the entire Okinawan population. 

Victimization of Okinawans’ farmers and the forceful acquisition of their land 

was combined with the physical violence inflicted on the locals personally. In 

September 1955, the mutilated corpse of a six-year-old girl was found in bushland 

in Kadena village, near the major US Air Force Base (usually called ‘the Yumiko-

chan incident’ after the name of the victim). The US soldier who kidnapped, raped, 

and murdered her was sentenced to death by a US court martial, but later returned 

to the US. The Okinawan public was not informed. 31 Less than a week later, another 

US soldier raped another child. Violence directed towards the local populace by 

US military staff, especially rape, revealed the crudest and most brutal aspect of 

the power relations between the occupiers and the occupied. 32 

Isahama and Ie-jima land acquisitions, and the Yumiko-chan incident that 

followed, have a special significance in the history of violence perpetrated by the 

US military staff in Okinawa (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 82, Okinawa Taimususha 

1997: 226). Molasky observes that, in the world of both Japanese and Okinawan 

literature describing the US occupation period, the humiliation and helplessness 

of the occupied was expressed most directly by the invasion of ‘the female body’. 

In this sense, ‘no single act, not even murder, surpasses rape in its ability to 

dramatise the fear and humiliation of life under foreign occupation’ (Molasky 1999: 

51). 33 Angst explains that ‘the violation of the girl’s virginal body’ ‘is equated 

with the violation of the Okinawan body politic’ (Angst 2001: 252). The brutality 

of the 1955 Yumiko-chan incident provided powerful symbols of the humiliation 

of all ‘Okinawans’ in postwar Okinawan history. Irei, who was a student activist 

campaigning for reversion, recalls the time of the Yumiko-chan incident: 

In tears, my university friends and I discussed that these incidents were 

evidence of racial insult. I was convinced that these crimes would never 

disappear unless we (the Okinawans) recover our human rights as Japanese 

guaranteed by the Constitution. 

(Irei 1983: 82) 

The mass protest against US crimes after the Yumiko-chan incident was staged at 

the earliest Okinawan Citizens’ Rally (kenmin taikai) (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 

83). In the Okinawan community of protest, Citizens’ Rallies have recurred – and 

continue today – whenever major accidents and crimes were caused by the US 

military and its staff. 

The first-wave Okinawan struggle 


US land acquisition in Isahama and Ie-jima, and the rape of a girl, resulted in 

the humiliation of all ‘Okinawans’, leading to what Arasaki calls the first wave of 

a postwar ‘Okinawa Struggle’. The direct cause of the mass uprising was, however, 

the ‘Price Report’, issued by the US House Armed Service Committee in June 1956, 

after only a two-day review of the land problem in Okinawa. The Price Report 

justified the permanent lease of military land, lump sum payment of rent, and 

additional land acquisition. 34 The Report totally violated the ‘four principles’, 

disappointing and infuriating the Okinawan public. On 15 June, the GRI and the 

Members of Parliament and mayors quit their positions in protest (Miyazato 1966: 

99). Within two weeks, an estimated 160,000 to 200,000 local residents joined 

residents’ rallies held in 56 cities, towns, and villages (the population of Okinawa


then was about 800,000). The rallies were an expression of the residents’ rejection 

of the Price Report and their intense commitment to the ‘four principles’. In Koza 

City, 50,000 residents joined the rallies and 100,000 in Naha. Students from the 

University of the Ryūkyūs, and others enrolled in universities in mainland Japan 

who were in Okinawa for summer holidays, demonstrated, yelling slogans in chorus 

– ‘Yankees Go Home’ – with placards carrying anti-US messages (Arasaki 1969: 

135–7). These rallies became models for mass demonstrations in the community 

of protest in the future. 

The land struggle becomes the struggle for reversion 

The 19 June issue of Okinawa Taimusu reported, ‘Okinawa is burning, determined 

to defend the “four principles”. Okinawans’ decade-long perseverance finally 

exploded’ (quoted in Miyazato 1966: 100). The ‘Five Group Coalition’ for land 

struggle was formed by 16 political organizations, including the OTA, the Youth 

Group Association, the Women’s Association, the Parents’ Association, the OSMP, 

the OPP, the Okinawa Democratic Party, the Chamber of Commerce, the Mayors’ 

Union, and Tochiren. The OTA and Tochiren were particularly active in galvanizing 

people into joining demonstrations and rallies through their networks in schools 

and land committees located in each community (Arasaki 1976: 157, Nakano 

and Arasaki 1976: 83–4). The 1956 protest involved all political forces, even 

US-appointed Chief Executive Higa Shuhei. 

Gabe explains that ‘ethnic pride’ was emerging among Okinawans under the US 

military rule, which was a complex mixture of ‘aversion to war following the Battle 

of Okinawa, and consciousness towards their rights against the US draconian 

policies, especially on the locals’ rights to their land’ (Gabe 1969: 42–3). Okinawan 

‘ethnic pride’ stood at the heart of the public debate; however, it did not take the 

form of an ambition for making Okinawa an independent political entity. 

Independence under the US protection ceased to appeal to most politically involved 

Okinawans as a feasible option. Instead, majority opinion was in favour of overcoming 

US military rule by returning to Japan: reversion to Japan came to appear 

as a hopeful option to turn the predicament around and improve the conditions of 

everyday life. ‘Okinawans’ defined as ‘Japanese’ – always a contentious element 

of Okinawan collective identity since the late nineteenth century – became much 

more prominent in the protest. The dominance of the new goal of reverting to Japan 

as the ‘home country’ was such that it overtook and silenced a debate on Okinawa’s 

self-determination. 35 

The more politically motivated actors in the community of protest, especially 

the OPP and schoolteachers, combined the land struggle with the campaign for 

reversion. Statements in residents’ rallies emphasized the importance of Okinawans’ 

land rights for defending integrity of ‘Japanese territory’ from US encroachment. 36 

Similarly, an Okinawan delegate, sent to Tokyo to discuss the land issue with 

Japanese government officials in June 1956, explained that the Okinawans’ land 

struggle was ‘for protecting our own land, but at the same time, for protecting 

Japanese territory’ (Hiyane 1982: 283). The statement produced at the Naha anti-


Price-Report rally argued that reversion was necessary to solve the land dispute, and 

the protest against the US administration was conceptualized as a struggle for ethnic 

self-determination under Japanese administration (Nakano 1969: 191). 

The Japanese also favoured this position, and the islanders’ land struggle – framed 

in terms of Okinawans’/‘Japanese’ identity – received enthusiastic support from 

the mainland Japanese. During the year 1955, political parties, trade unions, and 

citizens’ organizations in mainland Japan almost unanimously supported Okinawa’s 

reversion to Japan (Watanabe 1970: 109–19). 37 Although there were disagreements 

on the future status of the US military bases on the island, many mainland Japanese 

conservative politicians and business leaders supported Okinawa’s reversion. 

According to popular understanding Okinawa was part of national territory lost in 

WWII, together with other islands such as the Chishima and Ogasawara Islands, 

and should be recovered (Watanabe 1970: 111–16). Japanese government officials, 

such as Prime Minister Hatoyama and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, however, 

expressed concern that the US–Japan relationship would suffer damage if the land 

dispute turned into an ‘anti-American movement’ (Hiyane 1982: 284). At this 

stage, consequently, the Japanese government carefully avoided connecting the land 

dispute to Okinawa’s reversion, or to the validity of Article 3 of the peace treaty. 

Rather, they simply conveyed to the US government the residents’ petition to respect 

their land rights (Nakano 1969: 194–5). 38 

Conservative Okinawans who joined the land-struggle coalition were likewise 

cautious. That is to say they were reluctant to politicize the land dispute beyond 

the demand for economic rights. This was the major reason why the land-struggle 

coalition was short-lived, and by July 1956 the coalition’s solidarity began to 

crumble. The point of division was the strategy of identifying land disputes with 

the campaign for reversion: whether to limit the land dispute to the protection of 

private property or to develop it into a greater demand for a political solution, that 

is, the demand for reversion. 

At this stage USCAR was completely hostile to reversion. It indicated that 

it was prepared to switch to direct rule, and to abolish any institutions run by 

locals if the local administrative staff resigned. The conservative Ryūkyū Democratic 

Party members expressed concern about losing US-appointed institutions 

that allowed limited local political representation, namely, the GRI and Rippō-in 

(Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 86–7). Chief Executive Higa, who was the Democratic 

Party leader, reversed his earlier decision to resign and argued that the Five Group 

Coalition should not be anything more than a mediating institution between the 

US military and the residents. Other Democratic Party members, who formed the 

majority of the Parliament and the GRI, followed this decision. Additionally, Naha 

mayor Tōma Jūgōcommented, ‘Not all residents are opposed to the US lump sum 

payment policy’ in an interview with a US television station. He represented the 

interests of those landowners who were economically suffering and willing to 

receive rent all at once on the condition that they retained nominal property rights. 39 

As an additional measure to secure compliance, the US military prohibited 

soldiers and families from entering civil districts in central Okinawa where the 

economy was dependent on American clientele, such as bars and shops. Especially


in central Okinawa, this ‘off limits’ policy inflicted severe economic damage on 

the local business communities, including retail sales, entertainment, and the sex 

industry. As a result, the Koza City mayor resigned from the Five Group Coalition. 

It was a tactic on the part of the USCAR to divide the island-wide coalition 

(Miyazato 1966: 101-2). At the same time, the US administration announced the 

suspension of university funding to suppress the protest activities of the University 

of the Ryūkyūs students. The USCAR proclaimed that the ‘off limits’ policy would 

be continued unless the University of the Ryūkyūs took proper action to punish 

and control its ‘communist’ students, to which the University executives responded 

by expelling five students and suspending another. 40 Pressure on the University of 

the Ryūkyūs turned into an effective instrument to settle the land dispute for US 

authorities (Arasaki 1969: 136). 

The OTA, the OPP, and other central reversion protagonist organizations also 

retreated from the land dispute and concentrated on the campaign for reversion. 

The land struggle no longer included all social sectors. It was reduced to an economic 

dispute among individual landowners, a majority of them Tochiren members, 

local land committees, and the US military. 

In April 1958, the USCAR suspended the lump sum payment policy, which 

significantly improved circumstances for the landowners. However, accepting 

the lease contract meant that the landowners would accept their land being used 

by the US military indefinitely. In May, the surviving Coalition was invited by 

Washington to discuss land dispute settlement. 41 Before their departure, Minren 

(a new political faction made up of the Naha divisions of the OSMP and OPP) 

members strongly opposed the signing of the land contract with the US – because 

it would legitimize US domination of Okinawa and national (Japanese) territory. 

Despite this, the delegates agreed to the new contract terms for land leases offered 

by Washington. 42 As a matter of fact, landowners were allowed to request lump 

sum payment of ten years’ rent and many did, signalling a miserable defeat of the 

‘four principles’ (Ahagon 1973: 160–1). 

In due course, most landowners accepted contracts with the US military, and 

many of them started receiving amounts of money they had never imagined – Iejima 

farmers included. But Ahagon and others, mainly from Maja, refused to sign 

leases because of the implied meaning of such dealing, turning theft or wrongful 

occupation into a legitimate transaction. At great cost to themselves, they lived 

on farming and compensation from the US military for land use (not based on 

legitimate contracts). These Maja farmers became the earliest non-contract landowners, 

later called ‘anti-war landowners’ (see Chapter 7). In the community of 

protest, the landowners of military properties became divided between a minority 

who rejected the land lease with the US for ideological and political reasons, and 

the majority who did not, or could not do this for economic reasons. 

In the following years in Ie-jima, US training activity frequently resulted in the 

death of residents who were collecting scrap metal around the bases for a living, 43 

and missile practice and air training injured and killed several villagers, at least, 

every year during the intensifying military operations for the Vietnam War. More 

than fifty Maja villagers out of the population of 380 were arrested and jailed after

1955 (Ahagon 1998 [1992]: 32). 44 The military tried to force farmers to carry 

permits, but the farmers rejected this, arguing they considered themselves owners 

of the areas. The US forces burned the farmers’ crops and forests within fenced 

areas (Arasaki 1995: 53–5). The military put signs on fences saying, ‘Ryūkyūans 

Not Allowed’, the farmers took them off and put up their own signs that said, 

‘Landowners Only’. Because of these endless daily scuffles the US made a policy 

of mokunin kōsakuchi (‘permitted farming area’), which allowed farmers to work, 

as long as they did not get in the way of military activities. Mokunin kōsakuchi is 

a scheme agreed between the military and the farmer landowners, common in many 

US military bases in Okinawa to the present. 

Conclusion 


The first-wave Okinawan struggle against the US land acquisition, which led to an 

assurance of rent incomes for the landowners, was arguably the most powerful 

protest in Okinawan history that involved all social sectors. At the same time, the 

community of protest represented all social strata and classes and ideologies: 

communist, socialist, and conservative political parties, workers and teaching 

unions and locally organized farmers’ groups. Despite the diversity and differences 

among these political organizations, what made the temporary unity among 

‘Okinawans’ possible? 

The land struggle is characterized by the pressing ‘material’ nature of the 

protesters’ motives: most of the locals were battling against starvation and struggling 

to recover from the loss in the Battle of Okinawa. The socio-economic inequality 

among the locals was less than in any other period that followed: they were all equally 

deprived by the US military control, and equally poor. Material concerns central 

to the struggle meant that the politically conservative Landowners’ Union and 

the Democratic Party temporarily made the coalition possible, and created the 

momentum for an ‘all-island’ struggle. 

It is also true that material interests expressed by the various political organizations 

differed from each other. The Ie-jima farmers wanted their land back to 

regain their means of livelihood; others, such as the city-dwellers who gave 

up farming and started working for the US military, wanted rent that was fair; 

for radical students, it was more important to fight against US colonial rule. For 

reversion activists such as the schoolteachers, the land struggle was important 

in terms of claiming integrity with Japanese territory. These sometimes subtle 

differences derived from differences in social class positions and origins. Rather 

than being a source of unity, material motives involved in the land struggle better 

explain the fragility of that unity and of the solidarity among Okinawans in their 

protest. 

Can the Okinawans’ ‘ethnic pride’ explain the temporary unity of the coalition 

against foreign domination? The land struggle did provide for the emerging claim 

for Okinawan ethnic self-determination. As demonstrated by the nascent OPP 

reference to the US military as a ‘liberation force’ from the Japanese colonial 

rule, reversion to Japan was not a mainstream political concern in the early postwar


period. Arasaki points out that there was even an alternative suggestion to seek 

autonomy, such as that made by the OPP before 1950 to request compensation from 

the Japanese government for war losses, and to draft a constitution just for the 

‘Ryūkyūans’. 45 However, the option of independence, breaking free from the yoke 

of all external power, was never taken up. Too easily and regrettably, according to 

Arasaki, ‘self-determination’ was replaced by a question of choosing to be under 

the protection of either US military or Japan (Arasaki 1976: 40–2). Since the 

‘day of humiliation’ – the San Francisco Peace Treaty (28 April 1952) – separated 

Okinawa from Japanese administration, the pendulum of Okinawans’ identity 

moved towards claiming ‘sameness’ with Japan rather than difference. 

However, the ‘all-island’ coalition soon collapsed, owing mainly to disagreements 

among the coalition on whether Okinawans should co-operate with the US 

military and extract maximum profit (rent) or, alternatively, demand reversion. 

Outward expression of desire for reversion was radical, for it invited punitive action 

from the US authorities. Not all protest actors, perhaps except for the OPP members, 

were willing to commit to this position. That is, the political campaign for reversion 

did not (yet) operate as a basis for a unified coalition either. 

Instead, it was the incredible indifference that the US military displayed to the 

rights of the Okinawans that inspired unified collective action in June 1956. This 

was the common experience underpinning many different kinds of grievance felt 

towards the US. In June 1956, Okinawan locals all agreed on the need to demand 

recognition of the dignity and rights of all ‘Okinawans’ abused by the arbitrary rule 

of a foreign military. This abuse took many forms: failure to pay rent, takeover 

of land inherited from ancestors, poor resources given to Okinawan children’s 

education, and humiliating working conditions, to name just some. However, it 

was the 1955 rape case, and the forceful eviction of the Isahama farmers by US 

bulldozers and bayonets, that finally woke Okinawans to the need to act to protect 

their own dignity and rights. 

The ‘first-wave’ Okinawa struggle established the foundations of a new postwar 

collective identity and movement against marginalization: as of that point, the land 

struggle, however fraught and divisive, provided the ‘Okinawans’ as a people with 

an understanding of themselves as capable of standing up for their own rights and 

organizing grassroots collective action. This may seem to be at odds with the 

argument above – that the land struggles involved multiple and conflicting interests 

and that unity of the land rights campaigns was fragile. However, in the longer 

term, the memory of these events and the symbolic meaning they have acquired over 

time counted for more. Seen from a distance, they became emblems of unity. The 

land struggle, the ‘all-island’ mass protests, and a political coalition encompassing 

the conservative and progressive organizations were achievements suggestive of a 

unified Okinawan community of protest and, as such, gave life to the enduring 

myth of an ‘Okinawan struggle’.

6 The second wave 

Introduction 

Towards reversion 

The island-wide mass protest against the US land policy discussed in the previous 

chapter as the ‘first wave’ laid the foundations for what would, in due course, 

become the tradition of an ‘Okinawan’ struggle in the postwar period. The ‘second 

wave’ of that struggle followed in the 1960s, in a series of mass demonstrations of 

political opposition against the US presence in Okinawa. The main theme of this 

wave of protest was Okinawa’s reversion to Japan. 

In this period, the ‘Okinawan people’ sought unity in a form of nationalist identity 

– Japanese nationalist identity. The dominant framing of protest was based on the 

self-definition of Okinawa as ‘Japanese’, described in this chapter as ‘reversion 

nationalism’. Normally a point of dispute in Okinawan history, this Japanese 

identity became dominant during the political campaign for reversion. 

However, the collective actions in the 1960s were about many things, not just 

reversion. In the 1960s, according to one observation, the three issues that were of 

particular concern to Okinawan residents were: (1) crimes and accidents attributable 

to the US military personnel and unfair extraterritoriality provisions against locals; 

(2) suspected deployment of nuclear weapons on the island including stopovers 

by nuclear submarines at Naha Military Port; 1 and (3) the deployment of B-52s in 

Okinawa, flying over to attack Vietnam (Rabson 1989: 20). Until the mid-1960s, 

many believed – mistakenly as it turned out – that these problems would be solved 

by reversion. The first section reviews in more detail some of the most pressing 

social and political concerns arising as a result of US military rule that moved 

the locals to protest and to request reversion to Japan. These concerns were never 

straightforward. They reflected the complexity of the Okinawans as a people 

colonized by both the US and Japan. In the newly built US military bases, 

Okinawans became a potentially troublesome workforce servicing the demanding 

needs of the US military not just for land but for labour as well. 

It was during the Okinawans’ campaign for reversion that the idea of a ‘united 

Okinawan movement’ was developed. So were the basic organizational structures 

of that movement. Thus, it is of great significance that the major players in the 

community of protest were class-based, workers’ movement organizations such 

as unions and progressive political parties. Their concerns and the ways in which


they framed them were also immensely important not only in shaping the character 

of the reversion movement but also in defining its organization, strategy, and 

collective identity. The second section of this chapter examines anti-US protestors 

and the formation of a progressive coalition under the Okinawa Prefecture Council 

for Reversion to the Home Country (fukki-kyō). The third section examines the 

ideological basis of the coalition’s ‘reversion nationalism’. The progressive coalition 

on which the movement was built formed a basic professional, semi-permanent 

capability which was publicly associated with formal political opposition in Okinawa 

thereafter. The fourth section reflects on a series of mass demonstrations staged by 

the coalition members. These are of enormous significance because of their intensity 

and future symbolic contribution to the mythic life of the movement. 

Inevitably the Okinawans’ traumatic memories of suffering in the Battle of 

Okinawa, ethnic and racial discrimination, and class-based exploitation fused with 

the political demand for reversion to Japan. However, the framing of ‘reversion 

nationalism’ that focuses on Okinawan ‘sameness’ with Japan was too simple to 

address the complexity of the multiple issues at stake. The fifth section discusses 

how ‘reversion nationalism’ was exposed to various critiques within the community 

of protest. The Vietnam War also helped the Okinawans realize that they could 

not simply think of themselves as ‘victims’. The idea of ‘anti-reversionism’ presented 

an important exception and a critique of the dominant framework of the 

reversion campaign. 

The sixth and seventh sections address, respectively, the failure of the attempted 

general strike and the Koza riot. These sections demonstrate that the unity suggested 

by the idea of an ‘Okinawan movement’ can be misleading if it leads one to overlook 

the multiplicity of actors, framings and their priorities. The dominant framework 

during the reversion movement – ‘reversion nationalism’, as well as the strategy 

and organizations of political parties and trade unions – made it hard to represent 

the voices of marginal actors of protest outside the most organized and established 

parties and unions. 

What made the Okinawans angry? 

Uehara Kōsuke, one of the oldest military base worker unionists, first started 

working for a US base in 1951. He recalls that racism and human rights abuses 

against Okinawans were routine in the workplaces in the military establishment: 

for example, racially segregated toilets, Okinawan workers banned from coffee 

shops, and no protection from unjustified dismissals for Okinawans (Uehara 1982: 

41). Significantly lower wages for the same job were paid to the Okinawans. 

Thus, in 1956, US workers enjoyed minimum hourly rates of $1.20 and the 

Japanese $0.83; Okinawans received only 10 cents. The poor pay and working 

conditions of many Okinawans were combined with poverty, unemployment, 

and ‘overpopulation’ induced by massive confiscations of arable land by the US 

military. 

The case for reversion was born of these conditions and further fuelled by the 

contemporary mainland (Japan) experience of rapid economic recovery and

The second wave 79 

improved material conditions, a welfare system, and labour legislation. The postwar 

Japanese Constitution and its principles of basic human rights protection also 

became a source of envy, not just for the social security it offered but more so for 

democracy ‘peace’ it promised. 

In the wake of the Korean War, on the threshold of the Vietnam War and 

embroiled in the Cold War, the US forces announced the deployment of Nike Hawks 

(a nuclear missile) in Okinawan bases in 1957. This raised fears among the public 

of horrific accidents if things went wrong and additional forced land acquisition 

by the military if they went well. Both fears were well-grounded. 

In 1959, for example, during a training flight, a US Air Force jet fighter crashed 

on the Miyanomori Primary School, at 10.20am when the schoolchildren were 

about to have a milk break. The school burned down quickly, killing 17 and injuring 

121 people. The pilot, according to reports, escaped unharmed via a parachute. A 

surviving teacher witnessed children’s limbs burned off and skin peeled off by the 

fuel from the plane. Survivors suffered from various post-traumatic syndromes 

such as amnesia, miscarriage, and shock. Forty years later, families of the victims 

were still having difficulty coming to terms with the incident (Okinawa Gunyochi 

Iken Sosho Shien Kenmin Kyoto Kaigi 1998). 

In another bizarre incident in June of 1965, a military transport vehicle fell from 

a plane during a ‘drop’ exercise, crushing a girl to death in Yomitan village near 

Kadena Air Base. It is difficult to know how many such accidents may have taken 

place though one reputable source indicates 275 aircraft accidents between reversion 

in 1972 and 2003 – that is, nine per year or one every six weeks (Okinawa 

Ken Sōmubu Chiji Kōshitsu Kichi Taisakushitsu 2004: 82). While the frequency 

of such accidents in the 25 years prior to reversion appears to be unknown, it 

is almost certain that there were more – both because aircraft technology has 

improved and because the US has, for political reasons, become more careful. 

Whether that is so or not, the frequency of accidents, together with the constant 

noise and the unknown nature of their payloads, were sufficient to induce a state 

of near-permanent anxiety in populations exposed to risk. The threat of nuclear 

accidents in or around Japan is likely to have been especially stressful for many 

individuals. 

For a number of years, too, Okinawa provided a base for mass B-52 bombing 

raids against the Viet Cong (Nakano and Arasaki 1970: 7). The sight and thunderous 

noise of B-52s flying from Okinawa every day reminded the residents of the Battle 

of Okinawa they had very recently experienced. It hardly seems too much to say 

that the Okinawan public was still living in an active war zone. As always in 

situations of this kind, there would be moral and political fallout: the Okinawans 

would be made to understand that their lives and their rights as human beings had 

very little weight as far as the US was concerned (Fukuchi 1999: 77). 

In the 1960s, after the 1956 island-wide land struggle subsided, farmers’ struggles 

against the US military operations and further property acquisitions continued in 

places such as Ie-jima, Konbu, and Chibana. 2 More than one-fifth of the farmland 

– much more in the densely populated central region – had been expropriated by 

the US military since the early 1950s and Okinawa became reliant on imported


American foodstuffs (Selden 1974: 121). The main alternative to starvation for 

the displaced farmers was employment in the US bases and the sex industry catering 

for the US military personnel. Selden writes: 

As of 1970, one-sixth of the Okinawan workforce was directly employed by 

the US military (40,000 workers) and the colonial government (34,000). And 

this was but a fraction of those forced to live off the American presence, 

including an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 prostitutes and bar girls, and more 

than 10,000 maids employed by servicemen (all officers and many enlisted 

men have servants, a luxury made possible by the depressed Okinawan wage 

scale). Tens of thousands of others work in the wide range of subsidiary 

industries and services which cater to American pleasures. 

(Selden 1974: 288) 

The bases not only provided employment for the farmers who had lost land to 

the military, they also provided the biggest market for locally manufactured 

products such as cement, steel, vegetables and fruit, clothes, and packing crates 

(Ryūkyū Shimpōsha 1968: 120). They were also by far the biggest buyers of 

‘rest and recreation’ service providing sex, alcohol, and food. Revenues from 

prostitution, bars, and other service industries for the US soldiers were of huge 

significance to the Okinawan economy until reversion. Indeed by 1970 prostitution 

replaced sugar as Okinawa’s largest industry with earning of some $50.4 million 3 

while sugar lagged behind in second place at $43.5 million (Sturdevant and Stoltzfus 

1993: 251–2). The sex industry was also highly organized. 

Following the Korean War, when the sexual assault of women and girls by US 

soldiers and officers was common, ‘special catering districts’ (tokushu inshoku gai) 

designed for US military clientele were developed by community members to create 

a ‘sexual breakwater’, aimed at protecting ‘normal citizens’ from the potential 

danger of sexual violence (Tomiyama 1996: 27). 4 The US authorities also took 

a keen interest and imposed rigorous health and hygiene regulations on the rest 

and recreation businesses – effectively licensing them. Bars, restaurants, and 

clubs that met US standards were required to display an ‘A’ (‘Approved’) sign. 

US military patronage made ‘special catering districts’ special for another reason 

as well: their exceptional almost total vulnerability to the US military’s ‘off limits’ 

sanctions. When seeking to dampen local political opposition, the US military could 

apply enormous pressure by banning their personnel from entering local businesses. 

The businesses that felt economic pain immediately and most intensely were those 

in the ‘special catering districts’ (see Chapter 5). 

Traffic accidents were another reminder of the low value attached by the US 

military to locals’ property rights and safety. A high-school history teacher, Arashiro 

Toshiaki, lost his father at the age of five in March 1956. His father was run over 

by a car driven by an American soldier, who was subsequently arrested by the US 

military police. Except in very limited cases, the local police and GRI courts did 

not have the authority to arrest or bring US military staff to trial. The US military 

courts handled the cases, and the ultimate say on all sentences of American citizens

ested with the High Commissioner (Ryūkyū Shimpōsha 1968: 137). The verdict 

in Arashiro’s father’s case was, as in many similar cases, ‘not guilty’ (Okinawa 

Mondai Henshu Iinkai 1995: 71–2). 5 In the case of common crimes against local 

residents, such as vandalism, non-payment in restaurants, bars, and taxis, beating, 

and muggings, the local police and residents had no ability to follow up the cases 

(Ryūkyū Shimpōsha 1968: 138). 

In February 1963, a speeding US marine’s truck drove into a pedestrian crossing, 

and ran over and killed a thirteen-year-old schoolboy. The marine and witnesses 

saw the boy crossing on a green light. However, the US court martial accepted the 

marine’s claim that it was impossible to see the traffic light because of the strong 

sunlight, and acquitted him. The verdict of this case deeply upset the schoolteachers 

and families in the communities around Naha. As after the Yumiko-chan incident 

(see Chapter 5), the case resulted in an Okinawan Citizens’ Rally (kenmin taikai), 

in which three thousand participated against the verdict (Nakano 1969: 487). This 

traffic accident is still remembered in Okinawan community, as the ‘Kokuba-kun 

incident’, after the boy’s name. 

The extraterritoriality ‘rights’ associated with the crimes of the US military 

members were the most humiliating aspect of the foreign military’s domination. 

Arashiro perceives that the US military looked down on the Okinawan residents, 

and it was natural that residents wanted reversion to Japan, the ‘shelter’ and security 

of ‘peace Constitution’, and a peaceful life without military bases (Okinawa Mondai 

Henshū Iinkai 1995: 72). 6 

The stories above provide just some insight into the often humiliating conditions 

prevailing for some 27 years of US military administration and giving rise to the 

desire for reversion. They are the memories of which the Okinawan historical 

narrative of marginalization is made. But there is, of course, more to the narrative 

than this. There is also the story – or rather, stories – of how they responded to the 

oppression, suffering, and humiliation. Who were the actors? What did they choose 

to fight for and how? What did they argue about, how were they, despite differences, 

able to unite and forge a unified ‘Okinawan’ collective identity, and what kind of 

identity was this? Significant parts of the answers to this question can be found in 

the campaign for reversion. 

Coalition for reversion: class-based organizations 


It was widely believed that the reversion of Okinawa to Japan would mean the 

removal of the American bases and this belief was shared by the US administration 

and the Okinawan activists until the mid-1960s. Control over the civil 

administration of Okinawa assured the US forces of their unfettered ‘right’ to use 

the island as a security depot (Gabe 2000: 50). 7 Loss of that control would 

compromise that right. Local protesters shared this view but welcomed such an 

outcome. They assumed that the size of the foreign military presence – and the legal 

protection of locals’ rights – would be adjusted to the standard applied to mainland 

Japan. For the US, reversion campaigning undermined the security of the region, 

and was thus identified with ‘communism’.


This assessment was not entirely without foundation. As elsewhere, political 

activists in the 1950s and 1960s Okinawa often framed their protest in terms of 

class struggle. A student activist during the 1960s, Irei Takashi, and his colleagues 

referred to Okinawa’s reversion to Japan as a ‘revolution’: for them Okinawa’s 

oppression was based on class and ethnicity (cited in Arakawa and Arasaki 1985: 

51). Political ideas to justify the reversion were drawn from the mainland Japanese 

left-wing activists, especially those of the JCP (Arakawa and Arasaki 1985: 52). 8 

The only communist party in Okinawa, the OPP, was also the most outwardly 

critical of the US administration and it was politically effective. The Okinawa 

Taimusu editorial noted that the OPP members’ impromptu speeches and lectures 

held in local communities across the island had been extremely popular: the 

audience responded enthusiastically with clapping and cheering to the OPP speakers 

for attacking the US military’s authoritarian rule, ‘saying what the people dare not 

express in words’ (Okinawa Taimusu date unspecified 1954 cited in American 

Consular Unit 1955: 1). 

The US authorities were aware of the connection between the JCP and the OPP, 

and regarded their political activities as harmful to their administration. 9 The OPP 

leader Senaga Kamejirō and Tomigusuku village mayor Matayoshi Ichirō were 

arrested and jailed in October 1954 for harbouring blacklisted communist activists 

from Amami Island. 10 After his term in jail, Senaga won the Naha mayoral election 

in 1956 and became the first ‘red mayor’. The USCAR threatened the Senaga 

administration by freezing Naha City’s finance from the Ryūkyū Bank and subsidies 

from the US. This briefly threatened local industries, especially construction – but 

USCAR promptly took more decisive action. In 1957, it implemented a change of 

law so that a simple majority vote at a city assembly could dismiss a mayor from 

office. As a result, Senaga lost his office. On the basis of the ordinance that banned 

candidates with criminal records from public office, Senaga could not stand for 

re-election either. The high-handed US interference in politics aroused public 

criticism and temporary support for the opposition parties. 

The US also made every effort to marginalize anti-US parties such as the OPP 

and OSMP. 11 Politics in Okinawa in this period was characterized by the intense 

partisan strife between the conservative Ryūkyū Democratic Party on one hand 

(conservative) and the OPP and OSMP on the other (progressive). Increasingly, 

this conservative–progressive battle became the central focus in the Okinawan 

community of protest. With USCAR sponsorship, the Ryūkyū Democratic Party 

replaced the OSMP as the main party in the Legislature. The Ryūkyū Democratic 

Party deleted reversion from its policy platform (Gabe 1969: 56). In this conservative 

party the US authorities had created a useful local pro-US political ally: 

since 1952, all the GRI Chief Executives have been appointed from the conservative 

party members. 

The OPP and OSMP briefly attempted to form a progressive coalition against 

the US–Democratic Party alliance. A group of Senaga supporters from the OPP, 

the Naha Division of the OSMP, and independent Naha City Assembly members 

formed Minren (the Protection of Democracy Communication Council). The public 

supported Minren with enthusiasm, for its ability to speak for the residents against


the arbitrary US rule, in particular, against expanding US military facilities 

and additional land acquisition. Minren nevertheless fell apart when a group 

of members resigned, criticizing the dominance of the OPP ‘sectarianism’, and 

formed a new party, the Okinawa Socialist Party (Okinawa Shakaitō, OSP), in 

affiliation with the Japan Socialist Party. 12 Minren could not repay or respond to 

the public’s support. Their energies were excessively concentrated on winning 

elections. Minren nevertheless provided a practice run at coalition-building for 

reversion campaign (Tonaki 1969: 124). On the other hand, it also foreshadowed 

the characteristic and persistent susceptibility of Okinawa’s progressive forces 

to internal divisions. 

On 28 April 1960, the anniversary day of the San Francisco Treaty (‘the day 

of humiliation’), the most significant progressive coalition in Okinawan history 

was formed. Executive members of the labour unions and the Okinawa Teachers’ 

Association started the Okinawa Prefecture Council for Reversion to the Home 

Country (the Council, Okinawa-ken Sokoku Fukki Kyōgikai, Fukki-kyō). The 

three left-wing local political parties (OPP, OSMP, and OSP) shared the leadership, 

as well as the Okinawa Prefecture Youth Group Council (Okinawa-ken Seinen 

Kyōgikai), and the Council for the Okinawa Public Office Workers’ Unions Council 

(Okinawa Kankōchō Rōdō Kumiai Kyōgikai, kankōrō). 13 The OTA chair Yara 

Chōbyō declined other executive union members’ request to take up the position 

of Chair, 14 and the Council initially struggled financially. 15 However, the number 

of member organizations increased each year and, by 1965, there were 52 member 

organizations (Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982a: 1348–9). A longstanding 

political coalition of this size is rare in Okinawa. The Council for Reversion, 

bound by the goal of reversion, turned itself into an influential model of 

coalition-building in the community of protest. Building organizational solidarity 

and ‘unity’ on this model added further to the existing repertoire of protest. 

This date, 28 April, became an exceptionally significant date in 1960s (and for 

the reversion campaign) because it is the day of the signing of the San Francisco 

Treaty. The day this treaty became effective in 1952 has been remembered as the 

second Ryūkyū ‘disposal’: it is the second time that Okinawans have been deprived 

of their sovereignty; this time, however, in the form of detachment from Japan. 

This date marks the start of a new period in the history of the collective struggle 

of the Okinawan people – the idea of an ‘Okinawan struggle’ – characterized by 

the residents’ efforts to realize Okinawa’s repatriation to Japan. On this day, every 

year, even after reversion, it has been a tradition to hold annual protest rallies and 

meetings (Arasaki 1995: 27–8). 

Despite numerous offers, the conservative Okinawa Liberal Democratic Party 

refused Council membership. 16 The conservatives wanted reversion, too, but 

employed a ‘gradual method’ for reversion, placing priority on ‘practical’ unification 

with Japan, for example, in business areas, and rejected association with any political 

‘struggle’ or ‘resistance’ against the US. An all-island coalition of both conservative 

and progressive political organizations in the land struggle never materialized, and 

the Council only ever came to represent the politically progressive coalition in 

Okinawa.


Political parties tended to focus their energies on winning elections, and struggled 

to organize direct and effective political opposition to the US administration. In 

this respect, the Okinawan workers, especially military base workers, had a greater 

capacity to affect the US authorities directly not just as a result of their capacity 

to strike and act effectively but also because some, at least, worked effectively 

to secure international backing. A US military base employee Uehara Kōsuke 

and his workmates at the engineering section in Zukeran (Camp Foster) – starting 

from an after-hours discussion group – announced the establishment of a union 

with 1,600 members in September 1960. Uehara’s union quickly gained the support 

of the conservative, Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade 

Unions (ICFTU), 17 which was playing an advisory role for the USCAR, in 

order to help smooth state–labour relations in order to facilitate the US military 

administration in Okinawa. USCAR was more or less forced to give its blessings 

to the new union. Six unions of military base workers – including Uehara’s – 

merged in June 1961 to form a single union of 2,638 members, at least ten per 

cent of the entire base worker population. 18 In July 1963, this league of unions 

developed into the All-Okinawan Military Workers’ Union (Zengunrō) (Uehara 

1982: 66–77). 

The immediate focus of the workers – especially employees of the US bases – 

was to protect workers’ rights against low wages, long working hours, and appalling 

working conditions. The most important goal was to abolish the USCAR’s 

ordinances – especially Ordinance No. 116 – that excluded the workers who worked 

for the US military bases from the protection of the three labour laws passed 

by the GRI Ordinance No. 145, which required applications to USCAR (including 

union executives’ names) for approval to establish unions, was also a source of 

considerable aggravation. 

The unionized military base workers considered reversion necessary to improve 

the conditions of workers. At the 1965 annual meeting, Zengunrō protested against 

Ordinance 116, and, at the same time, formally joined the Okinawa Prefecture 

Council for Reversion to the Home Country. Yet there was still some controversy 

among the workers about antagonizing the US forces (Uehara 1982: 94–5) and anti- 

US or anti-base action did endanger employment for the Zengunrō workers. 

In July 1961, Okinawan unions covering workers not employed in the military 

bases also formed a federation, the All-Okinawan Labour Unions’ Association (Zen 

Oki Rōren). The association contained 30 labour unions and represented some 6,700 

members. Also supported by the ICFTU, Zen Oki Rōren effectively organized 

strikes demanding pay rises and refused to comply with Ordinance 145. USCAR 

and the local business sector expected Zen Oki Rōren to be a moderate, non-political 

organization (Nagumo 1996: 51–3) but, together with Zengunrō, it participated in 

political campaigns for reversion and the public election of the GRI Chief 

Executive; in anti-nuclear base rallies; and in anti-Vietnam protest. Furthermore, 

Zen Oki Rōren grew closer to OPP. Moderate member unions who were more 

sympathetic to the ICFTU resigned in order to establish a new league of unions, 

the Okinawa Prefectural Labour Union Committee (Okinawa Ken RōdōKumiai 

Kyōgikai, Kenrōkyō), in 1964. Zengunrō joined and became a major member of


Kenrōkyō. The division among Okinawan unionized labour mirrored that between 

the socialists and communist party members in mainland Japan (Tōyama 1987: 

412). Although workers’ unions were internally divided, and also tended to place 

priority on their specific economic agendas, they nevertheless became leading actors 

in local political activism against the US. 

Early in the 1960s human rights activists also became part of the community of 

protest. Thus, in April 1961, together with more than three hundred citizens, 

Fukuchi Hiroaki established the Okinawa Human Rights Association (Okinawa 

Jinken Kyōkai). This organization is the oldest of its kind in Okinawa. It raises the 

awareness of Okinawan residents in relation to such issues as personal safety, 

freedom, and private property. Roger Baldwin, a US citizen and Executive Secretary 

of the International League for Human Rights 21 was a key influence on Fukuchi 

and the Association followed Baldwin’s advice to establish an apolitical or 

politically neutral image (Watanabe 1970: 140). 

Yet its executive members included the most influential leader of the Council 

for Reversion, Yara Chōbyō, and Fukuchi himself, was an active Okinawa Teachers’ 

Association member and executive member of the Council for Reversion. To the 

present, Fukuchi exemplifies many Okinawan political activists with overlapping 

organizational memberships among progressive political parties and unions. Far 

from being politically neutral, the Human Rights Association was closely related 

to the progressive coalition, and campaigned for reversion. The inauguration 

statement of the Okinawa Human Rights Association in February 1961 stated the 

Okinawans’ strong wish for reversion, and stressed the importance of the Japanese 

Constitution: 

After WWII the Japanese Constitution clearly stipulated the eternally inviolable 

nature of basic human rights. Unfortunately, because the political administration 

of Okinawa was taken over by the US Occupation forces, the Okinawan 

people have been unable to benefit from the Constitution. 

(Nakano 1969: 356) 

The statement also clearly recognized the lineage of the historical struggle of the 

‘Okinawans’ as one people: ‘In Okinawa, pioneers’ efforts to protect human rights 

existed since Meiji as exemplified by Jahana Noboru’s People’s Rights Movement’ 

(Nakano 1969: 356). 22 

It is clear now that, in Okinawans’ collective actions for reversion, teachers’ 

and workers’ unions, and political parties played a central role, framing the struggle 

for reversion as a ‘class struggle’. The unions were able to do this for a number of 

related reasons. First, many of the primary grievances of the Okinawans were, as 

we have seen, related to work and to the conditions under which Okinawans sold 

their labour to the Americans. They were related to pay rates, to working hours, 

to conditions of work, to holiday entitlements, to free rights of association and 

organization, and so on. Second, unions could assume a leadership role because 

once organized, they could more easily assemble resources than other protest actors 

and they were, for related reasons, the most capable of organizing and mounting


protests. Unions were, so to speak, battle or protest ready. The other major issue 

around which generalized protest movements might have formed relates to land 

seizures but protesters here were fewer in number, not able to threaten damaging 

strikes, less capable of organizing, more divided, and more easily compensated, 

pacified, and disorganized. 

So did a number of struggles in Okiniwa fuse – or become confused. The struggle 

for identity became the struggle for reversion which, in turn, and for a while at least, 

became a class struggle. It was inevitable of course that class struggle in Okinawa 

would take on the colour of the struggle for reversion and a somewhat unusual 

struggle for identity: the Okinawans identifying as Japanese. 

‘Reversion nationalism’: framing of the reversion movement 

The Okinawans’ reversion movement was framed basically as an anti-capitalist 

struggle and nationalist struggle. The influence of nationalism can be explained in 

two ways. 

First, the Council for Reversion’s campaign was linked to the ‘progressive 

nationalism’ of the mainland Japanese left, in particular its political opposition to 

the renewal of the US–Japan security treaty (Ampo), originally signed in 1952 in 

San Francisco. The anti-Ampo protest was a pivotal grassroots political movement 

in the postwar period that motivated several hundred thousand political party 

members, activists, unionists, workers, artists, students, housewives, and other 

citizens into political action all over Japan. Neither Japan nor Okinawa was unique 

here. Nationalism was at the basis of movements for self-determination and 

decolonization throughout the world of Asia and African colonies. The JCP, for 

example, called for liberation of the Japanese people from US economic and 

military domination. It saw Ampo as a tool of US and Japanese capital intended to 

entrench the colonization of Japan and the rule of the LDP politicians (including 

former war criminals) who were eager to remilitarize Japan. This nationalist 

sentiment underpinned the view that both Japan and Okinawa were colonized by 

the US, and that the reversion of Okinawa meant national reintegration with Japan 

(Oguma 1998: 524–5, Packard 1966). The direct US rule of Okinawa was understood 

as the most blatant expression of colonial dependence and the ‘Okinawa 

Struggle’ for reversion represented not just the ‘retrieval’ of Okinawa but a critical 

assertion of Japanese independence. 23 

Joint actions between the Okinawan anti-US parties and unions and their yamato 

counterparts increased. Each year after 28 April 1961, Okinawan reversion activists 

got on a boat, sailed off north towards Japan, and met with Japanese activists who 

departed from Yoron Island. They shook hands at sea. 24 They met at the 27 degree 

latitudinal line that severed Okinawa from mainland Japan according to the San 

Francisco Treaty. One of the Okinawan participants (a schoolteacher) recalled, ‘my 

passport has been cancelled twelve times (by the US). I thought I could never 

go to the mainland. When I crossed the 27-degree line with no passport, I could 

not help my tears’ (Tōyama 1987: 411). In the annual ‘offshore boat rallies’, yamato 

and Okinawan participants built solidarity, in a tactile sense. A more potent


affirmation of unity – touching, talking, and crying (and no doubt laughing as 

well) after a journey at sea – could hardly be imagined. 

Many protest strategies and styles travelled to Okinawa from mainland Japan. 

For in the early 1960s, Council for Reversion members chanted ‘Ganbarō!’ (Never 

give up!), raising their fists at the end of rallies (Tōyama 1987: 405). This chant 

was borrowed from Japanese labour unions and is still practised today in the 

community of protest, not only by parties and unions but also by communitybased 

organizations. 

The second strand of nationalism that influenced the reversion campaign was the 

historical and emotional kinship with Japan. 25 Among the most eager to promote 

Okinawa’s reintegration with Japan were schoolteachers – many of them Okinawa 

Teacher’s Association (OTA) members who contributed significantly to proselytizing 

‘reversion nationalism’. The OTA, the central member of the Council for 

Reversion, lobbied for the ‘right to educate students as Japanese nationals’, which 

offended the USCAR’s cultural policy to promote the pre-annexation ‘Ryūkyūan’ 

identity. Schoolteachers, however, encouraged the use of the hinomaru flag and 

the kimigayo song (see p. 29). Of course, this new pro-Japanese position was 

inconsistent with Okinawan teachers’ regrets about promoting imperial education 

before the Battle of Okinawa (see Chapter 4) but the postwar world was a new 

Figure 6.1 Boat rally, 28 April 1968 (Source: Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982b: 

125, courtesy of Okinawa Jiji Shuppan)


one. In the early 1960s, schools enhanced the standard Japanese speech training: 

teachers pursued the ‘correct use of the Japanese language’ to an extent that often 

involved corporal punishment for the use of the Okinawan dialect (Takara 1995: 

157–8). 26 It is worth noting that the Okinawan teachers’ reversion campaign 

appealed widely to the Okinawan public. 

These two forms of nationalism – one anti-capitalist and the other pro-Japanese 

– merged in ‘reversion nationalism’, which was then able to appeal to both progressive 

activists and the wider general public who did not identify with any 

particular political ideology. Under the direct rule of the US military officers who 

were ‘foreigners’ and spoke a different language, the Okinawans’ emotional 

closeness to yamato was amplified. ‘Reversion nationalism’ served as an ideological 

resource for the Council for Reversion, until later political developments gradually 

but seriously revealed its weaknesses. 

The turbulent 1960s: demonstrations, strikes, and struggles 

During the 1960s, the Council for Reversion and its member organizations engaged 

in a number of collective actions in radical, intense, and, at times, violent ways 

and these have been remembered with pride in the community of protest. Reversion 

was the ultimate goal of – and source of unity among – the multiple actors involved 

and ‘reversion nationalism’ continued to be the dominant framing of protest under 

which collective action was conducted. 

The Chief Executive election struggle and Satō’s Okinawa visit 

The system of appointing the GRI Chief Executive by the US authorities highlighted 

the lack of Okinawans’ authority in political administration. 27 The limited electoral 

system set up by the US administration favoured the pro-US parties in the Legislature 

and the GRI Chief Executive nomination. 28 Protesting against the Chief 

Executive nomination system and requests for public elections were among the 

progressives’ and the Council’s main demands. 

On 29 October 1964, when Matsuoka Seiho was about to be nominated Chief 

Executive at the Ryūkyū Legislature Special Meeting, some two thousand protesters 

destroyed the front door and entered the Legislature building. They were a ‘petition 

troop’ organized by the Council for Reversion, and eventually removed by the riot 

police. But the conservative Liberal Democratic Party and Liberal Party members 

had been forced to flee the building and the nomination was postponed (Sokoku 

Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982: 1010). Subsequently, the Council held three 

mass public rallies on 26 June, and 1 and 27 October, calling for autonomy and 

the pubic election of Chief Executives. The rally in June attracted over fifty thousand 

people. 29 The Council also launched a massive door-to-door signature collection 

campaign (Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982: 199–201). 

On 19 August 1965, Prime Minister Satō visited Okinawa, raising hopes for 

reversion. Satō had been an LDP nationalist protagonist for the reversion of 

Okinawa. Schoolteachers ‘mobilized’ local children to welcome the Prime Minister

Figure 6.2 Okinawan citizens’ rally, 28 April, 1965 (Source: Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan 

Iinkai 1982b: 87, courtesy of Okinawa Jiji Shuppan)


on the streets, holding the hinomaru flags to express their commitment to ‘reversion 

nationalism’. Many locals welcomed Satō for promoting reversion and increasing 

governmental economic subsidies to Okinawa. Satō was only the third Japanese 

Prime Minister ever to visit Okinawa (after Itō Hirobumi and Tōjō Hideki). It 

was at this visit that he uttered the famous line at Naha Airport: ‘Japan’s postwar 

period never ends, unless Okinawa’s reversion is achieved’ (Nakano and Arasaki 

1970: 18). 

But not all welcomed him and there was also considerable hostility against Satō’s 

policy of supporting America’s war in Vietnam – heightened no doubt by the use 

of Okinawa as a launching pad for the war effort. As a consequence, the OTA 

and other Council members were able to organize a protest rally against the 

Prime Minister at Naha High School, which attracted 150,000 participants. They 

demanded the immediate cessation of raids against Vietnam from Okinawa, and 

reversion (Nakano and Arasaki 1970: 22). The Council also staged a large-scale 

sit-in along Route 1, between kokusai dōri (a main street in Naha City) and the 

Tōkyū hotel, where the Prime Minister was staying. 30 The Council’s plan for a 

controlled collective action turned into a zig-zag demonstration of twenty thousand 

people, which stopped traffic completely. The local police force clashed with the 

demonstrators, resulting in unprecedented violence, and five demonstrators were 

arrested. 

The demonstrators failed to communicate directly with Satō, who escaped to 

another hotel arranged by the US military. At a result they were unable to directly 

convey a number of crucial petitions to him: petitions focusing on the abolition of 

Article 3 of the peace treaty, the removal of nuclear weapons from Okinawa, and 

warrant of Okinawans’ basic human rights and autonomy including a public election 

of the Chief Executive (Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982: 236–7). 

Nevertheless, the executive committee of the Council for Reversion considered the 

mass demonstration a ‘success’. Even if unintentionally, they had disrupted the 

whole city, and they had conveyed to the Prime Minister the Okinawans’ ‘greatest 

wish’ for reversion (Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982: 265). 

Growing US incentives for reversion 

Eventually, in 1968, US President Johnson approved the public election of GRI 

Chief Executives. Tōyama writes that the direct petition to the USCAR by a group 

of five influential local figures in September 1965 was particularly effective: the 

USCAR public relations chief officer commented, ‘Receiving request from the 

influential local figures, the US would have to take some action’ (Tōyama 1987: 

451–3). 31 The appeal made a significant difference to the extent that it formalized 

the locals’ collective will for the Chief Executive election. Yet, in retrospect, it 

has become clear that this concession was most affected by the development of 

US–Japan diplomatic talks on security alliance. As a result of these developments, 

prospects for the reversion movement were significantly changing. 

By the mid-1960s, the US and Japanese governments had started negotiations 

for extending Ampo – the US Japan Security Treaty – which was expiring in 1970.


The primary interest for the US was to maintain its right to freely deploy and 

use military forces in Okinawa, including nuclear weapons. The advantage that 

Okinawa offered lay not only in its strategic location but in the relative freedom it 

allowed the US to bring in and store nuclear weapons. This would not have been 

possible in mainland Japan. 

The National Security Council was deeply concerned about the Japanese public’s 

enthusiasm for Okinawa’s return, and about the potentially serious damage that a 

US refusal to compromise on this issue might cause to the LDP and Prime Minister 

Satō Eisaku’s administration, which was most sympathetic to the US security 

interest. The stability of the pro-US Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governance 

of Japan was imperative for the US. It was crucial therefore, for the US to enter 

into negotiations over the reversion question with Satō and the LDP, not the 

opposition party, and extend Ampo on the condition of US free access to Okinawa, 

including the possibility to store nuclear weapons – even if this required the return 

of civil administration on Okinawa to Japan (Gabe 2000: 78–9). 32 The logic of 

the situation was reasonably straightforward: the status quo in relation to Okinawa 

(i.e. direct US administration) was becoming untenable. So if Okinawa had to be 

returned to Japan, better that it be returned to a US-friendly Japan on the best 

possible of terms than to an unfriendly one on poor terms. So let’s use the politics 

of reversion to help our friends. By 1965, not surprisingly, the US state elites 

were seriously thinking about the possibility of giving up the direct military 

administration over Okinawa. 33 

The ‘two laws on education’ struggle 

Okinawan schoolteachers played a leading role in the progressive political 

campaign for reversion. Their political activities were restricted by firm USCAR 

controls, especially on their rights to travel to the mainland. Yet, because of 

Okinawa’s separation from Japan, Okinawan teachers had been free from the 

different kinds of political control Japan has imposed on mainland schoolteachers. 

This started to change, as the contribution to Okinawa’s treasury from Japan 

increased. In 1967, the Okinawa Democratic Party and the GRI Education 

Department attempted to introduce two education-related legislation bills. The 

aim of these bills was, first, to improve working conditions and rewards for 

schoolteachers in accordance with mainland Japanese standards. Second, however, 

the bills also restricted the Okinawan schoolteachers’ rights to engage in collective 

strikes and political actions – again to mainland Japanese levels. Third, they 

introduced teachers’ performance evaluation, as in mainland Japan. 34 Of course, 

not only the teachers but also the Okinawan community of protest as a whole were 

infuriated at this legislation. 

On the day the Ryūkyū Legislature was to pass these bills, about 15,000 protesters 

demonstrated in the Legislature building and stopped the session (see Figure 6.3). 

The protesters included all kinds of workers, union members, and representatives 

who came to the Legislature building to support 24 schoolteachers staging a hunger 

strike. All the OTA schoolteachers took voluntary annual leave from schools in


protest. As a result, the two education bills were formally discarded in April 1967, 

which upset the conservative Democratic Party members so much that the members 

and Legislature Chair were ‘trembling with anger’ (Tōyama 1987: 449). 

While the OTA was opposed to the mainland Japanese legislation, it aligned 

itself further with the mainland Japanese teachers’ union, Nikkyōso, a left-wing 

progressive opponent to the government control on teachers’ political rights. 35 

Furthermore, in the process of this struggle, the progressive party and unions’ 

energy was distracted from the protest against the military bases (Gabe 1969: 298). 

This ‘two laws on education (kyōkō nihō) struggle’, led by the usually proreversion 

schoolteachers, was unusual in that it opposed a bill that aimed at 

Figure 6.3 Demonstrators stop the Two Laws on Education, 24 February 1967 (Source: 

Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982b: 107, courtesy of Okinawa Jiji 

Shuppan)

introducing the mainland Japanese education system. It was a struggle undertaken 

by a progressive coalition against conservative political interests in Okinawa, 

including the US administration. In Okinawa, the ‘two laws on education’ struggle, 

together with the violent ‘Legislature incident’ against the Chief Executive 

nomination and the mass demonstrations against Satō, provided evidence of an 

extensive, vibrant, and determined protest culture in Okinawa. This ‘two laws 

struggle’ in particular is recalled with pride among Okinawan activists, and an 

account was published in a book, Kyōkō Nihō Tōsōshi (History of the Two Laws 

on Education Struggle), by the Okinawa Teachers’ Union (Kyōkō Nihō Tōsōshi 

Henshū Iinkai 1998). 

‘Reversion nationalism’ in crisis 

Eldridge’s work (2001) demonstrates how prepared the Japanese and US leaders 

were to respond to the Okinawans’ sentimental affiliation to Japan, in order to make 

necessary legal and political arrangements for maintaining the US bases in the 

islands. Reversion in 1972 is the ultimate proof of this. As long as the hope for 

reversion was attractive to the Okinawans, there was room for negotiation for the 

Japanese and the US governments. On 15 November 1967, Satō and US President 

Johnson officially announced in the US–Japan Joint Communiqué that Okinawa 

would be returned to Japan in a couple of years’ time, without affecting the US 

military forces crucial for maintaining regional security (Nakano 1969: 651–2). 

That is, the LDP leaders found a way to achieve Okinawa’s reversion, and keep 

the US forces in Okinawa intact (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 70–80, Nakano 1969: 

597–602). Consequently, reversion as a goal, and ‘reversion nationalism’ as a frame 

of protest, began to attract criticism within the community of protest. 

Solidarity with mainland Japanese protest organizations? 


As the Okinawan activists deepened their affiliation with the mainland Japanese 

leftist organizations, a confusing issue arose. In Tokyo, despite the several hundred 

thousands of protesters surrounding the Diet as well as the nationwide opposition, 

Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke and the LDP passed the renewal of Ampo in 1960. 

The new terms of the treaty increased ‘mutuality’ between the two states, that is, 

greater military responsibility on Japan’s part, defending the Asia-Pacific region. 36 

In the early 1960s, the anti-Ampo mainland Japan Socialist Party (JSP) activists 

expressed qualms about the inclusion of Okinawa and Ogasawara in Japan’s defence 

‘responsibility’. These responsibilities, they feared, would drag Japan into warfare 

involving US forces in those regions. The Okinawans were immediately reminded 

of the peculiar mainland Japanese attitudes towards Okinawa: cutting the marginal 

islands adrift when their own security was endangered. The debate questioned the 

Okinawans’ reversion nationalist attachment to the ‘home country’, and the sense 

of solidarity with the Japanese protesters (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 115–17). 

Mainland attitudes diminished the credibility of ‘reversion nationalism’. 37


In 1964, the OPP followed the JCP and conducted a joint long march scheduled 

to take place from 28 April to 15 August – the Japanese anniversary of the end of 

WWII. The participants departed from Okinawa on 28 April, and ended the event 

with an offshore boat rally. On 28 April, independently of the OPP, OSMP, and 

OSP members held a boat rally as usual, co-operating with the JSP-affiliated organizations 

(Tōyama 1987: 412–13). This split collective action reflected differences 

over whether to place emphasis on 28 April, Okinawa’s ‘day of humiliation’, or 

15 August, which was a date that had little to do with the end of the Battle of 

Okinawa. So, was Okinawa’s reversion primarily part of Japan’s anti-Ampo struggle, 

or an indigenous struggle against Okinawa’s history of marginalization? Of course, 

it was both, but each side assigned different weights to the two dates and what they 

represented. A similar issue exists between Okinawa’s absolute pacifism and its 

synchronicity with the Japanese pacifism which has its spiritual bases in Hiroshima 

and Nagasaki (see Chapter 4). In so far as the Ampo movement and its solidarity 

with the Okinawan activists continues, there continues to be disagreement over 

strategy selection and organizational affiliation. 

The Vietnam War 

The Vietnam War forced many Okinawans to reconsider their ‘absolute pacifism’ 

(see Chapter 4) and a new form of consciousness surfaced. This stressed Okinawa’s 

position as an aggressor for contributing to America’s war – a war also supported 

by Japan. A 45-year-old male farmer in Koza City wrote to the Okinawa Taimusu 

in August 1965: 

It is understandable that we (Okinawans) have a big victim mentality 

considering the pressure from the US and Japan . . . [However,] Okinawa 

provides the United States the bases, and co-operates with the US forces. 

Does it not make Okinawa the oppressor of the Vietnamese people? . . . It is 

important that we should realize that we are not victims now, but are 

contributing to the sufferings of other Asians. Otherwise, I do not feel it is 

possible to find a true path to reversion and peace. 

(Nakano and Arasaki 1970: 34) 

The self-perception of Okinawans as victims was tempered by a realization 

that, in a war situation, anyone, including Okinawans, could turn into aggressors. 

This realization strengthened their aversion to imposing the pain and killing 

they had experienced in the Battle of Okinawa on the Vietnamese people. 

The growing aversion towards self-victimization was shared with the mainland 

Japanese anti-war activists and intellectuals. It was also represented by the anti- 

Vietnam Beheiren movement, the influence of which had been growing throughout 

Japan. 38 

By the mid-1960s, Okinawan anti-militarism was increasingly inclined to stress 

opposition to generic war and military bases against the Japanese government’s 

support for America’s war. This redefined anti-militarism forced many Okinawans


to reconsider reversion to a Japan which supported the war as a comprehensive 

solution to their problems. Thus, ‘reversion nationalism’ – and the Council’s 

strategy and collective action predicated on it – came under critical scrutiny. For 

example, members of the Ryūkyū University Study Group on Marxism (Ryūkyū 

Daigaku Marukusu Kenkyū-kai) focused on the problem of Okinawan reintegration 

into the Japanese capitalist order. The Group pointed out that the Japanese capitalist 

economy (and its expansion into Southeast Asia) was the main beneficiary of the 

new Ampo and the US military forces placed in Okinawa. The Group discontinued 

its affiliation with the OPP in 1960, and publicly criticized the nationalismoriented 

reversion movement. In May 1965, reacting to the intensification of the 

Vietnam War, these students formed the Anti-War Students’ Congress (Hansen 

Gakusei Kaigi). The 2 July 1965 statement of the Congress at a general meeting 

declared: 

Our struggle against the US imperialist invasion of Vietnam requires international 

solidarity with workers all over the world, including American workers 

who protest against militarism . . . Nationalist-inspired anti-Americanism in 

Okinawa, with the slogan ‘Go Home Yanks’, is not adequate to sustain our 

international anti-militarist struggle. 

(cited in Arasaki 1969: 210) 39 

The critical version of ‘absolute pacifism’ raised scepticism towards emotional 

attachment to nationalist symbols and slogans, and the latter were interpreted 

as pathways to inevitable future co-operation with the state and its war. It was 

becoming clear over time that opposition to the existence of US military bases, 

predicated on critical ‘absolute pacifism’ and anti-militarism sentiments, was 

diverging from the ‘reversion nationalism’ employed by the Council. 

In 1969, a young writer, Kishimoto Tateo, represented another form of selfcriticism 

against the ‘victim mentality’ originating in the tragic experience of the 

Battle of Okinawa. In his view, stories of aggression and cruelty of the mainland 

Japanese soldiers toward the Okinawan residents obscured the nature of war 

that could turn anyone, including Okinawans themselves, violent. According to 

Kishimoto, the Okinawans’ enthusiastic aversion to war, or ‘absolute pacifism’, 

derived from a victim mentality and was passive in character. Additionally, 

however, it could transform itself into an uncritical, emotional attachment to the 

‘home country’, Japan (1969: 204). As suggested above, this criticism of ‘absolute 

pacifism’ highlighted the limitation of ‘reversion nationalism’. Kishimoto pointed 

out in 1969 that the campaign for reversion and opposition to the US military 

presence had to be separate. As suggested above, this criticism of ‘absolute 

pacifism’ highlighted the limitation of ‘reversion nationalism’. Thirty years later, 

Kishimoto found himself representing a conservative political force as mayor of 

Nago City. In this role, he has approved the construction of an alternative heliport 

to the US Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station. How is this change of position to 

be explained? Perhaps, Kishimoto, while understanding the limitations of reversion 

nationalism, could find no effective alternative to it either.


Others, however, have been more loyal to his bolder and more youthful 

arguments and they remain alive in the community of protest. Thus in 1999, when 

Kishimoto formally approved the heliport in Nago, an anti-base activist and a local 

editor of a community magazine in Naha in her thirties from Okinawa Main Island 

commented: 

When I was growing up, I heard about the horror of the Battle of Okinawa all 

the time, from adults around me, not only my parents and grandmother, but 

also schoolteachers, and women and men in our neighbourhood. Their vivid 

and raw descriptions of war were frightening, they made you think, war, at all 

costs, must be avoided. The general message of the Okinawans – and some 

thinking mainland Japanese people, too – would be that there is no just war 

and no war can be justified. But, here, we cannot avoid asking, ‘Okinawa, 

too, with Japan, went to war, to that terrifying, frightening war of invasion, 

didn’t it?’ 

(Personal communication, August 1999) 

The last point she made represents self-criticism that has repeatedly come out in 

the internal debates in Okinawan civil society in the last thirty years – particularly 

during the Vietnam War. It also echoes the concerns expressed not just by the 

younger Kishimoto but occasionally by others who remained reserved about 

reversion nationalism and the victim mentality it often entailed. 

‘Anti-Reversionism’ 

As the Okinawans’ struggle went through different phases, the collective identity 

of the anti-base movement also underwent transformation. Its goals, strategies, and 

participating organizations were products of ‘an interactive and shared definition 

produced by several individuals who are concerned with the orientations of their 

action as well as the field of opportunities and constraints in which their action 

takes place’ (Melucci 1989: 34). Existential assumptions about Okinawa’s position 

vis-à-vis Japan – ‘who we are’ – were particularly important for the collective 

identity of the reversion movement. 

Up to the mid-1960s, the dominant definition of ‘Okinawa-jin’ (an Okinawan) 

within the community of protest emphasized the Okinawans’ sameness with 

the ‘Japanese’. Expressions of Okinawan distinctiveness from, and criticism of, 

the mainland Japanese (for example, Japan’s war responsibility) tended to be 

suppressed. At the same time, enthusiastic attachment to the hinomaru flag and 

promotion of standardized Japanese language were encouraged by the Council 

for Reversion by schoolteachers and by demonstrators (Takara 1995: 157–8). 

Following intensification of the Vietnam War, however, criticism of ‘reversion 

nationalism’ started to come from intellectuals, writers, students, and other nonaffiliated 

individuals. At the same time, these voices pointed out that there had 

not been enough self-critical reflection on the part of the reversionists during the 

reversion campaign regarding relations between the ‘Okinawan’ identity – what it


meant to be ‘Okinawan’, not just ‘Japanese’ – and their political struggle (Oguma 

1998: 597). These dissenting voices and actors were part of the broader community 

of protest, despite their often organizationally detached status. 

In the mid-1960s, as the possibility of Okinawa’s reversion became real, critics 

and writers challenged the idea of Okinawans as ‘Japanese’ more forcefully. For 

example, Shimao Toshio, in his ‘Yaponesia’ writings, captured the transformation 

of ‘the historical trend toward assimilation . . . giving way to a movement toward 

dissimilation’ (Gabriel 1999: 183). Shimao’s ‘Yaponesia’ writings suggested that 

islands such as Okinawa, Amami, Yaeyama, and Miyako did not primarily belong 

to yamato, but formed a separate cultural sphere that yamato was itself a part of. 40 

One of the most important critics of the ‘reversion nationalism’ was Arakawa 

Akira. He was a journalist, critic, poet, and philosopher who objected to reversionism 

on spiritual and philosphical grounds (Molasky 2003). His idea of antireversionism 

(han-fukki shisō) focused on the independence of Okinawan history 

and tradition. The assimilationist argument, dating back to the Japan–Ryūkyū 

Common Ancestry Theory (Nichiryū Dōso Ron) of a seventeenth-century aristocrat, 

Haneji Chōshū (Shōjōken), and extended to the Okinawan Studies pioneered 

by Iha Fuyū, had an important influence on orthodox Okinawan political thought 

(see Chapter 3). The pro-reversion intellectuals, who approved of Okinawa’s 

reintegration with Japan, tended to idealize Jahana’s movement (see Chapter 3) as 

a predecessor of the reversion movement. 41 In particular, Arakawa criticized the 

tactic of relying on protection from Japan as illusionary; as in the same lineage of 

struggles originating from Nichiryū Dōso Ron, succeeded by Jahana Noboru’s 

Liberty and Freedom struggle. 

Anti-reversionism not only rejected the Okinawan desire for assimilation with 

yamato, it also refused to accept the ‘logic of the nation-state’ that had dominated 

all political thinking on both the left and the right in Okinawa. Arakawa criticizes 

the mental character that tends to be drawn towards integration with a nation-state, 

and the emotional attraction of being a ‘good, complete Japanese’ (Arakawa 1996: 

96). He advocates the positive acceptance of the inevitable character of ‘Okinawan’ 

as ‘alien’ in relation to the nation-state. The crux of his anti-reversionism is that 

the Okinawans’ struggle against the state could be sustained only by recognizing 

the ‘alien’ status within the nation-state (Arakawa 1996: 97). 

Arakawa’s thinking puzzled the reversion protagonists. First, it was identified 

with the politically conservative argument for the independence of the Ryūkyūs – 

an argument that preceded the formation of the reversion movement in the early 

1950s (Chapter 3). The independence advocates in the 1950s argued for the 

separation of Okinawa from Japan, and for affiliation with the US in order to 

obtain better economic aid and assistance. This independence path was discarded 

as a ‘mistake’ as the oppressive methods of the US administration became apparent 

and, naturally, the main target of opposition. Yet ‘anti-reversionism’ in the 1960s 

did not endorse any political option for seeking patronage from another nationstate, 

and was qualitatively different from the earlier vision of Okinawa’s 

independence (Ōta 1971: 118–19). This is what made Arakawa, in particular, 

puzzling.


In fact, Arakawa’s anti-reversionism appeared to negate almost any political 

action by denying concrete political diagnosis. Arakawa himself did not form any 

major anti-base organizations, nor was his thought specifically connected to 

opposition to the bases, which makes his ideas susceptible to being criticized as 

nihilistic. Even though he opposes the idea of seeking integration with the state, 

his anti-reversionism does not point towards independence or secession (Arakawa 

2000b: 60–77). For this reason, anti-reversionism drew angry emotional reactions 

from some pro-OPP intellectuals, who interpreted it as approval of continuing 

US military administration. Politically, Arakawa simply recommends building 

the sense of self, as an Okinawan, by maintaining critical distance from the state 

system, at a spiritual level. With his colleagues such as Kawamitsu Shinichi and 

sympathetic student groups, Arakawa did attempt to organize a boycott of the first 

national election of Okinawan Diet members in 1970. But the support he attracted 

was very small: only some fifty people attended the initial meeting (Kawamitsu 

Shinichi, Interview, February 2002). Arakawa, now in his mid-seventies, maintains 

his ‘transcendental’ position, continues to write, and remains a respected even if 

iconoclastic voice within the community of protest. 

Kawamitsu, a Miyako-born poet, joined the Isahama farmers’ struggle against 

the US forced land acquisition as a student at the University of the Ryūkyūs. He 

is a retired journalist of the Okinawa Taimusu, and has been equally influential as 

an iconoclastic critic of Okinawa’s reversion. Kawamitsu has constantly distanced 

himself from progressive political organizations. Now in his early seventies, he 

says that he has never voted in elections, and his ‘Okinawa Struggle’ is to engage 

in debates against other Okinawan activists who believe in the ‘Okinawa Struggle’ 

(Interview, February 2002). He expresses critical detachment from the ‘progressive’ 

parties and unions. 42 Today, Kawamitsu concentrates on his artistic activities, apart 

from supporting the famous Okinawan musician Kina Shōkichi’s international 

peace movement, 43 which is also unaffiliated to political parties or unions. 

The anti-reversionist critique was a warning against what was seen to be the 

coalition’s detachment from what was really at stake for the Okinawans. Instead 

the coalition, including the government, the opposition parties, and the unions, were 

distracted by the desire to assimilate with mainland Japan, Arakawa may never 

have been entirely clear on what exactly was at stake in the argument. Despite 

this, anti-reversionism appealed to those whose main concern was the historical 

narrative of Okinawa’s marginalization and the need for ongoing struggle, especially 

pertaining to Okinawans’ rights to safety, security, and property. This is what 

was at stake. 

From reversion to anti-militarism? 

On 24 April 1968, military base workers held a 24-hour strike. Some 23,000 

employees participated and took annual leave, and these included more than the 

18,000 Zengunrō members (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 177). The strike was 

motivated by the base workers’ rage against many forms of entrenched discrimination 

reaching back over the previous 23 years, and for the first time it became


clear that Okinawa’s reversion was a certain event. As previously discussed, 

Zengunrō was an organization very capable of making effective demands on the 

US administration. It had been pressuring USCAR into abolishing Ordinance No. 

116 that prohibited workers’ industrial actions on bases (Jinmin, 18 January 1969). 

Other unions such as Zen Oki Rōren, Kankōrō, and Kenrōkyō also staged a number 

of rallies and demonstrations opposing B-52s and nuclear weapons (Jinmin, 

11 January 1969, 25 January 1969). 

In the early morning of 19 November 1968, a B-52 crashed in the Kadena Air 

Base. The Zengunrō leader Uehara was living within two kilometres of the Kadena 

base. Though there were no casualties, the incident ‘sent the residents into an 

abyss of fear towards the B-52s operation in Okinawa’ (Uehara 1982: 269). This 

fear was amplified by the existence of a nuclear arsenal located 150 metres from 

the site of the accident (Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982: 483). 

On 7 December, the Council for Reversion, Zengunrō, Kenrōkyō, and other 

unions and organizations formed the Okinawan Citizens’ Life Protection Coalition 

(Inochi o Mamoru Kenmin Kyōtō). The member organizations were almost identical 

to those in the Council for Reversion. The Life Protection Coalition was an attempt 

to redirect the focus of activists from reversion to anti-militarism and the use of 

the US armed forces on Okinawa to attack Vietnam. The Life Protection Coalition 

focused on protesting against B-52s, stopovers of US nuclear submarines, and all 

the nuclear weapons in Okinawan bases. On 14 December, the progressive coalition 

organized a major anti-B-52 rally and demonstration surrounding the Kadena Air 

Base (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 183–5). 

In order to request the removal of the B-52s, in January 1969, trade union 

members, students, and non-affiliated citizens advocated a general strike. The 

Council agreed to this proposal, and planned a ‘100,000 sit-in’ on the military roads 

within Kadena Air Base on 4 February. The general strike was planned to take place 

in February 1969 (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 183, Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan 

Iinkai 1982: 483). The participation of Zengunrō in the general strike plan was 

significant, in terms of the potential damage to US base operations. Further 

discussion of this event follows shortly. 

An association of businesses in Naha decided to participate in the February 

general strike, by closing businesses for 24 hours. Fishing people planned an offshore 

demonstration, and Chatan and Yomitan villages in central Okinawa prepared 

for the entire closure of the villages. The workers’ unions engaged in last-minute 

preparation for the prefectural rally, such as setting up medical facilities, transport 

to bring participants to Kadena, and mobile toilets. Although at this point everything 

seemed prepared, ‘politics’ intervened. 

In 1968, Yara Chōbyō was elected new Chief Executive of the GRI, winning 

over 230,000 votes. The election of the first Chief Executive in November 1968 

was fought between the conservative Okinawa Liberal Democratic Party candidate, 

Nishime Junji 44 (arguing for the economic-oriented co-existence policy with the 

US military) and Yara, the OTA chair and leader figure of the Council for Reversion. 

Yara was supported by the left-wing member parties, unions, and organizations 

who campaigned for the immediate and unconditional reversion of Okinawa to


Japan. Yara attributes the election result to ‘the strength of the coalition’s unity’ 

(Yara 1985: 20–1). As recorded in the Council for Reversion’s official history 

(Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982a: 459–60), the Chief Executive’s 

election struggle was interpreted as a victory of the ‘democratic forces’: the 1968 

election marked the apogee of the progressive coalition’s power. 

Having said this, the general strike planned for February of 1969 put greater 

pressure on the US and Japanese governments than the election of the progressive 

candidate Yara as Chief Executive. The Japanese government, which had earlier 

expressed its support for the US policy in Vietnam, persuaded the Okinawans to 

stop the general strike using fiscal leverage – by this time, the Japanese government 

was contributing more to the Okinawan budget than USCAR was. The Japanese 

government communicated directly to Chief Executive Yara, using two political 

weapons: first, economic aid and, second, the promise of early reversion. Chief 

Executive Yara had been building closer relationships with Tokyo in order to ask 

for an immediate completion of Okinawa’s reversion during the US and Japan 

negotiations summit, increased economic aid, and the removal of B-52s. Prime 

Minister Satō and Yara had a number of informal meetings during which Satō 

advised Yara to cancel the general strike in order not to slow the process of reversion 

(Nakano and Arasaki 1970: 186). 45 Yara agreed. 

The mainland Japanese umbrella organizations of trade unions, Sohyō and 

Dōmei, were also ambivalent towards the planned general strike in Okinawa. They 

had the Okinawa Prefectural Labour Union Committee (kenrōkyō) registered as 

their subsidiary organization, but were hesitant to involve Japanese trade unions 

in the anti-Ampo struggle, and opted for a moderate anti-militarist position. Almost 

no mainland trade unions participated in any activities in support of the Okinawan 

general strike (Nakano and Arasaki 1970: 186). 

On 31 January, finally, Chief Executive Yara requested the Life Protection 

Coalition members to abandon the general strike. This was a painful decision for 

him, for he had not been able to secure a Japanese government commitment to 

remove B-52s in his negotiations. Kenrōkyō, in which Zengunrō accounted for half 

of union memberships (about forty thousand), agreed to Yara’s request. They were 

keen to protect the new Yara GRI administration, elected by the progressive 

coalition. Angry workers and students surrounded the Kenrōkyō office. Among 

the Life Protection Coalition, the OPP, OSP, OTA, Zen Oki Rōren, all the youth 

groups and student groups, and Kadena residents’ groups voted for proceeding with 

the general strike as planned. However, when Yara’s personal assistants hinted at 

his resignation, the Coalition reached an agreement: it would hold a citizens’ rally 

against B-52, but would cancel the general strike plan (Tōyama, 1987: 491–2). 

Thus was the general strike aborted. On 4 February, a rainy day, when the general 

strike was originally planned to take place, forty thousand gathered to stage another 

anti-B-52 rally. 

Why did the coalition members in the end agree to cancel the general strike? 

They wished, as indicated above, to protect Yara’s progressive administration. Also, 

a general strike would have upset the US and the Japanese governments, and 

reversion might, as Yara had warned, have been cancelled or severely delayed.


The choice the Okinawan protesters were forced to make was definitely unfair: 

reversion or the right to resist continuing militarization. Yara, in his compromise 

with the Japanese government, chose reversion and, while his intention was to 

preserve the ‘unity’ and effectiveness of the movement, it had precisely the opposite 

effect. It damaged the cohesion and the confidence of the community of protest. 

The failure to stage a general strike contributed to the protesters’ confusion and 

loss of direction. The leading progressive organizations such as the OPP and OSP 

tended to self-criticize the ‘weakness of the mass movement’ for not being able to 

correct ‘Yara’s mistake’, attributing responsibility to Yara. 46 Criticism prevailed 

against the progressive coalition’s inability to resist the Japanese government, and 

many more started to disconnect themselves from the ‘Okinawan’ collective identity 

based on ‘reversion nationalism’ where it contradicted with anti-militarism (Nakano 

and Arasaki 1976: 195). ‘Anti-reversionist’ thought also gained popularity by 

combining with the newly emerging ambition for Okinawan independence. 

But none of this was easy going and changes in perspective resulted in or involved 

a questioning of the integrity of the Council for Reversion. Again confusion reigned 

in the community of protest and it did so just as a new arsenal – suspected to be a 

nuclear arsenal – was to be built near Camp Schwab in Henoko, adding to the 

anti-military protest agenda. Furthermore, in July 1969, the existence of poison 

gas in Okinawa was revealed by a media report. This led to a violent break-in 

by students into USCAR headquarters, and another Okinawan Citizens’ Rally 

(Okinawa Daihyakka Jiten Kankō Jimukyoku 1983: 184). The threat of the US 

and Japan intensifying Okinawa’s militarization – and of it becoming a permanent 

nuclear military base – was growing. And the hope that Okinawa’s repatriation 

might bring with it the removal of the US military presence was shattered. Nakano 

and Arasaki note: ‘the prevailing consensus was the denial of the Japanese 

government’s 1972 reversion policy. The Council demanded the complete removal 

of US bases that the people had wished’, which was, instead of reversion, 

defined as ‘Okinawa’s liberation’ (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 195–6). At this stage, 

it was clear that reversion to Japan was no longer the goal of the Okinawan 

protesters. 

After the Satō–Nixon Joint Statement in November 1969, which confirmed 

Okinawa’s reversion to Japan, the Council for Reversion members attempted to 

combine the slogan of ‘reversion’, with ‘opposition to war’. It was around this 

time that the Council leaders started to use the term ‘Okinawa Struggle’ (Okinawa 

tōsō) to describe Okinawans’ own struggle against the generic marginalization of 

Okinawa (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 199), as opposed to mainland Japanese usage 

of the term – Japan’s retrieval of Okinawa. However, the combination of reversion 

and anti-militarism had become unconvincing to many, especially to students and 

younger activists. According to Nakasone Isamu, a local magistrate, who was in 

his twenties at the time: ‘It was like adding a bamboo to a tree. Anti-militarism 

was incompatible with the support of reversion to Japan’ (Takara 1995: 191): Japan 

was supporting America’s war at the time. 

The Council for Reversion announced its opposition to the second meeting 

between Satō and US President Nixon, scheduled to confirm Okinawa’s reversion


in 1972. But the demonstrations against the meeting had very little impact – it 

caused Yara a headache and barely even background noise for Satō. 

The Koza riot: outside the progressive coalition 

Following Satō and Nixon’s announcement of Okinawa’s immanent reversion in 

their joint statement issued on 21 November 1969, 47 the US announced the dismissal 

of 2,400 local military base workers. From 8 January 1970, Zengunrō engaged in 

another series of strikes against the military’s redundancy policy. 48 This time, 

however, Zengunrō’s collective action was not a demand for the US bases to provide 

stable employment. It was a protest against the US military presence in Okinawa 

after reversion, under new, streamlined management (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 

202). With a slogan of ‘no jobs, no base’ (kubi o kirunara kichi mo kaese), the 

desperate struggle of the base workers was solid, well-organized, and full of energy, 

despite the workers’ lack of economic resources. Some schoolteachers, public 

servants, anti-war university students, and mainland Japanese supporters joined 

the picket lines at the military gates (Ishida 1993: 70–84). 49 However, the Yara 

administration, though sympathetic, did not express support for fear of delaying 

the intended 1972 reversion. 

The US military responded to the Zengunrō strikes by declaring that the local 

business districts, including ‘special catering districts’, were ‘off limits’ to the US 

military personnel and their families. On 20 January 1970, the ‘A’ sign business 

owners who feared bankruptcy surrounded the Zengunrō headquarters’ office, 

protesting against the base workers’ strikes (Okinawa Daihyakka Jiten Kanko 

Jimukyoku 1983: 186). A mainland Japanese supporter witnessed a debt-stricken 

female bar owner verbally abusing the picketers in Koza, and in return being 

sexually harassed by the base workers ‘for interrupting the picket line’ (Ishida 1993: 

85–7). Local gangsters, hired by the entertainment industry, also attacked the picket 

line (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 201). 

Unlike base workers who had the power to jeopardize US military operations 

by strikes and boycotts, bar workers and prostitutes remained politically unorganized 

and vulnerable. The ‘A’ sign businesses were particularly reluctant to support 

the campaign for reversion, or any political movements that offended the US 

authorities. Because of this vulnerability to the arbitrary ‘off limits’ sanctions of 

the US, uncertainty was rife about what would happen to the local economy if 

reversion was achieved and the military bases disappeared. A Koza restaurant owner 

also admitted that the people engaged in base-related industries shared with other 

islanders a basic wish to ‘return to the home country’. However, he confessed that 

with so many people relying for their livelihood on the bases, ‘I cannot agree with 

the view that reversion should be achieved immediately, at any cost’ (Ryūkyū 

Shimpōsha 1968: 127). 

In the late 1960s, US soldiers in Okinawa were exhausted by the prolonged 

Vietnam War, and behaved much more violently off base: their crime rate increased 

dramatically in the local community (Takazato 1998). 50 In some cases, soldiers 

assaulted Okinawan residents to invite arrest and to avoid being returned to the


war zone (Ryūkyū Shimpōsha 1968: 141). Murder and rape of the locals who 

worked in the ‘special districts’ and in US military bases were frequent, heinous, 

and insufficiently investigated or prosecuted by the authorities (Ryūkyū Shimpōsha 

1968: 140). In 1966, for example, no investigation result was reported by the US 

military police on the killing of a local barmaid in Kin village. Likewise in 1968, 

the result of an investigation into the case of a housemaid who was found dead, 

naked and stabbed repeatedly in a bathtub at a US soldier’s residency in a base in 

Urasoe village was never reported (Ryūkyū Shimpōsha 1968: 140). 

However, the reversion activists and organizations tended not to protest against 

these cases as they did for the ‘innocent victims’ of the 1955 Yumiko-chan and 

1962 Kokuba-kun incidents. This discrimination could be explained by the history 

of ‘special catering districts’ created by the necessity to control or at least contain 

the sexual violence of the US military soldiers. Yet it was more than that: the making 

of innocent victims as a resource for mobilizing collective action to demand 

reversion was predicated on the silence over violence and human rights abuses 

that occurred in ‘special districts’ like Koza. Tomiyama explains that the US 

military’s violence inflicted on the women in ‘base towns’ tended to be ignored 

by the protesters, in effect, to protect the symbolic effect of the victimization of 

normal ‘victims’ (Tomiyama 1996: 28). The prejudice was indicative of the 

priority placed on certain kinds of struggle, such as the campaign for reversion, or 

the class-based struggles led by the left-wing political parties, workers, and 

schoolteachers. This limitation of ‘reversion nationalism’ – once a powerful framing 

of protest that gave birth to the long-lasting progressive coalition – illustrates some 

of the difficulties of constructing a unitary and inclusive subject of protest, 

‘Okinawa’. 

Reflecting these complications and conflicts of interest in the community of 

protest, young business owners, bartenders, and waiters in the ‘base town’ districts 

were critical of the progressive political organizations’ inability to fully address 

or stage collective action against what they perceived to be their treatment as 

second-class human beings. To these workers Arakawa’s anti-reversionist thought 

was particularly attractive. In 1969, these workers established the Koza Livelihood 

Protection Society (Koza no seikatsu o mamoru kai) (Tomiyama 1996: 28–9), which 

found supporters among young ‘base town’ male workers (Ishida 1993: 86). 51 The 

position of the Livelihood Protection Society, needless to say, was seriously at odds 

with Zengunrō, and other ‘progressive’ Okinawan activists at the scene of picketing. 

On 20 December 1970, just past midnight, a car driven by a US Army soldier 

hit a local man employed by the US military. The crowd at the scene of the accident 

started to scream and shout, demanding that the Military Police should hand over 

the driver to the local police. When the Military Police simply released the driver, 

the witnesses were infuriated. Just seven days prior to this incident, the military 

court had acquitted a US soldier, after he had killed a woman in Itoman in a car 

accident. The crowd set fire to vehicles with yellow licence plates, which indicated 

ownership by the US military. According to a ‘Department of Defence Intelligence 

Information Report’ of 28 December 1970, the riot involved more than two 

thousand locals, one or two hundred of whom were involved in burning 82 cars, a


military employment office, and American children’s schools within the Kanda Air 

Base (Okinawa Shiyakusho Kikakubu Heiwa Bunka Shinko-ka 1999: 96–101). 52 

This was the Koza riot, and it was the only spontaneous, outbreak of violence on 

this scale in Okinawa’s postwar history. 

Participants included union members, schoolteachers, base workers, and other 

ordinary citizens who were drinking in Koza. 53 However, a public servants’ union 

member who joined the riot stresses that there was no union involvement: the main 

instigators were younger people who worked for the bars and restaurants in Koza 

catering to the US soldiers (Mainichi Shimbun (Seibu Honsha) 17 December 2000). 

Tomiyama explains that the explosive anger of these workers was directed at the 

discrimination and human rights abuses they experienced in their daily contact with 

the US military and its people. In the Koza riot, the ‘bar town’ workers who had 

been excluded from the definition of ‘citizens’ in the reversion movement 

themselves became the subject of a struggle, as ‘Okinawans’ (Tomiyama 1996: 29, 

Aldous 2003). The Koza riot gave voice to the ‘bar town’ workers, at least to young 

male workers who were capable of violence but who had been irrelevant to the 

organization or mobilization of the progressive coalition. 

The power of the Koza riot was ‘different from any rallies or protest “movements”’ 

according to a New Left mainland Japanese student (Ryūkyū Shimpō 

20 December 2000). The riot, completely outside of the organizational and 

ideological spectrum of the Council for Reversion, was an indication of internal 

divisions among the community of protest and, importantly, of the separation 

of the ‘Okinawa Struggle’, led by the progressive parties and unions, from 

the day-to-day issues faced by many Okinawans in living with the US military 

presence. 

Conclusion 

This chapter has examined the second ‘wave’ of protest in postwar Okinawan 

history. In the 27 years of direct US military’s occupation, the Okinawans suffered 

from loss of political autonomy, systemic racial discrimination, lack of protection 

from many forms of workplace abuse, unprosecuted lawlessness, and criminal 

behaviour on the part of US personnel (due to the extraterritoriality provisions), 

economic dependency, insecurity, and distorted development including the development 

of a huge sex industry, threats of continuing land expropriation, the noxious 

presence of huge quantities of weaponry including B-52s and nuclear and chemical 

weapons, and potential arms and weapons-related accidents. And this list could 

probably go on. More significantly here, reversion was for many during most of 

this 27-year period perceived to be the answer to these problems – following US 

withdrawal and access to the protections of the Japanese Constitution. 

During the reversion movement, leading political organizations and coalitions 

were formed on the basis of class struggle and nationalism. In the end, however, 

emotional attachment to Japan as a ‘home country’ became the dominant and 

most popular ‘framing’ – more popular than the idea of class struggle promoted 

by the OPP, trade unions, and student groups. This, as we have seen, suited the

Gendered bodies and physical identities 105 

conservative mainland political agenda, especially that of the Japanese Prime 

Minister. 

To be sure, affiliation with mainland Japanese anti-Ampo parties and unions 

accelerated. Mass demonstrations that led to GRI Chief Executive election and 

the cancellation of Two Laws on Education are remembered as glorious and major 

achievements. ‘Reversion nationalism’ and the progressive coalition consolidated 

the idea of ‘the Okinawa Struggle’ as a comprehensive people’s movement against 

Okinawa’s marginalization. The organizational structure and repertoire of protest 

under the Council formed the basis of a still influential protest sector. 

However, the progressive coalition’s focus on reversion and the framing of 

‘reversion nationalism’ failed to speak for the whole Okinawan community of 

protest, or to accommodate the locals’ strong rejection of involvement in another 

war, which stemmed directly from the residents’ experience in the Battle of 

Okinawa. ‘Reversion nationalism’ also lost credibility for many Okinawans who 

understood Okinawa’s role in bombing Vietnam: anti-militarism and the ‘reversion 

nationalism’ came into conflict. ‘Anti-reversion’ intellectuals rejected the Okinawan 

identity defined in terms of closeness to Japan, but sought an alternative identity 

– as ‘alien’ within a nation-state. The protests driven by the progressive coalition 

were silent in relation to many human rights abuses – including violence – which 

occurred daily. ‘Special districts’ like Koza were a case in point. The progressive 

coalition’s call for a general strike was defeated by the government’s intervention. 

These fissures and divisions reveal the always fragile, elusive, and ultimately mythic 

character of a unitary Okinawan struggle – threatening to fall apart, even falling 

apart, as it is being made; there but not there. 

Yet Okinawa became part of Japan in 1972, largely owing to the favourable 

political opportunity, namely the new security alliance arrangements between the 

US and Japan. The progressive coalition and its collective actions were rewarded 

by Okinawa’s repatriation to Japan. But, of course, the US bases were not withdrawn 

or even downscaled. Although it was hardly the ideal result, the reversion movement 

persisting for some 27 years of US direct military rule finally resulted in a major 

political change and, for that reason, the idea of the ‘Okinawa Struggle’ survived. 

The influence of the reversion movement has remained strong; and so has the myth 

of a unified ‘Okinawan’ struggle. The reversion movement provided organizationally 

and strategically lasting influences for the ‘Okinawan’ struggle. However, its outcomes 

added another traumatic chapter to the historical narrative of marginalization.

7 The anti-war landowners 

and the progressive coalition 

The constitutional framing 

of protest 

Introduction 

In 1972, Okinawa returned to Japan, and everything apart from the US military 

base presence changed. It marked the start of a long ‘low’ period in terms of mass 

protest that lasted until the third ‘wave’ of island-wide protest, triggered by the rape 

of a 12-year-old girl in 1995. During the first and second ‘waves’ of protest, the 

campaign for reversion was led by the Council for Reversion, which engaged in 

successive mass rallies and campaigns, and gave substance to the idea of a united 

Okinawans’ political movement, described in terms such as the ‘Okinawa Struggle’. 

Reversion as an overall goal was achieved and a goal that once held the coalition 

of protest organizations together no longer existed. The victory was, for many, more 

bitter than sweet. The US military bases were there to stay. 

Nor did the Okinawans’ history of marginalization come to an end with reversion. 

The ‘trough’ between the second and the third ‘waves’ was an important phase, a 

period when protest actors redefined agendas for protest, as well as finding new 

approaches and strategies. This process involved redefining ‘why we protest, what 

is at stake, and who “we” are’, across various struggles in different regions and 

communities. 

What stands out during this long ‘trough’ period is burgeoning diversity: 

differently defined struggles in Okinawa led to a splintering of protest groups and 

individual struggles. As indicated in previous chapters, this had been constantly 

the characteristic of the Okinawan community of protest. But in the post-reversion 

period, these differences became more explicit in terms of organizational structure 

and strategies. At the same time the island-wide – or even progressive – coalition 

towards one ‘Okinawan Struggle’ became much weakened. Having said that, the 

idea of an ‘Okinawan’ struggle as a continuous and united political ‘movement’ 

survived. The myth had momentum and survived despite the increased splintering 

of the organizations, priorities, and reform agendas. To understand the dynamics, 

changes, and tensions at work here I want to distinguish three ‘framings’ of protest 

in Okinawa: constitutional, environmentalist, and gender. 

This chapter focuses on the constitutional framing of protest, represented by the 

struggle of the anti-war landowners and the progressive coalition. It also reflects 

on the ‘low’ period of protest, following the reversion, before the rise of the ‘third

wave’ of Okinawans’ island-wide protest in 1995. The anti-war landowners, 

together with the One-tsubo comrades and the supporting progressive coalition 

became an anchor for the idea and tradition of the ‘Okinawa Struggle’. (One-tsubo 

land owners were not farmers; they were activists who acquired land in order 

to become protestors – see below for further discussion.) After the Council for 

Reversion ceased to function, the anti-war landowners provided the ‘glue’ needed 

to build an anti-base coalition – albeit a much smaller, divided, and loose one – 

among progressive, left-wing political parties, workers’ unions, teachers’ unions, 

and other citizens’ organizations. Through supporting the anti-war landowners, 

these progressive forces were able to continue their ‘Okinawa Struggle’. 

The constitutional framing of protest adopted by the anti-war landowners and 

their supporting organizations provided a vehicle to extend the ‘Okinawa Struggle’ 

from the 1950s and into the 1960s. By the end of the 1960s however, the momentum 

for mass protest was in decline and went into a sustained ‘low’ phase lasting 

almost a quarter of a century – until 1995. This chapter will consider some aspects 

of change and diversification in collective identity, strategy, and organizational 

structure of protest of the progressive coalition but, overall, continuity has been 

the predominant characteristic of its protest activity. 

Ironically, however, continuation of the old contributed to the emergence of new 

framings and strategies of protest. They were invented by those who went separate 

ways from the traditional parties, unions, and anti-war landowners. In effect, the 

limitations of the established protest groups provided the stimulus for the development 

of new approaches. A vacuum, waiting to be filled, had developed. Not surprisingly, 

and also importantly, this vacuum and the extended ‘trough’ created an opening for 

so-called new social movements to make their entry on to the Okinawan protest 

stage at precisely the right time. The environmentalist and gender framings referred 

to above were able to take their place in ‘Okinawa’s’ struggle’ – further enriching 

and diversifying it – but these are issues for Chapters 8 and 9 below. 

The present chapter first examines the reorganization of the anti-base progressive 

coalition inherited from the reversion movement. The successors were the anti-war 

landowners and their supporters. It then examines the repertoire of collective action 

of the anti-war landowners and the progressive coalition. The third section examines 

the ‘constitutionalist’ framing of protest. An important role played by the anti-war 

landowners’ long-term struggles has been, despite the Japanese government’s 

various schemes and economic subsidies to quell opposition, keeping the memories 

and practices of local disobedience alive. In so doing of course they were both 

drawing inspiration from and recharging the myth of a continuing, unified 

Okinawan people’s movement. 

The organizations 

The anti-war landowners 107 

Who are the anti-war landowners? 

The ‘anti-war landowners’ are the owners of private properties occupied by the 

US and Japanese military in Okinawa, who ‘refuse to sign the lease contract, from


the perspective of opposing war and aspiring for peace’ (Arasaki 1992a: 108). 

Currently they represent about a hundred of about thirty thousand landowners. 

The overwhelming majority, thus, contract legally to lease their land to the state. 

They are ‘contract landowners’. Immediately after the Battle of Okinawa, the US 

forces occupied the land to build military bases in the landowners’ absence (as 

examined in Chapter 5). And some 33 per cent of the land they occupy is privately 

owned. 1 Subsequent to the 1956 island-wide protest (Shimagurumi tōsō, see Chapter 

5) against the US military’s lump-sum payment policy, the landowners earned the 

right to receive rent each year. Most of the landowners entered lease contracts 

with the US forces. Tochiren, the biggest and oldest interest group of landowners 

of military property and a central actor in the land struggle in the 1950s, represents 

the ‘contract landowners’. 2 

However, several hundred landowners, mostly farmers in villages such as Maja 

in Ie-jima, Oroku, Chatan, and Yomitan, refused to sign their leases, to express 

their opposition to militarism and war. This marked the birth of the anti-war 

landowners (‘non-contract landowners’ or ‘objectors’). Since the late 1950s, 

the contract landowners have received ‘rent’, and the non-contract landowners 

have received much lower rates of ‘compensation’ from the US and, after 1972, 

the Japanese government. The real difference between compliant and objecting 

landowners, however, is that the latter sign no lease documentation. This action – 

or inaction – signals their refusal to give their land over to supporting military 

activity or to engage in dealings with a government intent on such activities. 

Immediately after Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, the Japanese government 

became the subcontractor of the Okinawan landowners’ lease to the US military, 

under Article V of the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty, which states that it is 

Japan’s duty to provide facilities to US forces within Japan (Arasaki 1995: 75). 

In the late 1960s, reflecting the locals’ anti-militarist sentiment against B-52s 

and the Vietnam War, the number of non-contract landowners rose to three 

thousand. In 1971, the Anti-War Landowners’ Organization (Kenri to Zaisan o 

Mamoru Gunyō Jinushi-kai, usually called Hansen Jinushi-kai) was formed, 

financially supported by the Council for Reversion to the Home Country (Council 

for Reversion). As a counter-measure, the Japanese government increased the rent 

6.1 times, on average, higher than before reversion (Kurima 1998: 288). Thus, the 

rent from the military came to form a sizable part of the Okinawan economy. 

Together with greater Japanese subsidies to the Okinawa Prefecture, the Okinawan 

economy was transferred from a ‘base economy’ to a ‘subsidy economy’, dependent 

on the income granted by the government (Kurima 1998: 32–4), including the 

military property rent. 3 

The Japanese government used many methods – mostly underhand – to 

discourage objectors. 4 Over time, a majority of landowners succumbed and signed 

their lease contract. Arasaki (cited in Zen’ei Staff 1996: 86) recalls the comment 

of an anti-war landowner, Uehara Taro, from Oroku village: ‘at least, the US 

military respected the landowners’ right to express their refusal and did not 

manipulate our psyche by inventing sources of conflict between contract landowners 

and the objectors, as Japan did’.

Iken Kyōtō: successor to the Council for Reversion? 


In June 1971, the US and Japan signed the ‘Okinawa Reversion Agreement’ 

(Agreement Between the United States of America and Japan Concerning the 

Ryūkyū Islands and the Daitō Islands, Okinawa Henkan Kyōtei). Unhappy with 

the Agreement, the Council for Reversion explained that the reversion achieved in 

1972 was not what Okinawans expected: 

We, the citizens of the Okinawa Prefecture (Okinawa kenmin), are firmly 

opposed to any military bases. The majority of us wished for immediate, 

unconditional and total reversion under the pacifist Japanese Constitution, as 

demonstrated by the 1968 election of the Chief Executive. The ‘Return of 

Okinawa Pact’, however, made the reversion totally different from what the 

citizens of the Okinawa Prefecture have really hoped for. 

(Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Henkan Iinkai 1982: 728–9) 

The Agreement stipulated that, apart from partial removal of nuclear warheads from 

the island, the existence of the base facilities of the US forces would remain 

unchanged. The expectation that the US military presence on Okinawa would be 

decreased to a level comparable with that of the mainland was betrayed. 5 In 

particular, the Council protested against the loopholes that allowed for the additional 

deployment of US nuclear weapons and for the stationing of the Japanese 

Self-Defence Forces in Okinawa (Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982: 635, 

688). 6 Prime Minister Satō’s repeated promise to make the US military bases in 

Okinawa ‘without nuke and mainland-standard’ (kaku-nuki, hondo-nami) had 

proved deceptive. Even though reversion was no longer a rallying ground for 

coalition, the ‘Okinawan Struggle’ had to continue. 

In its 1975 annual report, the Council for Reversion redefined the next stage of 

the ‘Okinawa Struggle’ (Okinawa tōsō). It first reflected on the shortcomings of 

‘reversion nationalism’, the dominant framing of protest in the 1960s: 

Under US military rule, when Okinawa was all but completely forgotten as 

part of a Japanese-speaking people, it was ‘necessary’ to appeal to Okinawans’ 

ethnic ties with Japan in order to turn Okinawa’s reversion into a national issue. 

[Moreover,] . . . [w]e engaged in the reversion campaign without any particular 

ideology, logic, or philosophy. The focus was on dealing with the emergency 

situations at the time, [yet], over time, the reversion movement evolved from 

its initial stage of a simple ethnic movement to its the present state: a ‘classoriented’, 

‘anti-establishment’ struggle. 

(Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982: 888–9) 

These statements are a self-critique of ‘reversion nationalism’ as a ‘simple sense 

of ethnic solidarity’ that, in retrospect, could not provide an adequate basis for 

resisting the US military presence in Okinawa. The ‘evolved’ movement, by 

contrast, was defined as a ‘class struggle’ (kaikyū tōsō), in which ‘Okinawa’ was


an oppressed class, subjected to the domination of Japan, the US, or capitalism in 

general. 

The previous chapter distinguished between two different streams of ‘reversion 

nationalism’: the Okinawan version of ‘progressive nationalism’ derived from the 

(mainland) Japanese left’s class struggle against US colonialism, on one hand, 

and the emotional, ‘ethnic’ attachment to Japan, on the other. Rejection of the latter 

version of ‘reversion nationalism’ in 1975 is understandable, since reversion was 

interpreted as Japan’s betrayal of Okinawa. Yet the new phase of the ‘Okinawa 

Struggle’ was redefined as a class struggle, that is, an extension of the first stream 

of ‘reversion nationalism’. In this sense, an element of the ‘reversion nationalism’ 

survived. At the same time, however, there were fundamental and somewhat 

perplexing changes. 

Continuity and changes were both obvious in the organizational structure of the 

Council members. Most local political parties and trade unions, which were 

previously independent ‘Okinawan’, ‘Yaeyama’, or ‘Miyako’ entities, all became 

incorporated into bigger mainland Japanese organizations. The OPP (Jinmintō), a 

locally bred communist party that fought against the US military regime, became 

the Okinawan branch of the Japan Communist Party (JCP). The OSP became a 

branch of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). The Okinawa Teachers’ Association 

became integrated with the Japan Teachers’ Union (Nikkyō-so). Not all of these 

changes were welcomed, however. The integration of Zengunrō with Zenchūrō(All 

Foreign Military Workers’ Union, Zenchūryūgun Rōdōkumiai), a Japan-based union 

of workers employed by the US military bases in 1978, for example, caused some 

unhappiness: for many working Okinawans it meant the ‘disappearance of the flag 

representing the Okinawan union of base workers from the Okinawan mass workers’ 

movement’ (Uehara 1982: 450). 7 Only the OSMP retained local headquarters and 

remained a purely ‘Okinawan’ political party. The Council denounced reversion 

publicly. Paradoxically, however, the protest organizations ‘reverted’ to Japan. This 

is what perplexes and what we perhaps see more clearly as perplexity today must 

have been a source of considerable tension in the early 1970s as the Council set 

about its self-reconstruction. 

We can infer this in part from documented difficulties in building consensus 

among the new organizations as their Japanese headquarters argued with Okinwan 

branch offices. One example involves larger policy against the LDP government 

and the US military forces (Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 1982: 891). But 

what is perhaps most striking is that the Council disbands within two years of 

1975 – in 1977. And this is one year after the establishment of a new umbrella 

organization in 1976, the Iken Kyōtō(Okinawa Gunyōchi Iken Soshō Shien Kenmin 

Kyōtō Kaigi, the Okinawa Supporting Council for the Legal Actions against 

Unconstitutionality). While it is true that Council members all agreed, in principle 

at least, on one agenda – support for the anti-war landowners’ struggle – it is not 

clear how this worked out in practice. It is not possible, however, to overstate the 

political importance of the anti-war landowners. Their numbers may have been 

small but their symbolic significance was huge. They maintained the lineage and 

historical continuity of the struggle, reaching back to the 1950s, and the early


reversion movement. In short, the uniquely ‘Okinawan’ anti-war landowners’ 

disobedience was vital in two related ways. It stamped the Okinawan’s struggle 

as Okinawan; and it was a vital link in the historical narrative of Okinawa’s 

marginalization. It also, thereby maintained connections with the Battle of Okinawa 

experience, which will be further discussed below. The new body, Iken Kyōtō, 

established in 1976, formed around the anti-war landowners. 

Following the cancellation of the general strike planned in 1969 and reversion 

in 1972, the community of protest was in confusion. The ‘Okinawan’ identity, 

which had constantly oscillated between sameness with yamato and distinctiveness 

of uchina (Okinawa), was swinging decisively towards distinctiveness at this point. 

While this was most apparent in anti-reversion sentiment of the late 1960s, 8 after 

reversion it crystallized around the anti-war landowners’ struggle. Iken Kyōtō 

became the primary organizational vehicle for this. 

In February 1976, 18 organizations – most of them former Council members – 

including three local political parties (the OSMP, Okinawa branches of the JCP 

and JSP) and local trade unions (Kenrōkyō, Zen Oki Rōren, Jichirō Okinawa 

Branch, Zenchurō Okinawa Branch) as well as teachers’ unions including the 

Okinawa Teachers’ Union (OTU, formerly OTA), the High School Teachers’ 

Union, the two Okinawa Retired Teachers’ Organizations, The Okinawan Youth 

Groups’ Association, and the League of Okinawan Women’s Groups formed a new 

anti-base coalition. This was Iken Kyōtōor, in full, the Okinawa Supporting Council 

for the Legal Actions against Unconstitutionality. Iken Kyōtō offered an organizational 

framework for an anti-base coalition, holding together anti-base political 

institutions and citizens’ organizations. The Council for Reversion dissolved in 

1977 and, according to Arasaki, the Council for Reversion ‘gave birth to a legitimate 

successor from its own womb’ (Arasaki 1995: 76). 

Thus the anti-war landowners were given a symbolic role as the embodiment of 

solidarity and coalition among the ‘progressive’, left-wing political parties, workers’ 

unions, teachers’ unions and other citizens’ organizations against the continuing US 

military presence. Apart from providing an organisational rallying point for an 

‘Okinawan’ anti-base coalition, Iken Kyōtō’s main function focused on supporting 

the anti-war landowners’ struggle against the US military’s compulsory acquisition 

of their land. Iken Kyōtōwas an extensive organization that encompassed both JCPand 

JSP-affiliated parties and unions. All of this said, the ties it provided were much 

weaker and more nominal than those provided by the Council for Reversion. 

One-tsubo anti-war landowners 

The One-tsubo organization started as an opportunity for those Okinawans (and 

some in mainland Japan) who did not own substantial properties to become antiwar 

landowners. A group of initiators, including Arasaki Moriteru, advocated the 

One-tsubo (a tsubo is 3.3 square metres) movement, a collective land ownership 

of a property located inside the Kadena Air Station. A new organization, the One- 

Tsubo Anti-Landowners’ Organization (Hitotsubo Hansen Jinushi-Kai) was 

established in December 1982. Each participant bought ¥10,000 worth (sometimes


less than one tsubo) of property, which jointly consisted of a property of 418 

tsubo (786 square metres), originally owned by a non-contract landowner. 

According to the first issue of the organization’s newsletter, Hitotsubo Hansen, 

at the beginning, 833 One-tsubo landowners had registered as property owners, and 

refused to sign the lease contract (Hitotsubo Hansen May 1983: 3). ‘Return our 

land from the military to life and production!’ was chosen as the One-Tsubo 

Landowners’ Organization’s slogan. The One-tsubo membership provided avenues 

to directly participate in the anti-military resistance rather than indirectly supporting 

it. One-tsubo landowners increased the number of total anti-war landowners from 

just over a hundred to more than three thousand. 

The original participants in this One-tsubo movement were those who had already 

been engaged in various political and community activities such as members of 

the local parliaments, union activists, and intellectuals from all over the prefecture, 

including remote areas, such as the Miyako and Yaeyama island groups. 

Initially, members with diverse profiles were regarded as likely to contribute to 

a ‘proliferation of an unprecedented approach to anti-base protest, different from 

the traditional-style progressive political organizations’ (Shin Okinawa Bungaku 

30 September 1982: 141). Some novel attempts were made to break free from the 

past style of protest during the reversion movement. For example, the organization 

avoided a top-down structure with a central headquarters. The One-Tsubo Anti- 

War Landowners’ Organization is a network of independent regional ‘blocs’ across 

Okinawa, including Naha, Itoman, Urasoe, Northern Okinawa, Yaeyama, and, later, 

Tokyo and Osaka. This organizational structure promoted the idea that individual 

blocs engaged in their own activities as independent entities (Hitotsubo Hansen 

May 1983: 4). 

The members were often affiliated with other organizations or community groups. 

For example, one veteran One-tsubo member is also involved with another antiwar 

movement, the Okinawa Historical Film Society (see Chapter 4), as well as the 

Ainu Moshiri and Uruma Society (Ainu Moshiri to uruma o musubu kai), which is 

a communication-promoting movement with another minority group in Japan, the 

Ainu people. A One-tsubo member explained that a majority of the members 

belonged to organized labour unions. As a non-union worker, ‘it would be difficult 

to actively participate in a regional bloc, without many friends or [anti-base] movement 

experience’ (Hitotsubo Hansen May 1983: 10). In fact, initially, an electronic 

industry workers’ union owned 180 tsubo (595 square metres) of the total size of 

the 418 tsubo (786 square metres), collectively owned by the One-tsubo landowners 

(Hitotsubo Hansen May 1983: 8). Furthermore, the media often depicted the antilandowners 

and supporters as ‘radicals’, which has distanced the wider Okinawan 

public from them (Arasaki 1992b: 88–9). Indeed, original One-tsubo members were, 

predominantly, those who already owned land within the US military bases, 9 or 

locals who felt comfortable enough to go through the paperwork and the complicated 

registration process. 

According to one One-tsubo landowner, many of them do little more than deal 

with paperwork related to land registration and tax, subscribe to newsletters and 

attend annual rallies (Personal communication, April 1999). According to Arasaki

– an original member of the One-tsubo Anti-war Landowners’ Organization – the 

most important and meaningful character of both anti-war landowners and Onetsubo 

anti-war landowners is essentially ‘their existence and not their action’ 

(Arasaki 1995: 129). This relatively small portion of One-tsubo members has 

engaged in protest activities, mainly as ‘supporters’. 

Strategy and activities 


The main activity of the anti-war landowners has been long-term disobedience to 

the state’s request to sign a lease to the US military occupation of their properties. 

This has put a constant pressure on Japanese government officials. The anti-war 

landowners claimed the forceful occupation of their land was unconstitutional, 

because it breaches Article 29 (right of private ownership of assets) of the 

Constitution. The regular players in this struggle have been a small group of antiwar 

landowners, including One-tsubo landowners, members of Iken Kyōtō, and 

expert attorneys, versus the officers at the Naha Defence Facilities Bureau. 

Japan is obligated to supply the US forces with facilities and land by the US– 

Japan Mutual Security Treaty. In order to keep the US occupation of properties 

owned by these non-contract landowners legal, the Japanese government has 

‘reformed’ relevant legislation, time and time again. First, the Diet passed the Public 

Property Law (Koyōchi hō) on 31 December 1971, which legalized the use of all 

privately owned properties hitherto occupied by the US military in Okinawa for 

five years from 1972. 10 Nevertheless, this law was only good for the five years, as 

a temporary measure necessary in the transition period. In 1976, the landowners 

and Iken Kyōtō filed their first legal case against the Public Property Law. 

In order to maintain the US military’s use of the non-contract landowners’ 

properties, the government came up with manipulative and convoluted legislation 

in 1977. The Japanese Cabinet enacted the Land Registration Identification Law 

(chiseki meikakuka hō), which obligated the government to identify land registration 

within the military bases in Okinawa. 11 In a subject clause, the government extended 

the period of the Public Property Law for another five years (Arasaki 1995: 97). 

Before the passing of this bill, Uehara Kōsuke, former Zengurnō leader and then 

a JSP member representing the Okinawan electorate in the Lower House, pressured 

the JSP executives to resist a little longer in their negotiations with the LDP. This 

stalled the bill for four days, making the military’s occupation of the anti-war 

landowners’ properties technically illegal for those days. The lawfulness of the 

Japan–US Mutual Security Treaty was endangered. As symbolic acts of protest, 

the members of Iken Kyōtō and anti-war landowners broke the gates into some of 

the bases, to return to their previous homes for the first time since WWII. 12 During 

these four days, an anti-war landowner, Shimabukuro Zenyū, and his family, 

accompanied by a lawyer, took their tractor into his former property in Camp 

Shields. In front of the US military personnel, he released his ducks, ploughed the 

farmland and planted garlic (Shimabukuro and Miyazato 1997: 156–60). These 

four days created an embarrassing situation for the state, which was temporarily 

using private properties unlawfully.


Consequently, the government reactivated the US Military Special Measures 

Law (beigun tokubetsu sochi hō) and the Land Expropriation Law (tochi shūyō 

hō) which restricted the right of private property ownership when deemed necessary 

for protecting the ‘public interest’, with adequate compensation. In effect from 

1982, this law considerably simplified the procedures for land expropriation. The 

process obligates, first, the Naha Defence Facilities Bureau, a subsidiary of 

the Japanese Defence Agency, to apply for legitimate use of the non-contract 

landowners’ properties by the US forces. The applications, secondly, are processed 

by the Prefecture Land Expropriation Committee, a semi-judicial body attached 

to the prefectural government. This Committee has the authority to decide whether 

or not the land expropriation was justified. The US Military Special Measures 

Law made no provision for regulating this Land Expropriation Committee, and its 

selection processes were unclear (Arasaki 1995: 158–9). The Land Expropriation 

Committee approved the Bureau’s applications made in 1981 and 1986. It extended 

the state’s right to sublet the non-contract landowners’ properties for another five 

years. 

Since the enactment of this legislation, the public legal hearings in front of the 

Land Expropriation Committee became the site of battle between the anti-war 

landowners and their supporting groups on the one hand and the Naha Defence 

Facility Bureau on the other. They have provided rare opportunities for the antiwar 

landowners to express their arguments about the government’s unconstitutional 

use of private property, together with their moral stance against leasing their land 

for military use, recorded in the proceedings of the public legal hearings by Iken 

Kyōtō (for example, Okinawa Gunyōchi Iken Soshō Shien Kenmin Kyōtō Kaigi 

1998, Okinawa Kōyōchi Hō Iken KyōtōSoshō Shien Kenmin KyōtōKaigi 1982). 13 

In February 1982, the Land Expropriation Committee approved the first 

application for land expropriation of non-contract landowners under the US Military 

Special Measures Law. This decision demoralized the anti-base movement in 

Okinawa. A decade after Okinawa’s reversion to Japan, the ‘Okinawan’ judges on 

the Committee panel approved of the US military’s use of the anti-war landowners’ 

land. A local citizens’ critical journal, Shin Okinawa Bungaku, lamented that the 

Okinawans themselves ‘sold off’ the anti-war landowners’ land to the government, 

which expressed the sense of helplessness and despair of the anti-base Okinawans 

(Shin Okinawa Bungaku 30 September 1982: 141). This decision highlighted the 

‘low’ phase of the anti-base protest. Between 1977 and 1982, the number of noncontract 

landowners (not One-tsubo landowners) shrank from about five hundred 

to 120–30. 

At the 1986 public legal hearings, the presence of several hundred One-tsubo 

anti-war landowners gave tremendous support to the anti-war landowners in court 

(Arasaki 1995: 172). The aforementioned anti-war landowner, Shimabukuro Zenyū, 

recalls that at the 1981 hearings there were only 20–30 anti-war landowners, looking 

miserable and weak in court, while the opponents, the officials from the Naha 

Defence Facilities Bureau, came in suits and ties, in a much larger number, on a 

chartered bus. Most importantly, Shimabukuro says, the encouragement from the 

One-tsubo landowners was immense, for the anti-war landowners who had long


been engaged in their solitary and painful struggle against the Japanese government 

and unsympathetic family members, relatives, and other community members 

(Interview, April 1999). In February 1987, however, the Land Expropriation 

Committee approved the Bureau’s application for land expropriation for a period 

of ten years instead of twenty years. 

For the next period of compulsory lease from 1987, the Bureau applied for the 

occupation for another twenty years. Arasaki argues that this was a counter-measure 

against the increased non-contract landowners because of the One-tsubo movement, 

which had expanded its members to more than two thousand. The Anti-War 

Landowners’ Organization, the One-Tsubo Anti-War Landowners’ Organization, 

Iken Kyōtō, and two attorney groups have been the main players of the anti-war 

landowners’ legal struggle. Over the years, the One-tsubo landowners supported 

the anti-war landowners by observing the public legal hearings, organizing rallies 

after the court cases, with funding, or simply by contributing to the numbers of 

anti-war landowners. 

In 1990, the number of anti-war landowners increased. Of those who originally 

leased land to the military from 1972 with consent, 70 landowners decided not to 

renew their contracts. 14 An additional five hundred became One-tsubo anti-war 

landowners, buying a property in the Futenma Air Station, and there were three 

landowners who owned properties in the Naha Military Port. 15 For their properties, 

the Bureau applied for an additional ten years’ compulsory use on 27 November. 16 

After only two public hearings, the Committee approved the compulsory use of 

the objectors’ properties, for a period of five years from May 1992 (Arasaki 1995: 

197–9, 212). The anti-war landowners and One-tsubo anti-war landowners took 

the Committee’s decision to court. Anti-war landowners had also initiated several 

similar court cases against the US military’s use of properties without the landowners’ 

consent in 1985, 1990, 1992, and 1994. Furthermore, in October 1998, 

seven anti-war landowners filed a case against the US Military Special Measures 

Law, claiming it was unconstitutional (Ryūkyū Shimpō 27 October 1998). Most of 

these court cases took more than a decade each to settle, exhausting the energy 

and resources for anti-base protest (Hitotsubo Hansen 1995: 7–10). 

On a daily basis, many anti-base movements and protests were routinely 

conducted by a specialist peace sector, formed by ideological like-minded and 

organizationally closely affiliated unions and organizations. The Okinawa Peace 

Movement Centre (Heiwa Undō senta) is one such organization. It is the biggest 

coalition of any kind in Okinawa, specializing in peace movement activities specific 

to Okinawa, including opposition to the US military bases. It is a coalition of 35 

Okinawan unions and parties, including the OSMP, the JSP (since January 1996, 

the Japan Social Democratic Party, JSDP) Okinawa Branch, the Zenchurō Okinawa 

Branch and the Okinawa Teachers Union. After the reversion these unions had 

mostly become affiliated with the mainland Japanese coalition of workers’ unions, 

Rengō (Japanese Trade Union Confederation). 17 The Okinawa Peace Movement 

Centre is affiliated to the Peace Movement Centres that exist in other prefectures 

in mainland Japan. The Okinawa Peace Movement Centre members are linked with 

other Japanese Peace Movement Centre members, for example through ‘Okinawa


tours’, which involve visits to the Battle of Okinawa remains, major military bases, 

and the ongoing anti-base residents’ movement, such as the anti-’heliport’ struggle 

in Henoko (hence the need for ‘struggle huts’). 

There are smaller coalitions of peace organisations affiliated with the JCP, called 

the Okinawa Peace Committee (Okinawa Heiwa Iinkai) and the Okinawa Prefecture 

United Action Communication Conference (Okinawa Ken Toitsu Kōdō Renraku 

Kaigi, Tōitsuren). These JCP-affiliated organizations occasionally join together 

with the Peace Movement Centre in Prefectural Citizens’ Rallies (Kenmin Taikai); 18 

however, they usually engage separately in peace movement activities, such as 

supporting residents’ anti-base demonstrations, election campaigns for anti-base 

candidates, and organizing and mobilizing for the annual 15 May Peace Marches. 19 

Although similar internal division always existed before reversion, it also indicates 

the decreasing political influence of a progressive coalition – Iken Kyōtō – 

representing ‘Okinawa’. 

The anti-war landowners’ struggle is basically silent disobedience, that is, by 

definition, passive rather than active: by the steady continuation of long-term legal 

battles in the courts and through public hearings, the anti-war landowners have 

extended the tradition of the ‘Okinawa Struggle’. During the low ‘period’ that 

followed the reversion, the struggle of unified ‘Okinawa’ – symbolized by the 

anti-war landowners – was conducted mainly by a specialized group of activists. 

It also meant that the progressive coalition became increasingly detached from the 

rest of the society. Those who felt the urge to protest but were outside the circle of 

anti-war landowners and their supporters needed alternative avenues of protest. 

As will be explained in the next two chapters, this contributed to the development 

of what I call ‘new social movements’ in Okinawa. 

Direct actors of protest against the danger and inconveniences of military bases 

on Okinawa have always been the residents of cities, towns, and villages or smaller 

community units such as hamlets and districts, where particular base or facilities 

have been located or were planned to be constructed. These geographically scattered 

protest actors could not avoid being isolated from each other, which has become 

a significant vulnerability for the Okinawan protesters. Supporting is often an 

important collective action of those who do not live in the regional communities 

in struggle. 

Since the late 1980s, the Okinawa-based US forces and SDF kept growing 

in size and capacity, until the mid-1990s. In 1989, 45 US bases and 35 SDF 

bases were located in Okinawa Prefecture (95.7 per cent of the US forces are 

located on Okinawa Main Island), in more than 25 cities, towns, and villages 

(Kurima 1998: 279, Okinawa Ken Sōmubu Chiji Kōshitsu Kichi Taisakushitsu 

2000: 8, 24). The residents of Onna village protested against and stopped the 

construction of a US training facility designed for urban guerrilla fighting. 20 

The protest succeeded because of the involvement of the whole village population, 

young and old, conservative and progressive, in a range of collective actions 

including petitions to various US military and Japanese government authorities, 

direct blockage of construction work and confrontations with riot police, and 

around-the-clock surveillance by the villagers from a ‘surveillance hut’ (Tokushu


Butai Kensetsu oyobi Jitsudan Shageki Enshū Hantai Onna Son Jikko Iinkai 

1990). 

In the early 1990s, residents of the Toyohara District of Motobu village also 

stopped the construction of an SDF communication facility and the deployment of 

P-3C anti-submarine aircraft. 21 In Toyohara, too, the residents collected funds and 

built a ‘surveillance hut’ in front of the construction site, where the residents took 

turns being responsible not just for surveillance but also for hosting visitors and 

supporters from outside, and preparing meals. Supporters were mainly Okinawan 

activists from outside Toyohara, such as members of workers’ unions and peace 

groups, among others the Workers Unions’ Council, Northern Region Branch 

(Hokubu chikurō), the Okinawa Historical Film Society, 22 and the One-tsubo antiwar 

landowners. 

In Naha, One-tsubo landowners conducted direct appeals and demonstrations at 

the Prefecture Hall and the Naha Defence Facilities Bureau, against the construction 

of the P-3C base in Toyohara in Motobu village, on behalf of the Toyohara residents. 

The One-Tsubo Anti-War Landowners Northern Bloc contributed to converting the 

traditional lavatory of the ‘surveillance hut’ of the Toyohara residents into a flush 

toilet (Hitotsubo Hansen April 1995: 16). They also conducted ‘study trips’ to 

communicate with the residents who protested against the military in places such 

as Ie-jima, Aha (in Kunigami), and Onna (Hitotsubo Hansen June 1990: 12). 

The One-tsubo movement was not limited to increasing the number of anti-war 

landowners, but it also provided an organizational platform from which to support 

regional protest against the US and SDF bases. The regional blocs have constantly 

supported the anti-base regional protests across Okinawa, with similar strategies. 23 

Attorneys also have been significant players. A group of local attorneys have 

regularly represented anti-war landowners in court. One of them, Ikemiyagi Toshio, 

has represented numerous residents’ and citizens’ movements in Okinawa after the 

reversion. 24 He explains that lawsuits are an important part of collective action, 

under the democratic system, taking advantage of the legal rights entitled to the 

Japanese citizens. At the same time, Ikemiyagi severely criticizes Japan for being 

‘anything but a democracy, or a law-abiding state’. From his perspective, the 

Japanese government would engage in whatever legal manipulation it took to 

protect the US–Japan security alliance. Moreover, the judicial system, especially 

the Supreme Court, has proved reluctant to judge against the state when residents 

take legal action against municipal and central government authorities as a form 

of protest. 25 In Ikemiyagi’s view, the Japanese public is not aware of its role enough 

to ensure democratic rule under the law – thereby allowing the LDP government 

its constant dictatorship – or to ensure the independence of the judiciary from the 

executive. Nevertheless, Ikemiyagi has worked for Okinawan residents’ movements 

as a specialized, activist attorney, in the hope that the lawsuits may spread 

information about the issues through the media, and appeal to as great a part of the 

sympathetic population as possible (Interview, May 1999). 

Ikemiyagi’s comments reflect the transformation of Okinawans’ protest: from 

desperate, sometimes violent, mass uprising against an authoritarian dictatorship 

to long-term, demanding battles of attrition under a formally democratic system


Figure 7.1 One-tsubo anti-war landowners protesting against the relocation of Naha Port 

in Naha central district, May 1999 (photographed by the author) 

that require the regular commitment of a smaller number of specialized protesters. 

Long-term legal battles require participants with specialized skills, experience, and 

funds. They require activist attorneys and supporting organizations usually linked 

with political parties, workers’ unions, and other organized entities able to offer 

financial and staff support. Using legal rights guaranteed by the Constitution 

has a special meaning in Okinawa, namely, using the constitutional rights earned 

by the reversion movement. In this sense, something important was salvaged from 

the disappointment of reversion. Japan or Japan’s government may have betrayed 

the hopes of the Okinawan protest movement – but at the same time formal 

connection with Japan also provided new tools to protest against that betrayal – 

tools to be found in the Japanese Constitution. 

The constitutional framing of protest 

This section examines the framing of the anti-war landowners’ collective identity: 

how they define and express who they are and why they protest, and how this is 

reflected in their strategy to make use of the Japanese Constitution as a tool of 

struggle. At the same time, it reflects on the declining momentum of public 

involvement and the onset of a ‘low’ phase of the Okinawan struggle. 

Arime Masao, Chair of the Iken Kyōtō, had been a schoolteacher for nineteen 

years before he retired in 1994. Arime is the owner of a property inside the Kadena


Air Base, where his family house used to be. He first became involved in the 

Okinawa Struggle in reversion campaigns during the US occupation, as a member 

of the Okinawa Youth Group Commission (Okinawa Seinendan Kyōgikai), which 

was a member organization of the Council for Reversion. After the reversion, he 

has protested against the military bases in Okinawa as a member of the Anti-War 

Landowners’ Organization and the Okinawa Teachers’ Union, and participated in 

‘almost all anti-base protest occasions against the US bases that are concentrated 

in the central region’, where he has lived and worked (Interview, March 1999). 

Arime maintains that 28 April 1952 is still the most important anniversary for 

the Okinawans’ struggle. From 1952 until the reversion, the ‘4.28’ (28 April) 

anniversary was the most important date to hold big annual protests at which 

Okinawan reversionists and mainland Japanese left-wing activists could demonstrate 

solidarity. 

After reversion, the most important anniversary shifted to 15 May 1972, 

the day of formal repatriation, which has been interpreted as another historical 

marker of Okinawa’s humiliation. In 1971, the last rally on the ocean was held on 

28 April. Since then, on 15 May (5.15) each year, the Okinawan activists join the 

peace march, which continues today as one of the biggest annual Okinawan events, 

organized by the Okinawa Peace Movement Centre. The majority of about three 

to five thousand participants, including more than a thousand from mainland Japan, 

are members of Okinawan and Japanese labour unions and citizens’ groups. They 

walk across Okinawa, about 60 km, carrying anti-Ampo and anti-base slogans in 

flags and placards, often in the rain or hot weather. This annual event demonstrates 

the continuing ties between Okinawan unions and the mainland anti-war Japanese 

unions, activists, and citizens’ organizations. The ‘Okinawa Struggle’ is still an 

important part of mainland Japanese popular opposition. 26 Also, support from the 

mainland Japanese organizations is still an asset in the Okinawan community of 

protest after reversion. 

Before reversion, the Okinawans’ struggle was primarily defined as resistance 

against foreign military rule and pursuit of nationhood by way of reintegration 

with yamato. In the Okinawan community of protest 28 April signalled a strong 

emotional attachment to becoming ‘Japanese’. The 15 May anniversary marks the 

continuation of a struggle, but this time a struggle against Japanese and US 

militarism. This transition from ‘reversion nationalism’ to ‘anti-militarism’ is 

significant because it is at the same time a repudiation of ‘reversion nationalism’ 

– under which Okinawans achieved reversion that resulted in the imposition of 

continuing dominance of the US bases, against all of their hopes and expectations. 

This shift parallels the change in the meanings attached to the Japanese flag. 27 In 

the post-reversion community of protest, the flag is associated with Japanese 

imperialism and the sufferings inflicted on locals during the Battle of Okinawa (see 

Chibana 1992, Field 1993). 

Nevertheless, Iken Kyōtōmembers – Arime and his colleagues – continue to define 

28 April as the most important day for the Okinawan struggle: they hold meetings, 

memorial lectures, and speeches every year, though the events attract far fewer 

people than those of 15 May. Arime says that 28 April has provided an opportunity


to reflect on the humiliation of the day on which Okinawa was abandoned: it is a 

reminder that Okinawa was, and still is, the first cargo to be thrown overboard to 

save the imperial Japanese ship (Interview, March 1999). For some Okinawans, 

the pain of being separated from Japan remains an important part of Okinawa’s 

historical narrative of marginalization. Together with remaining ties to mainland 

Japanese leftist organizations, 28 April helps to maintain a living connection between 

‘reversion nationalism’ and the present. Albeit fading, the framing of reversion 

struggle is still alive in some sections of the community of protest. 

Indeed, some older-generation Okinawan activists who know the reversion 

struggle often talk about the unfinished business of the ‘reflection and overhaul of 

the reversion movement’ (fukki undō no sōkatsu). This frequent self-criticism 

indicates a deep sense of regret that the strategy of the reversion movement was 

unable to deliver what the Okinawans’ struggle was really about. More importantly, 

however, it involves an ongoing dialogue with the past, and this, in turn, contributes 

to the continuous and unbroken narrative of an ‘Okinawan’ struggle – an essential 

element of its mythic character. 

It has already been noted that the disappointment of reversion brought some 

consolations – i.e. access to legal protections of the Japanese Constitution. This 

had, of course, been anticipated by the reversionists and, in the post-reversion 

period, two clauses of the Constitution would assume great importance: Article 29 

(‘Property rights shall not be violated’) and Article 9, the ‘non-war’ or pacifist 

clause. While both have been important, the second has provided Okinawan antiwar 

activism with its most important support: 28 higher-order justifications for the 

Figure 7.2 At a 28 April function, 1999 (photographed by the author)


refusal to enter into lease contracts with the US military. At the time of writing, 

the Japanese government is planning a nationwide referendum to seek authorization 

to repeal Article 9. If the Japanese public supported the government (and its 

amendment), the anti-war landowners would lose only the formal/legal basis of 

their case and not its moral basis. They would, in other words, lose Article 9 but 

they would not lose the ideals embodied in Article 9. Given the manner in which 

courts have ruled, it is arguable that they would not be losing a lot. 29 

The most important factor in the anti-war landowners’ anti-base protest – even 

more basic than the Constitution – is the experience of war in the Battle of Okinawa. 

Recollections of the Battle often appear in the autobiographical accounts of antiwar 

landowners. Graphic descriptions of killing, starvation, and the aggression and 

cruelty of mainland Japanese soldiers toward the local residents are recounted in 

the anti-war landowners’ statements given at the public hearings over and over 

again. Their impact has not weakened over time ant they never fail to inspire strong 

compassion in witnessing audiences. The existence of the anti-war landowners 

today proves that Okinawa continues to be a ‘war state’ – as opposed to the ‘peace 

state’ that the rest of Japan, for the time being, remains (Hook and McCormack 

2001: 24). Protest in Okinawa is situated tenaciously within a moral and political 

universe defined more than half a century ago by the Battle of Okinawa. 

The war experience is also important for the landowners as a place from which 

to criticize the state’s structural marginalization of minorities – criticism that was 

difficult to express during the reversion campaigns (Takara 1995: 158). Revealing 

the atrocities of the Japanese soldiers toward the local islanders during the Battle 

of Okinawa is a political statement that has become possible only after the reversion. 

It still, however, calls for considerable courage, and the anti-war landowners found 

– and find – this courage in their passion for peace. This, too, is part of what it 

means to be ‘Okinawan’. 

Zukeran Chōhō is a former Chair of the OSMP and was a member of the 

Okinawan Prefectural Council for 12 years before he retired to become a farmer. 

He is also a One-tsubo landowner and one of the first members of the One-Tsubo 

Anti-War Landowners’ Organization. In an interview with the official JSP journal, 

Zen’ei, Zukeran explains that the reason for becoming a One-tsubo landowner 

was his commitment to peace, anti-militarism, and human rights in the Japanese 

Constitution. Zukeran argues that the history and memories of the war are something 

commonly shared by all Okinawans. 30 This statement summarizes the OSMP 

emphasis on being a ‘party of the Okinawan citizens’ (kenmin-tō), rather than being 

a regional branch of mainland Japanese parties, despite its strong connection with 

the JSP. The party’s strategy also involves appealing to the masses rather than 

placing too much emphasis on political ideologies. 31 

Zukeran followed this statement with his personal memoirs of the Battle of 

Okinawa. He was 13 years old in 1945. The highlight of his story was a description 

of the incident on Mabuni Hill, when he, his family, and other locals were caught 

in a cul-de-sac trying to avoid the US bullets. The American soldiers urged the 

locals to surrender. When several Okinawan residents attempted to do so, three 

Japanese soldiers beheaded them. He claims that the same kind of cruelty continued


after WWII, citing Article 3 of the Peace Treaty which separated Okinawa from 

Japan and subjected Okinawans to US military rule. He explains that the Okinawans, 

including himself, requested reversion to Japan, because they wanted peace and 

wished to be entitled to the peace constitution. However, the military bases are 

still there and the Okinawans can never be free of the danger of becoming involved 

in the war – and particularly war waged by others – again. He maintains that the 

Japanese government has ignored the Constitution as far as the Okinawans’ rights 

and security are concerned and cites the unequal Status of Forces Agreement that 

protects US soldiers from proper criminal prosecution when they offend seriously 

against the locals. The Japanese government’s machinations to legalize forceful 

military seizure of private property against landowners’ wishes further demonstrate 

the continuing marginalization of Okinawa. According to Zukeran, these land laws 

are contrary to the principles of the Constitution (Zukeran 1997: 194–201). 

Somewhat surprisingly, the overall position of the Okinawan anti-war landowners 

and their supporters fits comfortably with the postwar mainland Japanese 

left’s commitment to the pacifist constitution. The distinctiveness in most stories of 

the Battle of Okinawa is that the Japanese soldiers are represented as the oppressor 

of the Okinawan islanders. Yet the division between the ‘Japanese’ aggressor and 

the ‘Okinawan’ victims overlaps with that between evil, fanatic militarists and the 

innocent general mainland Japanese public who were deceived into a horrific war. 

According to the dominant postwar Japanese discourse on WWII, the mainland 

Japanese general public was also deceived into a horrific war by fanatic Japanese 

imperial militarists. 

Dower explains that, in the late 1940s, pacifism replaced militarism as a new 

form of nationalism in the immediate postwar Japanese society. In Japan, too, the 

memory of the suffering of WWII fuelled enthusiasm for transformation of the 

entire society into a new, democratic, pacifist, and wealthy one. The peaceful 

Constitution has been a milestone for this collective determination of the war-weary 

mainland Japanese public. The occupation period in mainland Japan converted 

the pressure for hard work and sacrifice of the prewar era, into a desire to build a 

‘peaceful’ nation focused on economic growth. Pacifism from above is an important 

component of postwar Japanese nationalism. Moreover, the emphasis has been on 

the hardships endured by the Japanese themselves. Air raids, atomic massacres in 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the material scarcity after the war, as well as the 

postwar humiliation of Japanese soldiers in the winners’ verdict of the Tokyo warcrimes 

trial, became the collective memory of the nation (Dower 1999, Orr 2001, 

Yoneyama 1999). The discourse of postwar nationalism has stressed the Japanese 

war experience as victims, and underemphasized the hardships caused by the 

Japanese to other nations, including Okinawa. Silence about the different kind of 

war that the Okinawans experienced, including forced mass suicides, is part and 

parcel of this nationalist version of pacifism. 

Mainland Japanese left-wing political activists, among others, have been very 

loyal to this nationalist version of postwar pacifism. Popular protest in postwar 

Japan saw its highpoint in the anti-Ampo protest of 1960. Packard observes that 

the left-wing leaders of the mass movement, ‘in spite of a strong attachment to


Marxist principles and proletarian internationalism, showed unmistakable signs 

of the new nationalism’ in Japan at the start of the 1960s (Packard 1966: 335). The 

principal source of energy for the 1960 mass protest, led by the socialists, the Sōhyō 

unionists, the communists and the Zengakuren (students’ organization) activists, 

was growing national pride based on economic progress following the WWII defeat. 

The progressive intellectuals, who contributed greatly to the mobilization of the 

mass protest, ‘explored new foundations upon which to legitimize nationalism, 

such as the shared experience of the atomic bombing and postwar economic 

privations’ (Packard 1966: 337). 

The Okinawan anti-war landowners have shared with the communists, socialists, 

and other mainland Japanese left-wing peace activists the use of the Constitution 

as a vehicle of anti-militarism. The older activists who opposed the US–Japan 

Security Treaty, as well as the official party lines of the Japanese Socialist Party, 

the Communist Party, and a substantial part of the Japanese public have constantly 

supported Article 9 of the Constitution. As Lummis argues, the ‘non-realistic’, 

non-belligerent principle of the Constitution has had an important ‘realistic’ pacifist 

effect. He argues that because of Article 9 of the Constitution, not a single Japanese 

person has been killed in actual warfare in the postwar era (Lummis 2000: 13). 

However, it is also evident that Article 9 has had to co-exist with the US–Japan 

Mutual Security Treaty and the US military presence in Japan, heavily stationed 

on Okinawa Main Island. The Constitution has failed to defend the Okinawan 

anti-war landowners’ rights from the conservative Japanese national interest, which 

relies on the stability of the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty. The dispute on 

compulsory use of private property by the US military in Okinawa after the 

reversion has demonstrated that the Japanese ‘public interest’ and the right to private 

landownership protected by the Constitution are in conflict. The requirement of 

the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty, for US troops to be stationed in Japan, has 

constantly overruled the Constitutional right of Okinawan citizens (Nakachi and 

Mizushima 1998: 77). 

Belief in the postwar constitutional ideals, which supported the reversion 

struggle, has continued to be an important part of many progressive Okinawan antibase 

protesters’ definitions of who they are, and why they protest. As indicated in 

Chapter 5, Okinawan ‘absolute pacifism’, based on the experience of the Battle 

of Okinawa criticized the ‘reversion nationalism’ strategy of seeking assimilation 

with Japan, dominant during the reversion movement. The strategy relies on the 

democratic and pacifist postwar Constitution, consistent with the former reversionist 

Okinawans’ desire for a ‘true reversion to democratic Japan’. However, the demand 

that the Japanese government should ‘understand Okinawa’ and work towards 

achieving a ‘true reversion’ without the unequal burden of the US military presence 

exerted on Okinawa, reveals the basic trust attached to the state, to protect the 

minority’s interest. This is not consistent with the basic distrust of the state, which 

is an important aspect of the ‘absolute pacifism’ derived from the residents’ 

experience in the Battle of Okinawa. 

The resistance to being reduced to simply an Okinawan version of Japanese 

pacifism is revealed in the stories of an anti-war landowner, Shimabukuro


Zenyū. Born in 1936 in the central region of Okinawa Main Island, he and his 

family survived the Battle of Okinawa and after his father’s death he inherited 

several plots of land occupied by the US military in central Okinawa. Shimabukuro 

never signed the land lease agreements and he speaks as an Okinawan farmer. 

Although he is a member of the Anti-War Landowners’ Organization, he refuses 

to be affiliated to any political parties. His style of speech is direct, free of ambiguity, 

and loyal to his own feelings and experiences, rather than to any political parties 

or established ideologies. His accounts of the Battle of Okinawa centred on his 

father’s behaviour: 

My father was always critical of the Japanese soldiers and often outwitted 

them. He did not, for example, follow the Japanese orders to move south, when 

American attacks intensified. Those locals who went with the Japanese soldiers, 

thinking they would be protected, all died: they were forced into suicide 

for the Emperor, or they were evicted from bomb shelters to make room for 

soldiers. I believe my father’s ‘wit’ saved the whole family. I wish more 

Okinawans had been like him. 

However, not everyone in my family was like my father. My mother insisted 

on committing collective suicide, following what the soldiers, village leaders, 

and schoolteachers taught us was the right thing to do. My brother, who was 

more educated than my father, was a public servant, working for the US 

military government after the war, and was ready to surrender his land, because, 

after all, ‘we lost the war’. 

After my father died in the 1950s, I saw his spirit in the speeches of Senaga 

Kamejiro, founder of the Okinawa People’s Party. I was especially inspired 

by Senaga’s speech, before the all-island land dispute in 1956, in which he 

claimed that Okinawans had the right to charge the US military rent, for using 

the ports, land, and even for breathing Okinawan air. Everyone loved his speech 

and cheered loudly. 32 Senaga taught us that refusing to give up our land was 

the best way to get rid of the US military presence. 

As a landowner who experienced the hell of the Battle of Okinawa, I never 

feel guilty for refusing the contract. The origin of the landowners’ antimilitarism 

is quite simple: land is meant to plough and produce food. If you 

lease land to the US military, you are assisting war and violence instead of 

growing food. 

(Interview, April 1999) 

Shimabukuro’s dissent is individual, and his speech is direct, unaffected, and free 

of the influence of specific political parties or organizations. Furthermore, he is 

publicly critical of the reversion movement. His hero, Senaga, was a leader of the 

reversion movement; however, interestingly, for Shimabukuro, anti-militarism and 

the reversion struggle seem to be clearly separate. He does not hesitate to criticize 

the ‘progressive’ party members, and emphatically stresses that, at pre-1972 

reversion rallies, the reversion activists – presumably the Council members – held 

back from requesting the removal of all the military bases from Okinawa for

fear of delaying Okinawa’s reversion (Interview, April 1999). Furthermore, 

Shimabukuro makes strong and straightforward remarks such as ‘Uchinanchū 

(Okinawans) never say this, but we all hate yamatonchū (the mainland Japanese) 

for starting that war and dumping the US military bases on Okinawa for 50 years 

to keep the Americans at bay’ (quoted in Aihara 1996: 79) and ‘The Japanese people 

are the most hated group of people in the world’ (Interview, April 1999). 

For Shimabukuro, ‘Okinawa’ is a separate political community. He is respected 

in the Okinawan community of protest because of his direct speaking. His personality 

expresses what many take to be the distinctively ‘Okinawan’ struggle. At this level, 

his statements resonate with the speeches and writing of organizationally unaffiliated 

anti-reversionist thinkers such as Arakawa Akira and other ‘independent advocates’ 

– and not with those of former reversion activists and today’s anti-base party and 

union leaders affiliated with the mainland Japanese organizations. At the same time, 

however, Shimabukuro’s radicalism places him at some distance from the Anti-War 

Landowners’ Organization and Iken Kyōtō that stress the formal democratic 

principles of the Japanese Constitution. 

The anti-war landowners and their supporting organisations have publicly, and 

strategically, identified ‘Okinawanness’ with a strong attachment to the Constitution, 

which is basically merged with the post-war mainstream Japanese pacifism. 

Yet, perhaps more than anyone else, the anti-war landowners’ stories at the public 

hearings reveal the hollowness of the Japanese Constitution and ‘really existing’ 

democracy in Japan. 

Conclusion 


After reversion, the progressive coalition revived itself for the purpose of supporting 

the anti-war landowners’ struggle against the US military presence in Okinawa. 

This chapter stressed common elements of the past two ‘Okinawa Struggles’ that 

the anti-war landowners and Iken Kyōtō have maintained. The anniversary of 

28 April, the passion to protect constitutional principles, and the representation 

of Okinawan-specific anti-militarism through the experience of the Battle of 

Okinawa are important elements of the historical experience of marginalization. 

They continue to assist in constructing the ‘we’ of Okinawan protesters and in 

maintaining the mythic character of the ‘Okinawan’ struggle. 

Indeed, traditional solidarity among left-wing political parties and labour unions 

was maintained through shared sympathy and formal support for the anti-war 

landowners who symbolized the ‘Okinawan’ anti-militarist spirit. Iken Kyōtō’s 

existence did not result in the mobilization of an all-island struggle and, after 

reversion, the Okinawan protest community became increasingly fragmented 

geographically and organizationally. The period between the late 1960s ‘second 

wave’ and the mid-1990s ‘third wave’ mass protest was a long ‘trough’ or low. 

Much certainly happened at local community levels but the voice of one ‘Okinawa’ 

became distinctively weaker. The presence of a unified protest actor against the 

US military bases represented by the anti-war landowners was exceptionally 

important in this period.


The anti-war landowners were strengthened by the birth of One-tsubo anti-war 

landowners, a movement led largely by politically well-connected or experienced 

activist, middle-class, urban-dwelling citizens. The One-tsubo landowners’ movement 

elevated the anti-war landowners’ struggle to the stature of a citizens’ pacifist 

and anti-militarist movement. 

The anti-war landowners’ strategy to directly influence, and negotiate with, 

the formal political organizations through legal and judicial battles has involved 

extremely slow processes. At the same time the struggle, often confined to 

courtrooms, became highly technical, limiting wider public participation. Attachment 

to the constitutional principles of democracy and pacifism, furthermore, made 

it harder to distinguish the Okinawan progressives from the mainland Japanese left. 

This contributed to the decline of the ‘Okinawan’ progressive coalition. In July 2002, 

Iken Kyōtō closed its office, because of the lack of funding and absence of major 

activities (Ryūkyū Shimpō 3 July 2002). However, the decline of the old progressive 

movement did not result in the end of the idea or myth of a unified ‘Okinawan 

struggle’. New types of protest organizations and strategies were developing at the 

same time, and these ‘new social movements’ were no less ‘Okinawan’. And they, 

too, are now variously drawing from and extending the myth.

8 Kin Bay and Shiraho 

Introduction 

Emergence of new social movements 

During the ‘low’ phase of protest in post-reversion Okinawa, the idea of a 

continuous, unified ‘Okinawan’ struggle was redefined as an anti-base coalition, 

symbolized by the refusal of a small number of landowners to comply with the US 

military. While the pre-reversion coalition was maintained in a much more routine 

and limited anti-base movement, different forms of protest were starting to take 

shape in the community of protest. These new breeds of collective action were 

community-based and distinct from party and union-based organizations. 

This chapter examines two cases of residents’ movements as key examples of 

such protest in Okinawa after reversion in 1972. These two cases of new social 

movements were environmentalist and not directly against the US forces. In the 

Okinawan community of protest, nevertheless, these two environmentalist struggles 

have influenced the strategies and philosophy of subsequent Okinawans’ protests 

against the US bases. As shown in this chapter and Chapter 9, environmentalism 

and anti-military protest have become part of a larger ‘Okinawan’ struggle. The 

first case focuses on the residents’ opposition to the construction of the Central 

Terminal Station (CTS) – a huge petroleum storage facility – in the Kin Bay area 

in central Okinawa (Map 8.1). The second case examines the residents’ campaign 

against the construction of the New Ishigaki Airport on Ishigaki Island (Map 8.2). 

Arasaki maintains that the Kin Bay struggle (Kinwan tōsō) highlighted the 

emergence of a new type of residents’ movement, the first of its kind in Okinawa 

(Arasaki 1996: 50–2). This chapter examines the sense in which this particular 

movement – and perhaps even to a greater, extent, the Shiraho anti-airport movement 

– was a ‘new’ variant of protest, and contributed to the myth of an Okinawan 

struggle in the post-reversion period. 

The first two sections of this chapter provide brief outlines of the two residents’ 

movements. The third section elaborates on the characteristics of the Kin Bay and 

Shiraho struggles in terms of collective identity, organization, and strategy. The 

fourth section examines the implications of these struggles for the community of 

protest and the ‘Okinawan’ struggle.


OKINAWA ISLAND 

Kin Bay 

Nakagusuku Bay 

0 5 km 

Gushikawa 

City 

Yakena 

Map 8.1 Kin Bay Area (Courtesy of Vivian Forbes) 

The CTS construction dispute: a brief outline 

Miyagi Island 

Henza Island 

Tsuken Island 

128˚ 

Ikei Island 

24˚20’ 

After reversion, the Okinawan economy went through a fundamental change. The 

percentage of income generated directly from the US military in the prefecture’s 

gross direct income that was 15 per cent at the time of reversion (1972), gradually 

decreased to 5 per cent in 1987 and has remained stable since. 1 The changes, 

N

124ºE 

24º30’N 

0 20 km 

N 

ISHIGAKI 

ISLAND 

Ishigaki City 

Kin Bay and Shiraho 129 

Shiraho 

Map 8.2 Ishigaki Island and Shiraho (Courtesy of Vivian Forbes) 

however, were largely caused by the massively increased inflows of Japanese 

subsidies and inflation of the value of private properties occupied by the military 

bases. The Okinwan economy remains heavily dependent on the presence of 

military bases indirectly. 

The achievement of income levels and a standard of living equivalent to mainland 

Japan (‘hondo-nami’) became the slogan of the Okinawan and central government 

officials and the business sector. The Okinawa Development Agency (Okinawa 

kaihatsu chō) was set up within the Cabinet, and a Special Law for Okinawa’s 

Regeneration and Development (Okinawa shinkō kaihatsu tokubetsuhō) was enacted 

in 1971. According to this Special Law, the Okinawa Development Agency developed 

the first Okinawa Regeneration and Development Plan (Okinawa shinkō


kaihatsu keikaku), 2 starting from the year of reversion, 1972, to be implemented by 

the prefecture government, under the guidance of the Okinawa Development 

Agency. 3 

This Plan was a revival of the Okinawan Industrial Promotion Plan (Okinawa 

Keizai Shinkō Keikaku), implemented in 1932 (see Chapter 3). After reversion, this 

scheme has helped secure Okinawa’s support for Japan’s security policy, mainly in 

the form, this time, of hosting US military bases. 4 How was support entrenched? 

Essentially by using financial assistance to create economic dependence on subsidies 

and rent generated by the acceptance of hosting the bases. 5 If the Okinawan Industrial 

Promotion Plan had created an independent economy that no longer required 

governmental subsidies, would Okinawa still accept the continuing heavy US 

military presence? The structural economic dependence has made it very difficult 

for the Okinawans, especially Okinawan governors, not to co-operate with the 

Japanese government’s security policy. 

Former GRI Chief Executive Yara Chōbyō was re-elected as Governor of 

Okinawa Prefecture in 1972. The Japanese government’s development policy, 

specifically claimed to be designed to incorporate Okinawa into Japan’s rapid 

economic growth during the 1960s, appealed to the local population. The new 

Okinawa Prefecture Government was under pressure to promote a ‘hondo-nami’ 

(modelled on mainland Japan) industrialization, the strongest emphasis of Yara’s 

post-reversion policy. Yara was nevertheless concerned about his lack of experience 

in economic matters. 6 

His administration declared the construction of Central Terminal Station (CTS) 

as strategically necessary for Okinawa’s industrialization (Yara 1985: 218–21) and 

there were a number of reasons for this. First and most obviously, CTS was intended 

to increase Okinwa’s crude oil storage capacity. Second, in 1971, the Okinawa 

Development Agency has designated energy intensive oil and aluminium refining 

as key future industries for Okinawa. In short, oil was essential. 

However, political factors were also involved in the choice of Okinawa for heavy 

industrial sites: the heightened and heightening awareness of mainland Japanese 

residents of pollution problems in local communities. There were about three 

thousand residents’ organizations in Japan in 1972 (Kurihara 1999: 12), and 

environmental pollution was their major concern. (Krauss and Simcock 1980: 187). 

Residents’ victories in major litigation against big companies and the state had gained 

publicity, increased public awareness of environmental problems, and demonstrated 

the capacity of residents for effective political action (Broadbent 1998, Krauss and 

Simcock 1980, McKean 1981). 7 Despite this, building the CTS was considered 

essential – especially given the advent of the oil crisis in 1973. Okinawa – with its 

pristine natural environment unaffected yet by rapid industrialization – was thus 

targeted. 

In Yakena district, a municipality facing Kin Bay and directly connected to Henza 

Island by the ‘ocean road’, the mayor and commercial organizations were eager to 

attract petroleum industries. However, repeated oil leakage incidents from the 

tankers had already been causing damage to the ocean and local fishery to an extent 

that was visually obvious to the local residents. In October 1971, for example, at


one of the Gulf facilities, more than 190 tons of crude oil leaked and polluted 

the entire Kin Bay area, killing white squid, shellfish, and other local fish, and 

threatening people who lived by fishing (Yoshida et al. 1975: 5). In the Kin Bay 

area, the pro-industry local political leaders clashed with the residents’ opposition 

groups, especially those who were reliant on fishing. 

In the same month, residents of Miyagi Island (Map 8.1) formed the Miyagi 

Island Land Protection Society (Miyagijima Tochi o Mamoru Kai), and successfully 

fended off Arabia Sekiyu’s (Arabia Oil) CTS construction, despite the approval of 

the Miyagi Island’s economic development committee. 8 

Subsequently, the nearby Yonagusuku Village Council supported the landfill 

plan of the CTS construction by Mitsubishi Kaihatsu. In September 1972, the Yara 

prefecture government authorized Mitsubishi’s land reclamation of 640,000 tsubo 

(2.1 million square metres) between Henza and Miyagi islands. The landfill work 

started the following month. 

In September 1973, the anti-CTS local residents of a mostly fishing population 

formed the Kin Bay Protection Society (Kinwan o Mamoru Kai). The Kin Bay 

Protection Society repeatedly visited the prefecture government and Mitsubishi, 

demanding a stop to the landfill work, and protesting against the CTS construction 

in the area. In September 1974, six fishing villagers in Teruma District and the 

Kin Bay Protection Society brought the case to the Naha District Court, claiming 

that the Okinawa prefecture government’s authorization of the land reclamation 

project was illegal. 

Ironically, the defendant in the case was the progressive Yara prefecture 

government whom the plaintiff had politically supported. The progressive political 

parties and unions constituted Governor Yara’s support base, his platform stressed 

‘anti-militarism and peace in Okinawa’. However, after the reversion, those who 

regarded the introduction of polluting industries as a new form of colonization of 

Okinawa by mainland Japan grew critical of the Yara administration. The member 

organizations of the progressive parties and unions that supported the Yara government, 

such as the Prefecture Workers’ Union (Kenshokurō), Okinawa Prefectural 

Labour Union Committee (Kenrōkyō), and the High School Teachers’ Union 

(Kōkyōso) all expressed their opposition to the CTS construction (Yara 1985: 270). 

Yara took this seriously and announced on 19 January 1974 his intention not 

to authorize petroleum industries’ quotas for CTS construction (Yara 1985: 278), 

as well as requesting Mitsubishi to introduce industries other than CTS on the 

reclaimed land. In this ‘1.19 statement’, Yara emphasized the need for an 

accommodation of the popular feeling against environmental destruction (Yara 

1985: 275). 

In May, Mitsubishi completed the land reclamation, and requested the local 

government to authorize the CTS construction. The Kin Bay Protection Group 

members, banding together in a group of 40–50, frequently demanded direct 

negotiation with Yara, pressuring him to refuse Mitsubishi’s application immediately. 

A group of attorneys, who associated themselves with the ‘progressive’ 

political camp and called themselves the Progressive Attorneys’ Organization 

(Kakushin Bengodan), submitted to Yara an opinion statement that demanded


rejecting Mitsubishi’s application. Otherwise, the attorneys warned, they would 

make it public knowledge that permission granted by the Yara administration for 

the landfill project was illegal in the first place, because the necessary procedures 

to compensate the locals for their fishing rights had not been taken. Yara, however, 

authorized Mitsubishi’s CTS construction, fearing litigation mounted by the 

company for ¥50 billion in damages. This would have far exceeded the prefecture’s 

annual budget of ¥20 billion (Yara 1985: 278–9). 9 In court, the prefecture government 

argued that it was impossible to undo the land reclamation. The case ended 

in the plaintiff’s defeat. As a result, the construction of CTS tanks proceeded, 

making the Kin Bay area a major crude oil station. 

In terms of outcomes, the Kin Bay struggle was a defeat. The recourse to 

legal action, thus far a common strategy of the ‘Okinawa Struggle’, failed again. 

However, the embryo of a ‘new social movement’ was growing among the Kin 

Bay residents. 

The New Ishigaki Airport construction dispute: 

a brief outline 

Shiraho is a small hamlet on the east coast of Ishigaki Island (Map 8.2). In 1979, 

the prefecture government announced a plan to construct an airport on a coastal 

area next to the hamlet. In the following decade, this hamlet, with a population of 

a mere two thousand, became the centre of political activism that expanded into 

a well-known, exceptionally successful movement that attracted support from 

Okinawa Island, mainland Japan, and overseas (see Suzuki and Oiwa 1996: 

295–307). 

In July 1979, Ishigaki City and Okinawa Prefecture governments announced a 

plan to construct a new airport on Ishigaki Island. In support of this plan, 88 unions 

and organizations, most of them based in Ishigaki City, formed the New Ishigaki 

Airport Construction Promotion Organization (Shin Ishigaki Kūkō Kensetsu 

Sokushin-Kyō). On the next day, the organization designated the construction site 

on the coastal area next to Shiraho hamlet without any preliminary investigation of 

the area. The project for the new airport, which required a 2,500-metre runway and 

drastic landfill on the reef next to Shiraho, required the demolition of a mountain 

(locally called karadake) adjacent to Shiraho hamlet to obtain soil and sand. The 

Japanese government guaranteed a special subsidy of almost ¥30 billion for the 

project. 

The local residents in Shiraho had not been consulted prior to the selection of 

the construction site. Shocked by the news, residents held a general meeting at the 

Shiraho Community Centre (Shiraho Kouminkan) in December 1979. The Shiraho 

Community Centre was the place in which important decisions were made. With 

the agreement of every single villager present at the meeting, the Community Centre 

pledged to oppose the airport construction no matter what it took. In November 

1980, the anti-airport villagers formed a local opposition group, the Shiraho District 

Opposition Committee against the Construction of New Ishigaki Airport (Shin 

Ishigaki Kūkō Shiraho Chiku Kensetsu Soshi Iinkai).


In Ishigaki Island, the Shiraho Community Centre was the only opposition force. 

The late Shiraho fisherman Maedomari Shoei recalled that the mayor of Ishigaki 

City said, ‘The small number of Shiraho residents should “close their eyes” and 

take the suffering for the benefit of the majority, forty thousand Ishigaki citizens’ 

(Noike 1990: 66). It seemed as if the airport construction would proceed despite a 

minority protesting voice on the little-known southwest tip of the Ryūkyū 

archipelago. 

However, in the following decade, the anti-airport Shiraho activists and a wide 

network of external supporters turned the situation around. Even without the 

construction of the airport, red soil inflows from the Todoroki River had damaged 

the beautiful and unique coral around Ishigaki Island. Coral in Okinawa in general 

had been severely endangered, especially since the intensive development of 

harbours and roads at the time of the Okinawa Marine Exposition in 1975. In 

Ishigaki Island, a series of ‘land improvement schemes’ of the farmland, implemented 

by the Japanese Ministry of Farming and Forestry, caused the red soil to 

flow into the ocean, and to kill the coral (McCormack 1998, World Wide Fund 

Nature for Japan 2001, Noike 1990: 24–33). However, in the ocean adjacent to 

Shiraho hamlet there were still more than 120 species of coral, including the 

blue coral, one of the oldest and rarest kinds in the world. Public awareness of 

the importance of Shiraho’s coral reefs grew to a point that the politicians could 

no longer ignore it. In May 1988, then Minister of Transport Ishihara Shintarō 

expressed his concern with the impact of the airport on the Shiraho marine 

environment (Mainichi Shimbun 28 June 1988). Influenced by criticisms from 

influential scientists in August 1987, the Environment Agency of the Japanese 

government commented that the blue coral colonies in Shiraho would not be able 

to survive the new airport construction on the Shiraho reef. Following this comment, 

Okinawan Governor Nishime (1978–90) announced a reduction of the length of 

the proposed runway from 2,500 to 2,000 metres (Sugioka 1989: 152–3). 

In 1991, Governor Ōta announced that the New Ishigaki Airport would not be 

built on Shiraho reef, in consideration of the extensive concerns over coral 

conservation raised by the locals and abroad. The power of the Shiraho residents’ 

movement in conjunction with a nationwide and global network of citizens’ 

environmental movement prevailed and, to this point at least, the Shiraho struggle 

was a rare success. Although this ‘success’ was temporary and the New Ishigaki 

Airport dispute is yet to be resolved, 10 Shiraho has already left an important legacy 

in the community of protest in Okinawa, and added substantially to its traditional 

repertoire of protest – networking globally. How has this been possible? 

Kin Bay and Shiraho: emergence of ‘new social movements’? 

Organization and participants 

Both Kin Bay and Shiraho represented cases of residents’ movements (jūmin undō) 

– people engaged in collective action focused much more closely on the living 

conditions of the communities in which they lived. The main actors of the Kin


Bay and Shiraho struggles were residents and networks of sympathetic citizens 

living in other places. The central instigators of protest were the residents in the 

community, not the traditional leading figures of the anti-establishment political 

activitists in Okinawa, namely progressive political parties, workers’ unions, and 

teachers’ associations. 

It was not just in Okinawa that ‘residents’ were becoming grassroots protesters. 

In mainland Japan, in the aftermath of the Ampo protest in 1960, large-scale, 

centralized and established organizations affiliated with the JCP and JSP were 

increasingly susceptible to internal conflicts and fragmentation. As public disillusionment 

with the leftist organizations – preoccupied with organizational survival 

and sectarian struggles – increased, awareness of the importance of the participation 

of individual ‘citizens’ became increasingly prominent. Sasaki-Uemura explains 

that ‘the notion of the citizen subject’ was a reaction against the dominance of the 

‘Marxist framework’ and ‘the proletarian working class as the agent of social 

transformation’. The Japanese word shimin (citizen) carried an expectation of 

enlightened individuals ‘as the agents of history’, and as the ‘heart and spirit of 

democracy’ (Sasaki-Uemura 2001: 31–2). 11 The citizen subject emphasized the 

significance of the spiritual element in political activism of the individual. Emphasis 

on the independent individual’s direct political participation was the most significant 

feature of the residents’ movements as a ‘new avenue of citizen participation and 

as a new political force in Japan’ (McKean 1981: 5–6). For the supporters of Japan’s 

postwar democracy, the ‘residents’ movement’ was a realization of the principle of 

individual political participation, at the local level. 

Citizens’ movements and residents’ movements are terms that are used interchangeably. 

12 In the context of protest in Okinawa, the most important difference 

between the two manifests in the difference between the external ‘supporters’, who 

participate in collective action that concerns the community they do not live in, and 

the residents of that community. Mainland-Japan-based NGOs, for example, are 

often referred to as ‘citizens’ movement organizations’, as opposed to the locals 

who participate in protest as residents. Significant boundaries separate the activists 

who participate from outside, and the ‘residents’. 

The late Asato Seishin was a former schoolteacher and a resident of Yakena 

village near Kin Bay, a founder of the Kin Bay Life Protection Society and its 

most respected member. Sakihara Seishū, a former schoolteacher and fellow 

member of the Kin Bay Life Protection Society, recalls that Asato was critical of 

the interventions of the left-wing political parties, trade unions, and the progressive 

coalition. In his opinion, in order to represent the interests of the local residents 

properly, local residents needed to ‘organize and do things themselves’ (Sakihara, 

Interview April 1999). Asato stresses the need for the local residents to separate 

their struggle from external organizations participating in the Kin Bay struggle 

from the mainland and other parts of Okinawa, through activities such as 

demonstrations and court cases. In his oral record of the Kin Bay struggle, Umi wa 

Hito no Haha de Aru (Ocean, Our Mother), he points out that the external supporters 

often tried to be ‘movement instructors’, telling the residents what to do, and taking 

the struggle away from the locals (Asato 1981: 141).


We have seen Kakushin (progressive) political figures, who have expressed 

opposition to the military bases and CTS construction, in the end give in to 

the state and big companies. Even progressive governors Yara and Taira (in 

office 1976–8) did not make any difference. Being left-wing or right-wing is 

irrelevant. We, the locals, must fight our own struggle to protect our ways of 

living. 

(Asato 1981: 44) 

Asato stresses that the Kin Bay Life Protection Society does not have representatives 

or leaders. In his words, ‘each one of the residents is the representative of the 

movement’ (Asato 1981: 42). According to Asato, this organizational principle 

derives from the most important aim of the Kin Bay Life Protection Society: to 

establish and to transform jiko (self), that is, to enhance the autonomy predicated 

on the pride in one’s own distinctive way of life rooted in the particular local 

environment. Only in this way does one have the ability to challenge effectively 

government policies that destroy one’s way of life. (Asato 1981: 41–2). 

The decline of progressive parties and unions’ presence was an even more 

definitive characteristic in the Shiraho struggle than in the Kin Bay struggle. In the 

initial stage of the Shiraho anti-airport struggle, progressive parties and unions – 

the ‘usual suspects’ who normally participated in peace movements and anti-state 

movements – were mostly absent. Indeed, the Yaeyama District of the Workers 

Unions’ Council (Yaeyama Chikurō), 13 which initially joined the New Ishigaki 

Airport Construction Promotion Organization, supported the construction of the 

new airport. Other progressive Yaeyama divisions of the Okinawa Teachers’ Union 

and Highschool Teachers’ Union, as well as the Yaeyama Public Workers’ Union 

(jichirō) followed suit. The anti-airport Shiraho residents’ organization, the Shiraho 

District Opposition Committee, was the airport’s only opponent. Ishigaki City’s 

mayor was a progressive OSMP member, and one of the most important supporters 

of the new airport. 

Taking a wider perspective, Ishigaki City’s public opinion generally supported 

the new airport. Since the reversion, local villages and cities were losing economic 

self-sufficiency and increasing their dependence on public works and projects 

funded by the government. In Ishigaki City, many people expected the new airport 

to generate a boom that would have created instant income and a large number 

of temporary jobs. Some farmers expected the new airport, with the capacity to 

accommodate bigger aeroplanes, to expand their markets in Japan for off-season 

agricultural products. In Shiraho, too, there were residents who supported the 

airport, mainly those engaged in local construction and sand mining companies. 

These people distanced themselves from the Shiraho Community Centre and 

formed a separate administrative body, the Shiraho First Community Centre. Thus, 

the airport plan even divided the small Shiraho community into two camps, building 

up antagonism among friends, families, and relatives (Yonemori Yūji, Interview, 

13 April 1999). 

Isolation made it extremely difficult for the Shiraho residents to sustain their 

opposition to the airport project within Ishigaki Island on their own account – both


financially and psychologically. External support of the environmentally concerned 

and nature-loving urban population, therefore, became a crucial issue. Mukaezato 

Kiyoshi, then leader of the Committee, flew to Naha and sought help from Yonemori 

Yūji, a Shiraho-born university philosophy professor. Yonemori organized the 

Volunteer Association of Shiraho-Born Residents against the New Ishigaki Airport 

(Shin Ishigaki Kūkō ni Hantai suru Okinawa Zaijū Shiraho Kyoyū Yūshikai) in 

1981. Yonemori formed this group with other schoolteachers and university 

lecturers living in Okinawa but originally from Shiraho to support the local protest. 

In 1983, Yonemori and his colleagues used advertising space in a local newspaper 

to appeal against the construction of the New Ishigaki Airport in Shiraho, in a 

local newspaper, RyūkyūShimpō. The ‘advertisement’ featured a vivid photograph 

of the colourful Shiraho reef taken by a professional photographer for a commercial 

purpose. 14 Yonemori and his fellow members also made posters using the 

photograph and an anti-airport message and these were distributed everywhere in 

Okinawa. The posters and the advertisement raised a high level of interest from 

the people living in other parts of Okinawa and in mainland Japan. Many were 

overcome by the beauty of the ocean and its coral formations (Yonemori, Interview, 

April 1999). 

In July of 1983, opponents of the airport who lived in parts of the Yaeyama region 

(such as Ishigaki City) other than Shiraho formed the Concerned Citizens’ Group 

against the Airport (Kūkō Mondai o Kangaeru Shimin no Kai). Yonemori formed 

a new group called the Okinawa, Yaeyama, and Shiraho Ocean and Life Protection 

Group (Okinawa, Yaeyama, Shiraho no Umi to Kurashi o Mamoru Kai), based in 

Naha, with other concerned Okinawan citizens. In Tokyo, some fifty people who 

had visited the region and had strong attachments to the ocean in Shiraho formed 

the Yaeyama and Shiraho Ocean Protection Group (Yaeyama Shiraho no Umi o 

Mamoru Kai). The Protection Group in Tokyo included a member of the Upper 

House, Minobe Ryōkichi. This helped attract further publicity (Ryūkyū Shimpō 

17 May 1984). In Osaka, sympathizers formed an anti-airport group (Ishigaki, 

Shiraho no Umi ni Kūkōo Tsukurasenai Osaka no Kai). In Kobe and Kyoto, similar 

groups were formed. 

Thus, the Shiraho coral conservation movement came to involve small groups 

usually not numbering more than 100–150 members. These small groups joined 

together to form expanded, though loose networks that not only transcended the 

local community but eventually extended worldwide. As a result, many different 

groups with different capabilities and characteristics became involved in the same 

struggle. While this brought many new advantages, from time to time, the 

engagement of many and varied actors and supporting activists would contradict 

those of the Shiraho residents or threaten their autonomy. 

In order to minimize inter-group conflicts, Yonemori explains, ‘We (Shiraho 

struggle supporters) deliberately distanced our activities from political parties and 

workers’ unions, which tended to allow the organizations’ interests and priorities 

to control the direction of the movement’ (Interview, April 1999). Activist lawyer 

Ikemiyagi considers that the Shiraho struggle was successful, partly because 

‘Shiraho residents and non-resident participants made it clear that the political


parties were not welcome because they brought in their own egos, policies, and 

strategies. There was a clear consensus that the centre of the movement was the 

Shiraho District Opposition Committee. External organizations and sympathizers, 

including the Okinawa, Yaeyama and Shiraho Ocean and Life Protection Group, 

based in Naha, were “supporters” and no more than that’ (Ikemiyagi, Interview, 

May 1999). The main concern of the locals was that their supporters might deflect 

them from their original goals or wishes. Yonemori certainly believed this to be a 

real danger (Yonemori, Interview, April 1999). 

Collective identity and framing of protest 

As the agency of protest expanded from established political parties and unions 

to conscious citizens acting as individuals, collective identity – defining who 

‘we’ are and why ‘we’ protest – also shifted significantly. In the course of acting 

collectively to protect the natural environment, resident participants in the protest 

came to realize and emphasize the value of a distinctive lifestyle specific to their 

localities. This was quite unlike protest against the US military administration, 

motivated by ‘reversion nationalism’. Indeed, instead of demanding Okinawa’s 

inclusion within Japan, residents who protested against CTS and the New Ishigaki 

Airport defined themselves in their own words – and not in the official language 

of political parties – positively relying on their ‘local’ characteristics in defining 

who they were. The meanings attached to acts of protest also derived from this 

novel emphasis on ‘localness’ as a source of collective identity. 

The emphasis was on autonomy, rather than assimilation to Japan. Autonomy 

was sought from dependence on environmentally hazardous industries and military 

bases for immediate incomes. Thus, the Kin Bay struggle sent messages that 

appealed to many Okinawans who were aware of the local economy’s increasing 

dependence to Japanese government subsidies. This message was an expression 

of a particular ethical position about the meaning of life, especially the meaning 

of ‘affluence’. One of the expressions of this collective identity based on local pride 

was an attempt to develop locally specific industries to acquire the means of living. 

In the case of the Kin Bay struggle, the importance of local industry, such as growing 

and selling mozuku seaweed, was stressed as a potentially lucrative alternative 

source of income to the CTS. During the anti-CTS struggle, ‘I would rather eat 

sweet potatoes under the blue sky, than steaks in a big house’ was a favourite saying 

among the local CTS opponents (Sakihara, Interview, April 1999). 

Similarly in Shiraho, it was the coral and the ocean that defined the residents’ 

collective identity in the anti-airport protest. In Shiraho, residents were mostly 

content with the old-fashioned, slow lifestyle based on part-time farming and 

fishing. 15 However, Yonemori explains that it was not easy for most of the Shiraho 

residents to see the special value of the ocean that they saw every day. Some local 

residents did not regard the ocean and the coral reef as anything particularly special. 

Initially, noise and disruption of serenity were the locals’ main argument against 

the airport. Yonemori was frustrated that some locals did not immediately appreciate 

the value of the Shiraho coral reef, though that was stressed by the conservationists


who lived in big cities. His message to the Shiraho residents was as follows: ‘We 

can’t win by the anti-noise campaign. Let us request the coral conservation in 

order to stop the airport’ (Yonemori, Interview, April 1999). Journalists and divers 

came from outside, and reported in various media the unique lifestyle of Shiraho 

closely attached to the natural environment, with colourful photographs of the reef 

and marine life (for example Yoshimine 1991). 

Gradually, even the sceptical locals came to see the value of the ocean and to 

express pride in it. They started to see that the lifestyle in Shiraho epitomized a 

different kind of ‘affluence’ from that defined by advanced industrial infrastructure 

and abundant cash. Shiraho was an ideal place to live for someone who wanted a 

calm, relaxed life listening to the sound of the ocean, away from motor cars and 

karaoke noise. Many older Shiraho residents particularly enjoyed the lifestyle of 

going to the ocean collecting food during the day and watching the ocean waves 

lapping in and out in the evenings. An elderly anti-airport Shiraho resident asked 

the following rhetorical question: ‘If you don’t have lots of cash, does it mean you 

are poor?’ which appealed to many supporters (Yonemori, Interview, 13 April 1999). 

Seeing themselves as residents of a unique and wonderful place, rather than a 

small, impoverished region, enhanced the protesters’ confidence in themselves. 

Residents in Kin Bay lived in multiple villages and districts around Kin Bay, 

including Yakena, Yonagusuku, Gushikawa, Henza, and islands such as Tsuken 

and Miyagi (Map 8.1). Even though located closely to each other, each of the 

small villages and districts formed a distinctive community, with its own social and 

cultural traditions, as well as political problems and inter-community rivalries. 

For the residents, participation in community events was part of their daily lives. 

Participating in protest became a part of these events. During the six years of the 

Kin Bay struggle, traditional festivals and rituals specific to central and east-coast 

Okinawa – the annual dragon boat race, tug-of-war rope competitions, dancing 

festivals, 16 and farming product shows – provided venues for enjoying and 

participating in the traditional lifestyle and culture of the community. 17 These 

community events and this cultural revivalism became part of protest activity 

against the CTS construction. 18 Asato Seishin considered it necessary for the 

residents’ movements to ‘clearly express who we are, in the process of opposition, 

in order to demonstrate why we would not live according to the state policy, and 

why we are right’ (Asato 1981: 41–2). 

For the anti-CTS Kin Bay residents, Ryūkyū poetry provided a powerful forrm 

of self-expression. Ōshiro Fumi, a 79-year-old female Yakena resident, participated 

in rallies and demonstrations against CTS with her colleagues at her local seniors’ 

club (Interview, May 1999). She was also skilled in expressing the villagers’ feelings 

in her Ryūkyū poetry. One day, she started reading out her poetry at a protest when 

the riot police stopped the villagers from demonstrating against Mitsubishi. The 

poem she read out, which ‘made fun of the arrogance of the police’, had the effect 

of intimidating the riot police mentally, and spurred her on. She started composing 

more protest poems and reading them aloud at rallies and demonstrations (cited in 

Asato 1981: 168–70). 19 Her poems were capable of energizing the protest when the 

participants were intimidated by pressure from the state, police, and Mitsubishi.


Figure 8.1 Ōshiro Fumi and Sakihara Seishū (April, 1999 photographed by the author) 

Sakihara recalls that Ōshiro was like a ‘goddess’ to the struggle (Interview, May 

1999). 

Elderly women and housewives constituted the major participants in the protest 

and were also given special roles in the Kin Bay struggle. Sasaki-Uemura comments 

that the ‘numerical dominance’ of women came to be regarded as ‘a defining 

characteristic’ of residents’ movements in mainland Japan (Sasaki-Uemura 2001: 

146). While men were increasingly detached from the communities they lived 

in, 20 women were engaged in community activities especially those related to childrearing, 

home-making, and issues such as consumers’ rights, education, health, 

and protection of the environment. For example, women played a leading role in 

initiating the anti-cement-factory protest in Kazanashi hamlet in Usuki, Ōita 

Prefecture, where men tended to be absent from home on long-distance fishing trips 

(Matsushita 1999). In Okinawa, too, female-specific features were emphasized 

in residents’ movements. This marked a decisive break with dominant labour 

movement organizations connected to established political parties and unions driven 

by men, Marxism, and ideology. 

Throughout Okinawan history, women have been associated with a spiritual role 

as shamans, connecting people to gods specific to local communities. A 

photographer, Higa Yasuo, from central Okinawa, summarizes those female 

characteristics that were emphasized: 

The centre of shima society was women. 21 We can see the traces of that time 

in many of the rituals we still have on remote islands. The sacred places, called 

utaki, are still found all over the islands. To me these are what is left of the


sacred forests where women-gods lived. So today men are still forbidden to 

enter many of the utaki, and the gods who appear in the rituals are women. It 

is clear that in the ritualistic tradition the people have believed they are 

worshipping women and the matrilineal order. 

(Higa cited in Suzuki and Oiwa 1996: 95) 

Asato and his colleague from Amami went to speak to a local shaman (called yuta 

in the local language) about their protest against the CTS (Asato 1981: 59–60), 

not to a professional union or to party activists in Naha. 22 Irei Takashi, a non-resident 

supporter who used to be an avid campaigner for reversion, observed in a protest 

camp in Yakena in October 1981 that central events were tasting local foods and 

enjoying traditional singing and dancing, which required the local elderly women’s 

contribution (CTS Soshi Tōsō o Hirogeru Kai 1981: 234–7). ‘Women’ – and 

the characteristics associated with them – were clearly playing a vital role for 

constructing collective identity of the residents’ movement in Okinawa, defined 

in terms of attachment to the place they lived. 

The growing strength of women’s participation did not always mean that residents’ 

movements were less male-centric. Traditional ‘female’ roles, which enhanced 

the connection with the local-specific identity, were ‘rediscovered’ by the male 

organizers of the residents’ movement, and incorporated by them into their struggle. 

Women were often collectively referred to as ‘mothers’ (anmātachi), without names. 

The use of the ‘female’ was, therefore, strategic to some extent. 

The struggles in Kin Bay and Shiraho marked the importance of post-materialist 

views of ‘affluence’ that became part of the ‘Okinawa Struggle’ after the reversion. 

Following the reversion, attachment to traditional lifestyles embedded in the locallyspecific 

natural environments, away from the mainland-style industrialization and 

development, continued to define who ‘we’ were, and gave meaning to locally 

oriented protest. I call this a ‘localist’ framing of protest. During the long ‘low’ 

period between the second and third island-wide postwar collective actions of the 

Okinawan people that followed the reversion, this ‘localist’ framing of protest 

emerged and developed. It continues to define much of what the Okinawans’ protest 

is about. 

Strategy and the repertoire of protest 

An important strategy for the residents’ movements in the Shiraho struggle was 

support from scientists, intellectuals, celebrities, and sympathetic outsiders 

extending to the international community of environmentalist and conservationist 

movements. Seeking and accepting support from specialists and activists from other 

parts of the world became, as noted above, an important part of the repertoire of 

the community of protest in Okinawa. The search for support from external experts 

has become a common new strategy for Okinawan’s ‘new social movements’. They 

act locally but they think globally. 

In March 1986, the Okinawa prefecture government appointed fourteen members 

to form the New Ishigaki Airport Discussion Committee (Shin Ishigaki KūkōMondai


Konwa-kai). 23 As a result of recommendations made by the Discussion Committee, 

the prefectural government commissioned an Environmental Impact Assessment 

of the New Ishigaki Airport construction plan in July, and made it public. 24 The 

Assessment basically confirmed the prefecture’s evaluation that Shiraho was the 

most suitable site for the new airport and found that the landfill was compatible 

with coral preservation. Ui Jun pointed out that the finding was based on inadequate 

data, and argued that the information related to the environmental effects of the 

airport had been largely kept confidential. 25 

About seventy researchers and professionals in Okinawa and mainland Japan, 

who similarly questioned the official data on the airport construction project, formed 

the New Ishigaki Airport Construction Examination Group (Shin Ishigaki Kūkō 

Kensetsu o Kangaeru Kai). 26 In their publications, 27 the scholars in the Examination 

Group systematically reworked the government’s Environmental Impact Assessment 

on Shiraho and re-examined both environmental and socio-economic impacts 

of the new airport. However, the audience for their publications was mostly limited 

to already interested parties in Okinawa and mainland Japan. Their findings were 

directly opposed to those of the original report. 

The support of an American marine biologist, Katherine Muzik, played a key 

role in raising concerns overseas on the political issues threatening the coral reefs 

in Shiraho. Muzik was living in Okinawa, researching the coral around the islands. 

In Ishigaki City she made a speech at the first meeting of a citizens’ opposition 

group against the new airport based in the pro-airport Ishigaki City, stressing 

the value of the rare Shiraho coral reefs and the destructive effect the airport 

construction would have, from a scientist’s perspective (Yaeyama Nippō 11 July 

1983). Muzik’s research was motivated by her personal distress over the coral that 

used to decorate the islands of Okinawa in a necklace shape, of which about 95 

per cent was killed by the government-funded post-reversion industrialization 

projects following the Okinawa Marine Exposition in 1975 in northeastern Okinawa 

(Japan Times 2 March 1983; Muzik 1992). 

In April 1984, the Naha-based Okinawa, Yaeyama, and Shiraho Ocean and Life 

Protection Group asked Muzik and Richard Murphy from the Jacques Cousteau 

Society to investigate the coral reefs in Shiraho (Yaeyama Mainichi Shimbun 

21 April 1984). The aim of the investigation was to disprove the officials’ statement 

that the coral in Shiraho was in worse shape than other areas around Ishigaki. After 

comparative investigation in Ishigaki waters, Muzik, Murphy, and Takaesu Asao, 

representative of the Okinawa, Yaeyama, and Shiraho Ocean and Life Protection 

Group, reported that the coral in Shiraho was exceptionally lively and healthy, 

compared to other areas (Yaeyama Mainichi Shimbun 24 April 1984). 

In 1985, Muzik reported the rare value of the coral reefs in Shiraho at the Fifth 

International Coral Reefs Conference held in Tahiti, as well as the airport issue 

that potentially endangered them (Makishi 1997: 215). In November 1987, a 

delegation from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) came to Shiraho to 

investigate the coral reefs. On the basis of this investigation, the 17th General 

Meeting of the IUCN in San José, Costa Rica, in February 1988 passed a resolution 

on the Shiraho coral reefs. The IUCN urged the Japanese government to reconsider


the airport construction project and to develop a policy to protect coral in Shiraho, 

which the Union regarded as world heritage. The Environment Agency representatives 

joined the meeting, but abstained from the IUCN resolution on Shiraho. 

Muzik, Takaesu, and a Shiraho resident, Yamazato Setsuko, travelled to Costa 

Rica to attend the meeting. At the meeting, the three lobbied for the resolution by 

distributing pamphlets, titled The Heart Dyed in Ocean Colour (Chimu ni Umi 

Sumiri), to attenders from all over the world. Muzik translated the pamphlet text 

into English. The pamphlet included colourful photographs of the Shiraho coral 

and explained the airport construction project and the need to stop it. Makishi 

Yoshikazu, an architect and member of the Naha-based Okinawa, Yaeyama, and 

Shiraho Ocean and Life Protection Group, and the author of the pamphlet, was 

told by the three Okinawa delegates that the conservation campaign targeting local 

delegates with hand-made pamphlets was a novel introduction to the IUCN meeting, 

with a potent visual appeal (Makishi, Interview, 20 April 1999). 

The IUCN resolution in Costa Rica had the decisive effect of undermining the 

legitimacy of the airport construction plan in Shiraho. The government moved the 

construction site 4 kilometres to the north of Shiraho, to the east of Karadake 

Mountain. However, the opponents in Shiraho and external supporting organizations 

continued the protest against the airport project. In August 1990, an IUCN delegation 

conducted another investigation on the coral reef ecosystem of the newly proposed 

airport construction site and visited the prefecture government to request another 

change of the construction site (Ryūkyū Shimpō 30 August 1990). Consequently, 

another IUCN resolution on Shiraho coral was made at the Eighteenth General 

Assembly in Perth, Australia, in 1990. This resolution recommended the prefecture 

government ‘find an alternative solution to the problem, including extension of the 

present airport to ensure optimal conservation of the coral reef ecosystem at Shiraho’ 

(IUCN – The World Conservation Union 1990: 51). 

Later in 1992, the president of the World Wildlife Fund and the Duke of 

Edinburgh visited Shiraho, as part of the campaign to protect the Shiraho coral. 

The support from intellectuals and a British royal put pressure on the Okinawa 

prefecture government to prepare a second Environmental Impact Assessment and, 

finally, to give up the airport construction in Shiraho. 

Litigation was another common and more traditional strategy of protest of the 

Shiraho struggle. 28 As activists rather than as lawyers, the attorneys specializing 

in residents’ protests against the government undertook these cases. One of the 

Naha-based lawyers who represented the Shiraho fishers was Ikemiyagi Toshio, 

also involved in court cases of the Kin Bay Life Protection Group, and for the 

Kadena residents against the US aircraft training noise. Court cases are part of 

the ‘anti-base movements, just like other protest activities such as demonstrations 

and handing out flyers. Struggles in courts and other protest activities against 

the bases and the Japanese government are like two wheels of a cart’ (Ikemiyagi, 

Interview, May 1999). 

Compared to other activities, however, the court cases did not result in 

revitalizing the momentum of protest, and the role of the local residents tended to 

be much smaller because of the highly technical and time-consuming specialization


required in the court cases. Like the anti-war landowners’ lawsuits, the Attorneys’ 

Organization (bengo-dan), based in Naha, and a group of Osaka lawyers were 

amongst the supporting organizations of the Shiraho struggle. 29 Furthermore, the 

chances of winning court cases against the state were extremely low. 30 

Kin Bay and Shiraho in the lineage of the ‘Okinawa Struggle’ 

Collective action based on regional communities (towns, villages, and hamlets) 

had previously existed in Okinawa. And the most famous example, of course, 

was the farmers’ non-violent resistance against the US military since the 1950s in 

Ie-jima. Arasaki explains the farmers’ anti-base resistance in the Ie-jima struggle, 

which led to the island-wide demonstrations in the mid-1950s, as a precursor 

of the later residents’ movements. The Expand the Anti-CTS Struggle Society 

(the Naha-based citizens’ ‘supporter’ organization of the Kin Bay struggle) likewise 

regarded the farmers’ anti-base struggle in Ie-jima as ‘the origin of residents’ 

movements’ (jūmin undō no genten) in postwar Okinawa (CTS Soshi Tōsō o 

Hirogeru Kai 1981: 20). However, the Kin Bay struggle demonstrated many 

characteristics that had not been seen in the 1950s Ie-jima struggle (or in similar 

land struggles in Isahama or Konbu). 

Some resident participants in the anti-CTS struggles and Naha-based intellectuals 

promoted the use of the term ‘Ryūkyūko’ (Ryūkyū arc) to describe islands of the 

Ryūkyū region plus islands south of Amami demarcating the new sphere of 

solidarity. Writer Shimao Toshio originally developed the term Ryūkyūkofrom his 

writings on ‘Yaponesia’. Yaponesia challenges the idea that the group of islands 

located to the south of Japan (nantō), including Amami and Okinawa and other 

remote islands, constituted a ‘peripheral’ region of Japan. Yaponesia is a refusal to 

see Japan as a monolithic cultural sphere, and provokes the image of the Japanese 

archipelago as a group of many islands, integrated with the South Pacific islands, 

sharing the common cultural diversity of the islands of Polynesia, Micronesia, 

Melanesia, and Indonesia (Gabriel 1999, Kawamitsu 1987, Okamoto 1990, Shimao 

1970, 1977b, 1977c, 1981–3). The political utility of the concept of Yaponesia 

for Okinawans was used by anti-reversionists, who emphasized the importance of 

Okinawa as an independent entity – a place from which to resist the post-1972 

assimilation process into a monolithic and homogenous entity, ‘Japan’. 

The concept of Ryūkyūkoallowed the Okinawan activists to cultivate solidarity 

with Amami activists. Projects of CTS construction were planned in locations 

across Ryūkyūko, such as Yonaguni Island in the southwestern end of the Ryūkyū 

archipelago, Tarama Island, and Edateku Island near Amami Island. Residents in 

communities near these areas engaged in protests similar to the Kin Bay Protection 

Group. 31 Despite the geographical and historical closeness, 32 there had been a 

general sense of distance between activists in the Amami islands and Okinawa. 

This was mainly because the former returned to Japan in 1954 from US military 

rule, and had been integrated into the Japanese socio-economic system to a much 

greater extent than the other islands in Okinawa (CTS Soshi Tōsō o Hirogeru Kai 

1981: 12–14).


Ryūkyūko was a particularly important term in the construction of the myth of 

an ‘Okinawan’ movement. Seeing ‘Okinawa’ as part of Ryūkyūko allowed the 

activists to recognize themselves as an autonomous equal entity vis-à-vis Japan 

with a distinctive identity, and the capacity to resist ‘reversion nationalism’. The 

term Ryūkyūko was used by Shimao to signify the geographical region located in 

the southern margin of Yaponesia, together with Tōhoku (the northeastern region 

in mainland Japan), as an entity with independent cultural coherence, representing 

‘Japan’ in its own ways. Ryūkyūkowas thus a strategically applied concept, which 

assisted in establishing a community of protest among the resident activists with 

similar local problems. 

Residents’ movements in Ryūkyūko entailed much more than opposition to the 

CTS construction. Other issues of concern included opposition to the construction 

of nuclear waste disposal sites and campaigns to use soap, instead of chemically 

manufactured detergent, to protect local waters. These groups held joint meetings, 

lectures, camps, and field trips, and repeatedly held debates with other groups within 

the Ryūkyūko region, which were recorded in a seasonal newsletter, Ryūkyūko 

no Jūmin Undō, published by the Expand the Anti-CTS Struggle Society (CTS 

Soshi Tōsō o Hirogeru Kai). During its active years, the Society attracted new 

members such as Asato Eiko, Yamakado Kenichi, Morii Yoshikatsu, and Abe 

Ryoichi, who joined, organized, and reported on the joint activities of local groups 

in the region. 33 The term Ryūkyūko emerged as a concept from the anti-CTS 

struggles. It represented uniqueness and positive values, instead of marginality 

and backwardness. 

As the centres of protest in Okinawa became regionalized and fragmented, many 

activists were simultaneously involved in multiple protest activities concerning 

different issues and overlapping organizational memberships. Furthermore, supporters 

of the residents’ movements were often engaged in other protest activities 

in Okinawa. Before she was a Kin Bay activist Sakihara ‘witnessed the forced 

land acquisition of the US military in the early 1950s in Isahama’, and, as a student 

and schoolteacher, participated in campaigns for reversion to Japan. Sakihara is 

also a One-tsubo anti-war landowner (Interview, April 1999). 

Arasaki Moriteru, the main instigator of the network of One-tsubo anti-war 

landowners, advocated building solidarity between the anti-war military landowners 

and the anti-CTS activists. Arasaki organized the Expand the Anti-CTS Struggle 

Society (CTS Soshi Tōsōo Hirogeru Kai) in 1974, together with a veteran activist, 

Irei Takashi, Arakawa Akira, and an academic, Okamoto Keitoku. Both of the latter 

had been deeply involved in the discussion of Okinawa’s future after the demise 

of the reversion movement. The main purpose of the Society was ‘supporting the 

Kin Bay Protection Group’ (CTS Soshi Tōsō o Hirogeru Kai 1981: 20–1). It was 

an attempt to ‘establish the legitimacy of the residents’ movements in the Ryūkyūko 

region in the traditional lineage of the Okinawa struggle since the land struggle in 

the 1950s (represented by the traditional progressive organizations such as Iken 

Kyōtō)’. 34 The aim was to reduce the distance between the residents’ movements 

and the progressive political organizations based in Naha. At the same time, the 

Society aimed to ‘set up the venues for flexible and loose solidarity based on


communications between various residents’ and citizens’ movements in the region, 

which otherwise tended to confine themselves to their respective communities’ 

(CTS Soshi Tōsō o Hirogeru Kai 1981: 20–1). The Ryūkyūko concept integrated 

many, independently unique island societies into one community of protest – 

whether called ‘Okinawa’ or not – through shared activities of protest. 

Importantly, the anti-CTS movement created an opportunity to reflect critically 

on the reversion movement, and the new direction of the ‘Okinawan’ protest. This 

activity was extremely important in creating a sense of continuity for the ‘Okinawa 

Struggle’, connecting past struggles to the present. In particular, the emotional 

attachment to yamato as ‘the home country’ was criticized as a leftover from the 

campaign for reversion. Sakihara recalls that his participation in the reversion 

movement was not motivated by any political awareness other than wishful thinking 

that a return to Japan would free Okinawans from US military oppression, 

particularly the forced US land acquisition of the 1950s. After this hope was 

betrayed, like many other reversion activists Sakihara ‘questioned the meaning and 

the outcomes of the reversion movement’ and quit the OTA in 1968. He was 

also influenced by Arakawa Akira’s anti-reversion thoughts and his anti-state 

perspective. For Sakihara, the introduction of a polluting industry by the CTS 

construction project was a clear indication of the ‘colonial subjugation of Okinawa 

to the mainland Japanese capital, contrary to the principle of self-determination’ 

that the reversionists aspired for (Interview, April 1999). 

Local protest in Shiraho had much in common with that of the residents in the 

Kin Bay area, against the CTS construction. Former anti-CTS activists had many 

insights to offer from their experiences, and to encourage the Shiraho resident 

opponents. Both cases involved major land reclamation projects over the ocean, 

and disputes with locals who lived on fishing. The Shiraho struggle went through 

the stages that the Kin Bay Protection Group had experienced. Some of the members 

of the Okinawa, Yaeyama, and Shiraho Ocean and Life Protection Group (based 

in Naha) were involved also in the anti-CTS protest activities (Yonemori, Interview, 

April 1999). 

In 1984, five members of the Kin Bay Protection Group visited Shiraho ‘to 

encourage the local airport opponents not to repeat the fate of Kin Bay’, during 

which visit they went diving and saw the coral reefs in Shiraho. They said Shiraho 

coral looked like what the colonies of coral around Ikei and Tsuken Islands 

near Kin Bay used to be, which had mostly been killed as a result of CTS construction 

under the state and prefecture government’s propaganda of promoting 

‘development’ and ‘progress’ (Hanashiro 1984). A Kin Bay activist, Hanashiro 

Seihan, commented: ‘Compared to the reefs here (Shiraho), coral reefs in Kin 

Bay today look like a coral cemetery’ (Yaeyama Nippō 4 May 1984). Apart from 

providing psychological encouragement, the inter-regional support network 

integrated the Shiraho struggle with the ‘Okinawan’ struggle. 

In August 1984, a Ryūkyūko Residents’ Movements Communication Camp 

(Ryūkyūko no Jūmin Undō Kōryū Gasshuku) was held in Shiraho. Originally, 

Arasaki Moriteru and Asato Seishin started this camp in 1979. About 160 

participants were members of the Kin Bay Life Protection Society, the Expand the


Anti-CTS Struggle Society, and other residents’ and citizens’ movements in the 

Ryūkyūko region. Some mainland Japanese activists also attended the camp. The 

Shiraho camp was the fifth of the series of annual camps that started in 1979, held 

every year in Amami Ōshima, Iriomote Island, Yakena in Kin Bay, and Miyako 

Island. Some of the participants wrote articles describing the beauty of the ocean 

and the coral reefs, the abundance of fish and seafood, and the hospitality of the 

local Shiraho Community Centre members (for example, Miyagi 1983). This camp 

also contributed to establishing solidarity between the Shiraho anti-airport struggle 

and other residents’ movements in the Ryūkyūko region. 

Another dimension of the Shiraho anti-airport campaign that similarly inspired 

the struggles in Okinawa was the locals’ war experience. Before the Battle of 

Okinawa in 1945, a Japanese Army airbase was built in Shiraho, and was used as 

the launching base of the tokkō-tai (kamikaze) air fighters that flew to the battlefield. 

The local residents provided labour for the construction of the Japanese airbase, 

just as happened in Ie-jima, Yomitan, and other villages before the Battle of 

Okinawa. The Shiraho hamlet was raided regularly, and the residents had to 

evacuate to a nearby mountain without proper food and clothing. Many died of 

malaria, far more than in air raids and shipwrecks. 35 

In these crises, Shiraho elders often described the ocean as their ‘lifeline’ (Noike 

1990: 14–15). That is, no matter how much the social situation changed, one could 

always rely on the ocean to sustain one’s life as long as the ocean was maintained 

in a healthy state. During the war, the ocean was the only thing they could rely on. 

They faced starvation because their potatoes and other crops in the farmlands were 

raided or taken by Japanese soldiers. But, as a 74-year-old Shiraho woman says, 

‘Our family survived because we could eat fish and sea grasses. We lived on the 

stuff coming from the ocean. The ocean is life. I cannot stand it to be buried 

underground. That’s why I joined the protest against the plan to build an airport’ 

(quoted in Noike 1990: 22–3). 

Residents’ experiences during WWII, and their caution toward the possibility 

that the new airport might be used for military purposes, added further ground for 

protest. Anti-airport residents and supporters emphasized the danger of the possible 

military use of the New Ishigaki Airport. The 1979 airport construction plan was 

to extend the size of the runway to 2,500 metres long and 65 metres wide (from 

1,500 metres and 45 metres). The group of Shiraho-born residents in Okinawa 

Island who protested against the New Ishigaki Airport construction issued a protest 

statement emphasizing the ‘danger of military use of the airport’ (Shin Ishigaki 

Kūkōni Hantai suru Okinawa Zaijū Shiraho KyōyūYūshikai 1982: 17–19). Shiraho 

residents’ negative reaction to the fear of another airport construction was also 

linked to their collective memory of involvement in war (Noike 1990: 134). 

In the Shiraho struggle, the environmental concerns criss-crossed with the 

pacifist, anti-base concerns – which extends to the struggle against the US bases 

today. The anti-militarist motivation of the Shiraho struggle was based on the war 

experience specific to the locality and the idea of the ‘lifeline ocean’, which provided 

the residents with security that armaments and military bases could not provide. 

Yamazato Setsuko, a female Shiraho resident and a local opponent of the airport,

thinks that the Shiraho struggle against the airport was also a campaign against 

militarism (Interview, May 1999). 36 Only 0.2 per cent of the Yaeyama region is 

occupied by the US military, compared to about one-fifth of Okinawa Main Island 

(Okinawa Ken Soumubu Chiji Koushitsu Kichi Taisakushitsu 2000: 5). However, 

‘absolute pacifism’, rooted in the residents’ experience in the Battle of Okinawa, 

existed in the Shiraho struggle too. Anti-militarism and the new concept of a 

Ryūkyūko region as an amalgam of individually unique island societies constitute 

unifying themes, joining together many struggles in the community of protest in 

Okinawa. In this sense, the Shiraho struggle, like the Kin Bay struggle, extend the 

lineage of the Okinawa struggle in a new direction. 

As it expanded into a larger citizens’ movement from a regional conflict confined 

within Ishigaki Island, the Shiraho struggle drew sympathy from and participation 

by many left-wing, anti-militarist and progressive Okinawans. Workers’ unions 

were initially disengaged, but gradually started to show support for the Shiraho 

anti-airport residents and their struggle. External organizations were in a better 

position to state their views in support of the world heritage natural asset because, 

unlike the locals and unlike the progressive unions in Yaeyama, they could disregard 

the local economic benefits attached to the airport. However, in 1981, even the 

Yaeyama District Workers’ Union, which included the Yaeyama Teachers’ Union 

and High School Teachers’ Union, withdrew from the New Ishigaki Airport Construction 

Promotion Organization, after careful internal discussions (Yaeyama 

Mainichi Shimbun 26 August 1981). In 1984, public workers’ unions elsewhere in 

Okinawa, such as the Municipal Council Workers Unions of Yonabaru Town, Nago 

City and Naha City, publicly supported the Shiraho anti-airport struggle (Haemi 

1984: 21). The Public Workers’ Union (jichirō) Okinawa Prefecture Headquarters 

directly negotiated with the Ishigaki mayor and requested respect for the Shiraho 

residents’ opposition (Yaeyama Nippō 14 April 1984). 

Organizations and individuals based in other places participated in the anti-airport 

protest as supporters, as environmentalist and anti-militarist citizens. However, 

regardless of the influence outside supporters had, the local residents remained the 

‘subjects’ of the struggle. Similar dynamics existed in the relationship between 

anti-war landowners and One-tsubo landowners and later, also, between residents 

and external supporters, in the anti-heliport struggle in Nago. 

Conclusion 


The anti-CTS residents’ movements in the Kin Bay area and the Shiraho anti-airport 

struggle extended the horizons of collective action. Residents in individual 

communities, no matter how remote or small, became the central actors. The centre 

of gravity of protest tipped towards the residents and a loose network of non-resident 

supporters, away from the left-wing political parties and workers’ unions who 

became followers rather than leaders. As indicated in Chapter 6, the coalition of 

left-wing parties and unions made an effort to maintain the coherence of one 

‘Okinawan’ protest. This chapter, however, highlights a different dynamic within 

the community of protest: fragmentation in both identity and organizational terms.


Although government-led industrialization and the continued presence of US 

military bases in Okinawa were the common target of the community of protest, 

actual protest was motivated by many local identities with different experiences 

of everyday life, involving a wider range of people who lived primarily as residents 

in the localities of protest, rather than by subscribers to particular ideologies or 

established parties and unions. In the process of interaction and solidarity building, 

the residents intentionally stressed the autonomy and uniqueness of individual 

communities. External ‘supporters’ – in particular, political parties and unions 

in larger cities or mainland Japan – played an important role, but respecting the 

boundaries between outsiders (supporters) and insiders (residents) became an 

important feature of the ‘local’ framing of protest. It continues today. 

New awareness of the importance of the ‘local’ did not put an end to the idea of 

a single ‘Okinawan’ struggle. But it transformed it. A sense of solidarity within 

the community of protest was maintained through shared experiences and information 

and a shared repertoire of protest. As the centres of protest multiplied, 

communication and knowledge sharing among different actors across distant 

geographical regions increased, facilitated by the concept of residents’ movements 

of the Ryūkyūko region. Having said that, the Battle of Okinawa also remained 

common history, a shared memory, an important motivation for the residents’ 

movements, and a link to the established narrative of ‘Okinawan’ marginalization. 

But ‘local’ framing resulted in another important and somewhat paradoxical 

change as well. Where struggles fought within the arenas of national political 

institutions (through unions, parties, politics, and municipal and national legislatures) 

tended to be absorbed within the nation, the same was much less true of 

‘local’ political struggles. They were able to reach out beyond the boundaries of 

the nation and become international and/or global in scope. International recognition 

would nourish identity-building and myth-making in new ways. 

The emergence of ‘local’ framing in the Okinawan community of protest is most 

relevant to ‘new social movement’ theory and the increasing importance of 

post-materialist values, discussed in Chapter 2. At a time when the high-growth 

economy was coming to an end, and the horrifying environmental effects of blind 

enthusiasm for industrialization were a major social concern, the Kin Bay and 

Shiraho struggles convincingly suggested that the traditional lifestyle in rural 

Okinawa – even in a remote community in Ishigaki Island – offered an attractive, 

alternative ‘Okinawan’ collective identity. Activists redirected their preferences 

from assimilation to positively redefining ‘Okinawan’ distinctiveness by discovering 

values in rural community and traditional ways of life connected with 

nature. This stood in stark contrast to a hyper-industrialized Japan. The Kin Bay 

Life Protection Society’s protest and the Shiraho struggle both articulated the 

dominant issue that came to give meaning to Okinawan’ protest in the post-reversion 

era: Okinawa’s dependence on state-endorsed industrialization, which exhausts 

local natural resources. 

The Kin Bay and Shiraho struggles represent small-scale residents and social 

movements in the ‘low’ period of protest in Okinawa. Perhaps because of the 

political opportunity structure that favoured increasing flows of subsidies from


mainland Japan through the promotion of industrialization, local residents’ 

movements did not result in the formation of a big wave of Okinawa-wide protest. 

Together with the ‘constitutionalist’ anti-war landowners and the progressive 

coalition, the ‘localist’ residents’ movements laid the foundations for a new collective 

identity for the ‘Okinawan’ movement – one involving many local identities 

and wider sectors of the population. ‘Okinawa’ was becoming internally splintered, 

divided, and chaotic, but still represented a unitary community of protest.

9 The third wave and beyond 

Introduction 

The power of Unai and the dugongs 

This book will end its argument where it began: the 1995 rape case. As it has been 

told and retold in Okinawa, so can we retell it here. On 4 September 1995, in 

a base town near US Marine Division of Camp Hansen in northern Okinawa, a 

12-year-old schoolgirl on her way home from shopping was abducted, raped, and 

beaten severely at a nearby beach by three American soldiers. This heinous crime 

ended the long ‘low’ cycle of protest in Okinawa. It was a small number of 

Okinawan women who first expressed the outrage of ‘Okinawans’ at the forefront, 

and created the momentum for the ‘third wave’. On 21 October an estimated 85,000 

citizens gathered in Ginowan Marine Park to join the Okinawa Prefecture Citizens’ 

Mass Rally. A local newspaper Okinawa Times reported: 

‘This is the biggest opportunity ever to speak up for ourselves’, said the body 

language of the participants at the 21 October Rally . . . Since the All-Island 

Struggle in 1955–6 and the reversion movement in the 1960s, we are standing 

at the third turning point of Okinawan postwar history. 

(22 October 1995) 

The groundswell of locals’ opposition to the US military presence resulted in a 

temporary crisis for the US–Japan security alliance, and led to both governments’ 

decision to close the US Marine Corps Air Station in Futenma. Thus a cruel incident 

initiated a series of anti-base protests for years to follow – the third ‘wave’ of allisland 

mass protest in postwar Okinawa. The third wave has now subsided as an 

island-wide protest but it is after a decade too soon to declare its end. 

This chapter examines two major dimensions of the third ‘wave’. First, it focuses 

on diversification, that is, the expanding scope of strategies and organizational 

structure in the community of protest. In particular, this chapter argues that the greater 

profile of, specifically, women has significantly contributed to the change in the 

internal dynamics in the community of protest. In terms of public debate on gender 

issues in Okinawan society, the sudden spotlight on these women made only limited 

difference. It nevertheless profoundly challenged certain organizational hierarchy 

and methodological rigidity in the community of protest, opening up spaces for

different kinds of activity in political opposition that are more inclusive, with more 

ambitious global networking. The personal day-to-day issues, and ‘protection of 

human rights, peace and universal human values’ (Arasaki 1997: 166) came to 

be regarded as ever more important reasons for opposing the US military bases. 

The Okinawan women’s collective action was an important part of this change. 

However, second, we also see the continuing importance of the myth of a unified 

struggle of an Okinawan people. As discussed in previous chapters, the ‘Okinawan 

Struggle’ has been constantly internally divided, and in many ways the diversity 

has intensified and the scope of collective action expanded. Yet, in the course of 

cracking new doors open, the anniversaries and rituals reminiscent of the past 

struggles are remembered with respect, and the stories of legendary protests from 

the past are cherished. A lot of the new actions are developed from the experiences 

and lessons of the past. As hinted by Lévi-Strauss, history is stored in the verbal 

and informal stories and legacies, that is, the myth that defines today’s struggle. 

The recognition and respect paid to these stories and myth marks the boundary of 

the imaginary community of protest – who ‘we’ are. 

The overarching question addressed by this chapter is what are the implications 

of the detailed arguments for the idea of a unified ‘Okinawan Struggle’? While 

this takes a look at the evidence of recent and current events, the argument is 

necessarily more speculative about future directions than is the case with previous 

chapters. 

The Unai method: Okinawan women’s movement 

The third wave and beyond 151 

As shown by studies on gender and militarism, the everyday functions of foreign 

military service rely on the abuse of women’s human rights through prostitution 

and the sex industry that specifically caters for military personnel, as well as on 

domestic violence and sexual harassment within the military (for example Enloe 

1990, Moon 1997). Before the well-publicized rape in 1995, a small group of 

relatively well-educated, socially active women had been addressing the problem 

of military bases in Okinawa at the community level. What was unique about their 

method is to point out the problem of the bases and military in connection with the 

social order that degrades women’s safety and status, and also the patriarchal culture 

that is lenient regarding men’s involvement in prostitution but marginalizes women 

engaged in prostitution and their well-being. For these Okinawan women, protest 

against the violence specifically related to the US military bases is integral to a 

social movement that ‘highlight[s] women’s specific oppression in relation to men, 

preventing this from being submerged, amid all the other unequal relationships 

existing in society’ (Rowbotham 1992: 6). This perspective of the Okinawan women 

anti-base activists provides a ‘gender’ framing of protest, as important and powerful 

as the ‘Constitutionalist’ and ‘local’ framings discussed in previous chapters. In 

this framework, the problems of US military bases in Okinawa are understood and 

defined as part of a global gender issue. The activists, simultaneously, highlight 

the local-specific elements related to the historical marginalization of ‘Okinawa’ 

by Japan and the US.


The girl’s rape in 1995 could well be interpreted as one of the unfortunate but 

not uncommon incidents that the locals encountered in their daily lives. However, 

it was turned into a political opportunity for the protesters to bring international 

attention to the long-term imposition of military presence on Okinawan lives since 

reversion, and to request its reduction. The rape incident revealed the inherent 

instability of the US–Japan security alliance presence in the post-Cold War era. It 

was the women’s collective action that sparked this political opportunity, and 

spearheaded the third ‘wave’ of mass protests. Who were these women, how did 

they engage in protest, and what was the impact in the community of protest? 

The most prominent group of Okinawan women who created the momentum for 

the ‘third wave’ was the Okinawan Women Act against Military and Violence 

(OWAAMV). Its representative Takazato Suzuyo has been a pioneering figure who 

has addressed Okinawan military base issue from the feminist perspective. 1 Through 

Girl Scouts connections she studied in the Philippines for two years from 1961. Here 

Takazato learned about the Japanese military aggression and killings experienced 

by the Philippine people during WWII, similar in many ways to what Okinawans 

experienced. After coming back from the Philippines, since the mid-1960s she has 

investigated the burgeoning prostitution industry around the US bases and its abusive 

effects on local women. In the war-torn island where everything was destroyed, 

prostitution was the only way to survive for many girls and women who had their 

husbands and parents killed in war. In fact, prostitution and the sex industry for the 

US military personnel in Okinawa was a core industrial sector in the local economy 

(see Chapter 5). At the same time, the society nurtured persistent contempt for 

women who sold sex to the foreign military for a living. Many Okinawan men – 

who could live and go to school because of the incomes earned by their families’ 

labour in the sex industry – associated the memory of local women flocking around 

American soldiers with the shame and misery of ‘Okinawa’ occupied by the US 

forces. Regardless of the social and economic change following the reversion, 

discrimination and contempt against women – considered to be ‘sexual breakwaters’ 

between the US soldiers and ‘normal’ society – had not changed. 2 Takazato has 

11 years professional experience as a women’s phone counsellor, during which she 

talked with countless women who suffered from ill health and economic hardship 

as well as mental disorders, guilt, shame, and low self-esteem caused by their 

experiences of rape, domestic violence, and prostitution. They were victimized as 

much by ‘a strange society intolerant to the prostitutes but tolerant to prostitution’ 

(Takazato 1996: 106–11). Takazato and her colleagues who shared similar concerns 

created opportunities to discuss the underlying social dynamics of patriarchy that 

perpetuates discrimination, sexual harassment, and violence against women in the 

family and workplace at the community level. 

As part of their standard activity, the Okinawan women were accustomed to 

integrating with global civil society. The strategy used during the Shiraho struggle 

to appeal for coral conservation to the global environmental movements has been 

taken by Okinawan women to an even greater extent, addressing the international 

feminist community. They have participated in international conferences on women, 

gender, war, and militarism since the 1985 International Women’s Conference in


Nairobi. International conferences provided opportunities to tell other concerned 

citizens from overseas about the militarized environment in Okinawa and its impacts 

on women, particularly issues to do with rape of local women by US military staff, 

and prostitution and the sex industry catering for military personnel. International 

conferences expanded the network of anti-militarist and feminist activist colleagues 

in the countries with US military bases (among others, the Philippines, Korea and 

the US). 

In representing themselves to the international community of protest, Okinawan 

women activists have stressed their ‘Okinawanness’. Delegates to international 

conferences are separate from mainland Japanese women (although they do engage 

in joint actions). At these events the Okinawans explained the Okinawa-specific 

patriarchal family inheritance system called tōtōme that limits family asset 

inheritance to male offspring, not only disadvantaging women’s social and economic 

status but also discriminating against women who cannot produce sons 

(Takazato 1995b). At the 1995 NGO Conference in Beijing (NGO Forum Beijing 

95 Okinawa Jikkō Iinkai 1996), the delegates held a workshop on more than 130 

‘comfort stations’ that existed in Okinawa during WWII, which accommodated the 

women recruited from former Japanese colonies who were enslaved for forced 

prostitution. Takazato explains that their slogan is ‘think locally, act globally’, not 

the other way around. 

In 1985, a female director of a local radio network was recommended by her 

boss to report on the Okinawan women’s attendance at the Nairobi Conference. 

She asked instead for a 12-hour slot of broadcasting and budget to make a special 

programme on women, produced by female-only staff. The radio network has since 

given a 12 hour-slot to a women’s festival, each year, in which the female director’s 

colleagues and friends, including Takazato, and women from all sectors of the 

community, have produced forums on ‘women’s issues’ (Prodakushon Yui 1986). 

The issues they discussed were concrete life matters and relevant political issues 

in Okinawa, for example pollution, family, health, childcare, education, and work. 

She named the event the ‘Unai Festival’ after the Ryūkyūan word, unai, meaning 

‘female sibling gods’ who, according to folk belief, had the power to protect male 

siblings from misfortunes and accidents. The myth of unai embodies the traditional 

position given to Okinawan women in patriarchal family and society. Men joined 

and contributed to these events; however, women intentionally placed themselves 

in a privileged position in order to reverse and expose the ‘normal’ gender relations 

in which females are in underprivileged positions in every aspect of the social order. 

Over the years, the participants called this strategy the ‘unai method’ (Minamoto, 

Interview, April 1999). Traditionally – and still in communities in remote areas – 

society, even politics, revolved around religious ceremonies and festivals. Women, 

for their god-given mystic power, dominated these events, while men played only 

supportive roles (Asato 1999: 130). The role as protector of men and the community 

has been a traditional role assigned to women: for example, one often hears that 

women supported the community as primary breadwinners in the period following 

the Battle of Okinawa, when most men were dead, injured, or devastated. ‘Unai’ 

is indeed a significant identity marker that makes them ‘Okinawan’ no matter how


globally well-connected they are. The Unai Festivals, importantly, enabled 

Okinawan women to form solidarity with unai of different age, class, and regional 

or ethnic backgrounds within ‘Okinawa’. 

Similarly, they have linked with women outside Okinawa. The ability to connect 

the local-centred approach to international action has been the strength of the 

Okinawan women activists. Since the 1980s, Takazato, Carolyn Francis, 3 and others 

developed a communication network with feminist activists, who were concerned 

with common problems related to gender and military bases (for example Kirk et 

al. 1997). This includes the ties with the Philippine women in the Buklod Centre 

in the Philippines, 4 as well as My Sisters’ Place in Korea, a self-help institution 

for local women engaged in prostitution and service industries for American 

military personnel. As in Okinawa, many of these women’s children were fathered 

by US soldiers but denied US citizenship. Protest against disadvantages and 

discrimination suffered by the Amerasian children (of, usually, American fathers 

and Asian mothers) is a topic raised by the women in Okinawa, Korea, the 

Philippines, and the US, 5 whenever they get together. The Okinawan women have 

exchanged information, ideas and developed ties with US feminist academics Gwen 

Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey, of the San Francisco Bay Area Okinawa Peace 

Network (Kirk et al. 1997: 17). In 1988, women from those four places held a small 

joint conference on local US bases and women. The members have repeatedly 

visited each other ever since for workshops and conferences. 

The rise of the ‘third wave’ Okinawan struggle 

September 1995 was the year the Fourth World Conference on Women was held 

in Beijing. A team of 71 Okinawan women, who called themselves ‘NGO Beijing 

95 Forum Okinawa Action Committee’, represented Okinawa. The team participated 

in 11 workshops, and gave presentations on Okinawan-specific topics, 

including ‘structural military violence against women’. 6 

While the delegates were attending the conference in Beijing, a girl was abducted 

and sexually assaulted near Camp Hansen. The local newspapers reported the rape, 

in a tiny article, only four days later, when the US military refused to hand over 

the soldiers to the local police. Takazato’s colleague Toguchi Sumiko, who was in 

Okinawa at the time, recalls, ‘even local political parties and anti-base organisations 

(who routinely make protest statements) were quiet, as if on a silent agreement not 

to speak about the rape in public, or not knowing what to do’. This hesitation was 

perhaps out of consideration of the strong sense of shame attached to the rape victim. 

However, she phoned the president of the Okifuren (the League of Okinawan 

Women’s Groups) and prepared a draft statement of protest, and took some local 

newspaper clippings to the local airport when she met the Okinawan delegates 

returning from Beijing on 10 September around 10pm. Takazato, who led the 

Beijing delegates, recalls: 

I got off the plane, feeling rejuvenated by the discussions and workshops with 

NGO women from Africa, Cambodia and many other places about military


violence towards women. We talked about breaking silence, and speaking out 

that violence towards women should be treated as human rights abuse. The 

newspaper deeply shocked all of us. I thought ‘what was I doing in Beijing?’ 


The NGO Forum 95 Beijing Executive Committee and Okifuren held a press 

conference the next day at 10.30am. 7 In contrast with the silence in Okinawa, major 

TV networks such as NHK, BBC, and about thirty other media companies already 

knew about the incident and the press conference was widely reported to the world. 

The women’s delegation to Beijing was the first among Okinawan anti-base 

organizations to take public action on this rape case. After they raised their voice, 

the floodgate opened for other Okinawan protesters’ collective action. 

Then Governor Ōta demanded that the Japanese government should reform the 

Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), originally made in 1960. On 20 September, 

Ōta went to Tokyo to negotiate directly with the Foreign Minister for the revision 

of SOFA and a correction of the disproportionate military presence on Okinawan 

soil compared to the Japanese mainland. In particular, the focus was on Article 17, 

Section 5 (c) of the current SOFA, which prevented local police holding Marine 

soldiers in custody. This clause symbolized the power imbalance between the US 

military and the local residents, unchanged since the period of direct US military 

rule. It was this SOFA section that helped so many US military personnel charged 

with crimes to flee and discontinue the criminal cases. 

On 28 September 1995, Governor Ōta Masahide announced he would not sign 

the land lease contract on behalf of the 35 landowners who had refused to consent 

to the compulsory use of their properties (35,200 square metres) by the US military. 

These compulsory leases had been authorized according to the US Military Special 

Measures Law (see Chapter 7), and were about to expire in May 1997 and March 

1996. 8 According to the Law, the mayors of the municipalities of the properties were 

responsible for signing on behalf of the landowners. As an expression of opposition 

to the US military occupation, politically progressive mayors of Naha City, Okinawa 

City, Ginowan City, Chatan town, and Yomitan village had rejected this procedure. 

Then the authority next rung up was the Governor. 9 It was the first case in which a 

Governor had refused to authorize leases for the anti-war landowners’ land for 

military use. 10 Ōta became Governor in 1990, supported by the local anti-base 

political parties and workers’ unions, on the ground of his anti-military policy. Since 

the Cold War ceased, ‘realignment and reduction’ of the US bases in Okinawa had 

been a public request of the Ōta administration. Ōta’s refusal to authorize the leases 

was consistent with his anti-base and anti-war policy thus far. 11 

Funabashi (1997) explains that the post-Cold-War security alliance between 

the US and Japan had been far from a steady relationship: after the Soviet Union 

lowered its profile as an immediate military threat, the rationale for the security 

alliance had reduced to regional, remote, or hypothetical military threats, namely, 

China and North Korea. For the ‘drifting’ alliance that needed constant redefinition 

of its reason to exist, the 1995 rape case of a girl and the anti-base sentiment in 

Okinawa almost created a crisis (Funabashi 1997).


The Okinawan Prefecture Citizens’ Rally of 21 October attended by more 

than 85,000 locals and the governor’s refusal to sign the lease contracts were 

powerful reminders of the level of Okinawans’ antipathy against the US military’s 

crimes and accidents, which had been barely contained by the Japanese government’s 

generous financial compensation. At the ‘O21’ rally, the Okinawan 

people’s voices were crystallized into two demands: a review of the SOFA (Status 

of Forces Agreement) and a significant reduction of the bases. On this day, the 

citizens’ long-term grievances against humiliation, daily pressure, inconvenience, 

danger, and incursions caused by the US military presence was expressed as 

one ‘Okinawan’ voice: the third ‘big wave’ of the Okinawans’ united protest had 

come. 

With Ōta’s refusal of land lease authorization and the 21 October rally, the ‘usual 

suspects’ of anti-base protest joined the protest with more vigour. The progressive 

politicians and political party and union members all demanded a major cutback 

of military presence in Okinawa and a revision of SOFA. For example, Rengō 

Okinawa (a workers’ unions’ coalition with 48,000 members and affiliated to the 

Japan Social Democratic Party) conducted a hunger strike in front of the Okinawa 

Prefecture Hall for 31 hours (Ryūkyū Shimpō 21 November 1995). One-tsubo antiwar 

landowners, the Peace Movement Centre, and other unions and citizens’ groups 

held protest rallies and street demonstrations, chanting ‘Get rid of the military 

bases!’ ‘Persecute Murayama!’ (he was the Prime Minister) and ‘Ganbarō’ (never 

give up!). The rally of 85,000 citizens was a political opportunity to make demands 

vis-à-vis the Japanese government. The protesters’ demands were consistent with 

what they had worked for since the reversion; so was their strategy to use the formal 

procedures of democracy justified by the ‘constitutional’ framing, supporting the 

anti-war landowners’ disobedience. 

Another important product of the ‘third wave’ was that the anti-war landowners 

finally gained wide recognition for their long-term battle, following the Governor’s 

refusal to authorize land leases. On 1 April 1996, the US military’s legal occupation 

of a plot of land in Yomitan village, owned by an anti-war landowner, expired. A 

supermarket owner and part-time peace guide, Chibana Shōichi (see Chapter 3), 

who had been arrested and jailed for burning a hinomaru flag at a national sporting 

event (see Chibana 1992, Field 1993), was the anti-war landowner of property in 

a US military facility, the Sobe Communications Site. 12 In May, Chibana and 30 

family members and friends, including a famous Okinawan folk music star, Kina 

Shōkichi, were allowed to enter their property for two hours in the Site where 

entrance had been forbidden since the end of the Battle of Okinawa. They had a 

picnic, and performed music and dance, and publicized the US military’s illegal 

use of properties. Arasaki observes: 

The landowners had been generally regarded as morally respectable, but 

exceptionally stubborn and strange, generally with a negative connotation. 

Since last year, however, I have strongly felt that the Okinawan general public’s 

attitude towards the anti-war landowners turned positive. I am convinced that 

the anti-war landowners themselves are feeling that way. Finally, they must


have felt proud of being anti-war landowners. Their battles have been rewarded 

marginally, if not entirely. 

(quoted in Zen’ei Staff, 1996: 97) 

A long-time anti-war landowner, Shimabukuro critically describes the lack of 

integrity of the Okinawan general public: 

Many people shamelessly became sympathetic towards us, including those 

who had been receiving money from the government for co-operating with 

the US bases. Some apologised to me for not having been more understanding 

in the past, and said, ‘We have thought you (the anti-war landowners) were 

an intimidating bunch’. At the 21 October rally they might have thought they 

were protesting, but would quickly change their minds when the supermarkets 

cut their prices because of the US bases. 


Also coming to a head was the Japanese government’s illegal occupation of the 

43.2 hectares, owned by 2,068 landowners, and 11.5 hectares owned by 575 

anti-war and One-tsubo anti-war landowners. The Prefecture Land Expropriation 

Committee was unlikely to reach a final decision as to whether and how many years 

the lease would be granted before 15 May 1997, when the legal lease would expire. 

However, the government avoided this by reforming the US Military Special 

Measures Law. 13 

In the aftermath of the rape case and the rally, Governor Ōta’s act of refusing 

proxy authorization of land leases obtained an enthusiastic support from Okinawan 

citizens. According to a Ryūkyū Shimpō survey (7 October 1995), 74.5 per cent of 

Okinawan adults supported the Governor’s refusal of land lease proxy authorization, 

and 80.5 per cent thought that the SOFA should be revised. 

Rengō Okinawa started a campaign in February 1996 for a prefecture-wide 

referendum on reduction of US military presence and SOFA, 14 which was the first 

attempt in Japan at a prefecture-level referendum. In Japan, a referendum is a formal 

political exercise, but it does not have binding power on the state. It was the 

expression of an Okinawan-specific commitment to the Constitution that defined 

the aim of the referendum: ‘To reform the current conditions of the US military 

bases, which prevent Okinawan citizens from enjoying the rights guaranteed by 

the Constitution’ (Rengō Okinawa 2001: 3). The referendum questions were, ‘Do 

you think the US military presence should be reduced?’ and ‘Do you think SOFA 

should be revised?’ Yet no concrete level of reduction was suggested. Furthermore, 

the referendum was not quite a unified, all-island campaign. The LDP members 

called for boycotting the referendum, for fear of damaging Okinawa’s relationships 

with Tokyo and its policy of favouring the Okinawan economy (Okinawa Times 

27 August 1996). The referendum revealed the familiar internal opposition among 

conservative and progressive political forces. 15 

In December, with Ōta not budging from his refusal, Prime Minister Murayama 

Tomi’ichi, leader of the Japan Social Democratic Party, 16 decided to authorize the


land lease himself. Simultaneously, he sued Ōta for neglecting his professional 

duty. In March 1996, the Fukuoka High Court ordered the Governor to authorize 

the non-contract landowners’ land lease. At the Supreme Court, the Governor asked 

for Okinawa’s predicament to be seen as Japan’s predicament, citing Okinawans’ 

‘constitutionally guaranteed property rights, people’s rights to a life in peace, and 

[the prefecture’s] right to home rule’ (Ōta 2000a: 213). 

if the Mutual Security Treaty is important for Japan . . . responsibility and 

burdens under the treaty should be assumed by all Japanese citizens. If not, 

many of my people point out that the outcome is discriminatory and goes 

counter to [the principle of] equality under the law. 

(Ōta 2000a: 212) 

Ōta’s position has been underpinned by the ‘constitutional’ framing ‘although the 

principles of the Constitution are not fully realized, they are the most important 

foundation not only for Okinawa and Japan but for humanity in general’ (Ōta 1969: 

100). The Supreme Court, however, dismissed Ōta’s appeal on 28 August 1996. 

At the same time, the Japanese government set up a ‘special adjustment budget’ 

of ¥5 billion to reinvigorate the Okinawan economy. In early September 1996, 

Ōta finally agreed to authorize the leases. The event immediately followed the 

Prefecture referendum of 8 September 1996. The voting rate (59.53 per cent) was 

unexpectedly low, even though 89 per cent of those who voted agreed with the 

reduction of US forces and revision of SOFA. Ōta’s decision disappointed many 

anti-base activists and cooled many Okinawan citizens’ resurgent interest in the 

struggle against the bases. Arguably these two events induced a sudden plunge of 

the momentum of the ‘third wave’. Here, the ‘third wave’ seemed to have settled. 

Yet it had not. A much tougher and longer period of collective action against the 

plan to relocate the base in Futenma following the rape case was about to start. 

The wave has, however, been much less spectacular and called for more dogged 

commitment. This period will be discussed in the second half of this chapter. 

The women’s movement and the myth of a unified ‘Okinawan 

Struggle’ 

In the context of racial, national, and ethnic conflict, rape has a political implication 

of dominance. Cockburn (1998: 223–4) explains: ‘“Rape” is used metaphorically 

to convey that feeling of abuse, as when someone or some group penetrates, invades 

and damages the space (the land, perhaps, or culture, or thoughts) in which another 

or others dwell.’ Angst (2001) points out that precisely because of this effect of 

rape that elevates the physical violation into the abstract, the main public concern 

to do with the rape case in September 1995 was sidetracked from the issue of 

women’s rights as human rights; quickly, the central issue switched to the US 

military’s violence against ‘Okinawa’. 

The 1995 rape awakened the myth of a united ‘Okinawan Struggle’ from a long 

hibernation. It is not accidental that, at the 21 October rally, the 1955 Yumiko-chan


incident (see Chapter 5) – a brutal rape and murder of a six-year-old girl by a US 

serviceman – was repeatedly cited. At the Prefecture Citizens’ Rally following 

this incident, it was the unruly foreign military authoritarian regime that victimized 

the Okinawan women and children, which was relayed to the all-island uprising 

against the US land policy in 1956. At the 1995 rally, Ōta and other Okinawan 

activists described their deep regret for not being able to protect the dignity of an 

‘innocent girl’ from the semi-permanent US military presence. Both rape cases 

are told and retold in the historical narrative of Okinawa’s marginalization, given 

equivalent significance to the Ryūkyū disposal, the typhoon of steel, separation 

from Japan on 28 April 1952, and so on. These rape cases are a necessary component 

of the myth of an ‘Okinawan Struggle’. 

This idea of rape of a girl as a violation of a body politic by foreign powers is 

explained by Angst (2001: 262) in terms of the patriotic ‘trope’ that requires virgin 

daughters under protection of a patriarchal family nation, which is problematic for 

feminists. The purified image of a girl victim is predicated on discrimination against 

other ‘not pure’ local women, engaged in prostitution. Takazato also addresses 

this discrimination revealed by the absence of any Prefecture Citizens’ Rally 

when ‘professional’ women are raped or even killed (Interview, March 1999). Yet 

Takazato herself has adapted a nationalist metaphor of Okinawa as ‘a daughter sold 

to the US by Japan, for its economic prosperity’ (1996: 28). Her metaphor agrees 

with the language of ‘sexual double standard in which raped girls are “ruined,” 

although it presents that loss in the name of the greater good’ (Angst 2001: 252). 

Angst (2001: 261) interprets Takazato’s puzzling use of the metaphor as a strategic 

criticism of the state ‘using the very language (of patriarchal nationalism)’. 

Another interpretation can be added here: the metaphor of rape as a marginalization 

of entire ‘Okinawa’ was too vital to be dismissed for the continuing 

importance of the myth of a unified ‘Okinawan Struggle’. It would be difficult for 

the Okinawan women to be part of the community of protest, without relating to 

the rape cases as part of the historical marginalization of ‘Okinawa’. Takazato and 

her colleagues are feminists but they must be – or appear to be – engaged in the 

struggle against marginalization of ‘Okinawans’, as well as ‘women’. The voice 

raised by the women did enhance the international profile of the ‘Okinawan’ problem. 

To the male-dominated community of protest, women’s participation was beneficial, 

to the extent that it contributed to keeping the myth of the ‘Okinawan Struggle’ alive. 

After all, the female activists call themselves ‘unai’ – a local-specific religious word 

traditionally believed to protect males in their fishing trips and, in today’s context, 

political struggle. By accepting ‘Okinawa’ as Japan’s daughter sold to the US and 

similar metaphors to this, the women strategically maintained a united front with 

other ‘Okinawan’ struggles. 

The development of a women’s movement, however, inevitably entailed 

confronting the male-oriented order in Okinawan society, and in the community 

of protest. Following the 1995 rape, former Okinawa Times editor Yui Akiko 

repeatedly heard male activists’ criticisms directed at the women’s protest: for 

‘reducing everything into the problem of men’s violence’; ‘confusing the real issue 

of the US military, bases and Okinawa’ (Yui, 1999: 14, emphasis added). Takazato


was also yelled at by a male activist at a march in front of the Kadena Air Base: 

‘Don’t try to trivialize things by making this all into a “violation of women’s human 

rights”; the important issue here is the Security Treaty!’ (Takazato 1995a: 3). 

Takazato reflects: 

In the past, Okinawan reversion activists used to say, ‘Okinawa is a pain in 

the little finger of a body of Japan’ to describe how the suffering of Okinawans 

was ignored by the Japanese. But I have always wondered, in that ‘pain in 

the little finger’, how much of the women’s pain has been represented? It is 

difficult for people to understand that women’s human rights are a political 

issue, because there are always ‘bigger’ ‘more important’ issues. Prostitution 

has always been a social issue, but not presented to the public in the same 

way as the compulsory military occupation of land, or US plane crashes. 

(Interview, March 1999) 

The above reflections highlight the fact that the idea of an Okinawan struggle itself 

has been male-centred, and also that a rather conservative culture exists in the 

community of protest that tends to resist newcomers and drastically novel ideas. 17 

Interestingly, however, the type of criticism Yui and Takazato heard on ‘reducing 

everything into women’s issues’ is hardly ever found today. Male activists in 

political parties, unions or informal protest groups praise the public presence and 

pro-activeness demonstrated by the Okinawan women after the rape incident, with 

a gratitude for ‘energizing’ the community of protest as well as advancing the 

international profile of the ‘Okinawan’ – though not women’s – problem. ‘Women’ 

have been normalized in the community of protest; they are now ‘usual suspects’ 

at protest scenes in Okinawa. 

An OWAAMV member Utsumi (1996) contends that (men’s) praise for women’s 

movement is often a cover-up of the still marginalized women’s position in society. 

Surprisingly low priority is given to women’s right to safety from sexual violence 

in Okinawan public policy today. In 2001, REIKO, the first rape crisis centre ever 

in Okinawa, and the product of the lobbying of the Beijing Delegate’s request, 

could operate only six hours a week owing to insufficient funding from the 

Prefecture. 18 The OWAAMV members have continued protest activities against 

military violence and the patriarchal society that marginalizes gender issues. 

Because of the dishonour associated with ‘being the rape victim’, and the 

system’s lack of protection of victims’ rights and privacy, the official statistics on 

rape grossly underrepresent the actual rape cases in Okinawa. From her experience 

as a women’s counsellor, Takazato is convinced that at least 90 per cent of women 

do not press charges for fear of investigation and humiliation in court (Interview, 

March 1996). When asked by foreign journalists about the figure, the OWAAMV 

members were frustrated with the official figure (110 cases since 1972), which did 

not represent the reality. An important ongoing project of the OWAAMV has been 

to collect more correct statistics on US military-related sexual violence in postwar 

Okinawa, relying on oral history and biographical records kept at the community 

levels, such as town and village libraries.

Earlier in September after the rape case, the OWAAMV members held a public 

rally with 250 participants, who held microphones and talked about their 

experiences to do with gendered violence and military bases. In this occasion there 

were women or families who came and spoke about their experience of rape that 

they never reported or talked to anyone about for years (Ryūkyū Shimpō 

24 September 1995). The OWAAMV created a similar forum of communication 

and informal discussion on gender, the military, and sexual violence in a twelveday 

sit-in protest in front of the Prefecture Hall, in which more than seven hundred 

joined. Takazato recalls the relaxed atmosphere of their tent, never short of food 

– with tempura and snacks made at locals’ homes and brought in for the participants 

– very unlike that of Rengō Okinawa, conducting a serious hunger-strike right 

next to them (Interview, March 1999). 

In February 1996, 13 members of the OWAAMV made a two-week trip entitled 

‘The Okinawan Women’s Peace Caravan in America’. The members visited 28 

NGO groups and several universities in San Francisco, Washington, DC, New York, 

and Hawaii, where they gave talks, discussion sessions, and seminars. They took 

the work-in-progress rape statistics with them, and lobbied state and federal senators 

and representatives (San Francisco Chronicle 5 February 1996). They also met their 

feminist friends and academics Kirk, Okazawa-Rey, and Betty Reardon, 19 who 

shared the Okinawan members’ intellectual ground from which they argued against 

the military: they questioned the priority placed on national security, above the 

security of individuals, including women, focusing on telling the Okinawan situation 

as widely as possible, by talking directly with as many US citizens as possible 

(Okinawan Women Act Against Military and Violence 1996: 1). In the second ‘peace 

caravan’ in October 1998, they visited San Diego, and saw the US navy and air force 

facilities, and met local environmental groups and Chalmers Johnson, the chief editor 

of the Japan Policy Research Institute and a keen supporter of the Okinawan women. 

These trips were made possible by the networks between Okinawan women and 

American NGOs expanded through long-term personal contacts, campaigning 

techniques, and information about the military bases in the US. 

Today, a highly developed division of labour exists in the community of protest. 

Those Okinawan activists who ‘do gender stuff’ in Okinawa and those who do 

not usually engage in separate activities. This also reflects the splintering and 

diversification within the community of protest. There is, however, more to the 

impact of women’s movement than the new division of labour and diversification. 

This needs to be explained further in the context of the anti-heliport struggle (which 

continues today), as well as the survival of the myth of a united ‘Okinawan Struggle’. 

Unai and the dugong: new social movements and the 

surviving myth of the ‘Okinawan Struggle’ 


After the fever of the ‘third wave’ all-island struggle subsided with the referendum 

and Ōta’s authorization of land leases, the community of protest entered a new 

marathon phase. The anti-heliport struggle is the most recent, ongoing phase of 

protest in Okinawa.


Futenma, SACO and the heliport 

In April 1996, new Prime Minister Hashimoto announced that the US and Japanese 

governments had agreed to close the ageing Futenma US Marine Corps Air Base, 

used since the end of WWII, located in the middle of Ginowan City. The Special 

Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), comprising US and Japanese diplomats 

and high-ranking officials, also announced the plans to close ten other US military 

sites. The plan included the relocation of the live fire training across Road 104 in 

Kin Town, and the ‘drop’ trainings using parachutes in Yomitan village and the 

Naha Military Port. 20 Closure of the Futenma Air Station was regarded as the most 

urgent item by Hashimoto, the US official and Ōta. 21 It epitomizes the unwanted 

US military presence, located in the middle of crowded residential districts of 

Ginowan City where 84,000 people live. Combat helicopters train and fly over 

this city, where up to fifty aircraft crashes had been recorded since 1972. Fifteen 

other primary and secondary schools surround the bases, where the noise of helicopters 

and planes regularly interrupts classes (Fukuchi 1996: 21–2, 52–4). The 

SACO plan of reducing US military facilities including Futenma mark a significant 

consequence of the anti-base mass rally in October 1995 and the ‘third wave’ allisland 

struggle. 

For the anti-base activists and locals who wished for the reduction of US military 

bases, the news of Futenma’s return, however, was a small consolation considering 

its condition: the construction of a new base with equivalent facilities and functions 

of Futenma, with upgraded facilities somewhere in Okinawa. That is, Futenma 

would be relocated, not returned to Okinawa, to the disappointment and outrage 

of many Okinawans. The question was where to? 

In September 1996, Prime Minister Hashimoto announced a plan to construct a 

‘sea-based heliport’, which had been suggested by the US state officials, as an 

alternative facility (Okinawa Taimususha 1998: 11). The word ‘heliport’ belied the 

scale of this alternative facility with a mile-long runway, which could accommodate 

accident-prone MV-22 Osprey helicopters (Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs 

1997). On 2 December 1996, SACO released a final report on the ‘reorganization 

and reduction’ plan of 11 US military facilities (Bureau of East Asian and Pacific 

Affairs 1997). The US military facilities were mainly to be relocated with upgrading 

within Okinawa. For the relocation of Futenma, the SACO final report designated 

the east coast of Nago, next to Camp Schwab, as the desirable location for a new 

sea-based air station. 22 On this decision, Prime Minister Hashimoto commented, 

‘the government would not force the issue, but try to solicit the consensus of local 

municipalities’ (Okinawa Times Weekly, Monday Evening Edition 9 December 

1996, emphasis added). Since the SACO final report, the Japanese government 

has explicitly promised to bring quick and visible material benefits for the local 

economy where the US base facilities are planned to be relocated. As always, many 

Okinawan residents – although most wished to have no military bases in the island 

– saw that these benefits were crucial and necessary to sustain the local economy. 

Thus the central government managed to convert the united ‘Okinawan’ political 

opposition against the government into internal localized conflicts against pro-base 

and anti-base Okinawan residents.


Consequently, the anti-base movements were organized in different towns and 

villages. Simultaneously with the struggle against the relocation of Futenma to 

Nago, anti-base collective action was organized against individual relocations, for 

instance of the Naha Military Port to Urasoe City. There is no single organization 

to control and manage all anti-base activities in Okinawa. In the post-SACO period, 

the protest actors inevitably splintered into smaller, multiple groups. Thereafter, 

anti-base protest became geographically scattered and regionalized. Among others, 

Nago became the major location of anti-base opposition in the phase after the 

SACO report. 

Organizing a ‘citizens’ movement’ for referendum 

Nago City (with a population of 57,434 in 2004) is a major city in Okinawa Island’s 

northern region, which covers a vast area from Kin Town and Onna village to 

Kunigami village, an area that Okinawans call ‘yanbaru’ (mountain and forest) 

(Map E). Yanbaru is a region distinguished from the big city in the south like 

Naha, for its abundant, distinctive natural environment. It is where the rare species 

of birds, animals, and plants are found in the subtropical forest with world heritage 

flora and fauna, including endangered species. 23 Yanbaru has been a holiday 

destination for Okinawan residents living in the city. On the other hand, in terms 

of industrialization, the northern region in general has been considered to lag behind, 

and has not benefited from the state-funded industrial programmes and schemes 

which bring in employment, public works, and ensuing short-term economic 

returns. Yanbaru and the southern regions of Okinawa are quite distant from each 

other, and socio-economically and culturally carry distinct senses of locality. 24 

The planned site of the offshore base was adjacent to Camp Schwab, located in 

Henoko hamlet on the east side of Nago City (Map E). 25 Henoko is a district in the 

Kushi region on the east coast of Nago (population 4,661). All the 13 districts in 

Kushi suffer from declining agriculture, and a shrinking, ageing population. 

Residents in these districts still abide by centuries-old traditional rules and customs, 

such as annual spiritual rituals, as well as those to do with production and consumption. 

26 All of these communities are dependent on special government funding, 

awarded to the municipalities located around military base facilities. Henoko, 

among others, has hosted Camp Schwab since 1956, a US Marine Corps base, and 

a major ammunition storage area. First the residents opposed the construction of 

the Camp Schwab. However, it introduced electricity, water, and a sewerage system, 

and provided job opportunities for the local economy in construction, restaurants 

and bars, and other businesses. During the Vietnam War, US dollars flowed into 

the Henoko commercial area (Okinawa Taimususha 1998: 49). Job seekers came 

from outside, which transformed the dynamics of traditional hamlet life, and 

Henoko has become, and still is, the biggest hamlet in the region, with 1,646 

residents in April 2005. 27 Today, the bars and restaurants in the once-thriving 

Henoko entertainment area are mostly closed. Importantly, Henoko obtains more 

than ¥100 million rent from the government for land used by Camp Schwab, as 

well as various other funds related to hosting military facilities. 28 Jobs are scarce


for young people, who increasingly emigrate. Agriculture has declined, as there 

are fewer people under 60. Only the construction industry has grown steadily, and 

has provided jobs (mostly temporary or part-time) for the remaining working 

population. These socio-economic situations had reinforced dependence on the 

military. In Henoko, it has been extremely difficult for the residents to express 

opposition to the heliport construction. 29 

In January 1997, nevertheless, 27 residents who opposed the heliport construction 

formed a committee later known as the Henoko Life Protection Society (Henoko 

Inochi o Mamoru Kai). The Society is solely based on the identity of ‘Henoko 

residents’, and stresses its non-affiliation to any political organizations or ideologies. 

Distinguished from unions and party-affiliated opposition, the residents’ bodies 

against the ‘heliport’ construction are described as a ‘shimin undō’. Its ‘struggle 

hut’ stands on the beachside, right across the planned construction site in Ōura Bay. 

The most dedicated and determined opponents in Henoko have been the elderly 

members in their eighties and nineties. Their motivation is their experience and 

survival in the Battle of Okinawa. It is realistic for them to anticipate another war 

following the construction of a new base: they have seen it before. An elderly 

Henoko woman recalls the painful memories of war, and cannot bear to think her 

grandchildren may suffer the same in the future (Higa et al. 2000: 40). Like the 

older activists of the Kin Bay and Shiraho struggles, elderly Nago people survived 

food shortages during and after the war by catching fish in the ocean. 30 For those 

who know their lives have been protected by the endowments from nature in 

yanbaru, to build a major Marine Air Station in the ocean is equivalent to suffocating 

their source of life. One elderly woman comments, ‘I wonder why people 

in the south don’t oppose the construction. During the Battle of Okinawa, the 

southerners escaped to yanbaru and survived, because of the abundant natural 

resources. Their drinking water still comes from yanbaru too’ (Higa et al. 2000: 

40). Their stories connect today’s struggle to the war experience, part of the 

Okinawan historical narrative of marginalization. Today, the elderly members in 

their eighties and nineties (though many have health problems) are still the 

cornerstone of the Henoko Life Protection Society and the 24-hour sit-in since 

April 2004. 

Mayor of Nago City Higa Tetsuya was initially opposed to the relocation. 31 Yet 

in April 1997, Higa reversed his opposition and officially accepted the preliminary 

survey of the planned heliport construction site. Obviously, the reason was the 

prospect of increased special subsidies from the central government. After hearing 

this, Governor Ōta – officially claiming he would not interfere with the decision 

to accept the heliport – promised Higa increased prefecture budgets for the northern 

region, indirectly approving the survey. The ‘stimulation of the local economy’ 

was a magic phrase that appealed to those in the construction industry and small 

businesses. 

Ignored was the will of the opposing residents. The opponents reacted, with a 

call for a Nago City referendum. 

The Okinawa Prefecture Labour Union Committee (Hokubu Chikurō) held a 

rally at the Workers’ Centre in Nago Central Business District, and proposed a


referendum. Four labour unions based in Nago district formed the Five Party 

Coalition (Goshakyō) in February 1997. 32 The Okinawa Peace Centre, a loose 

Okinawa-wide coalition of labour unions (see Chapter 7), joined the Coalition in 

order to bring in the support of other trade unions from Naha and other areas in 

Okinawa. The aim of the Coalition was ‘to form solidarity with the Henoko Life 

Protection Society and to obtain [external] support to stop the heliport construction, 

prefecture-wide and nationwide’ (Hokubuchiku RōdōKumiai Kyōgikai 1999: 87). 

The unions were skilled and experienced to mobilize union members’ presence at 

the scene of protest, and to use media reports to publicize their opposition in 

other parts of Okinawa. When the Naha Defence Facilities Bureau conducted a 

preliminary inspection of the planned offshore heliport construction site, the 

Coalition and the Henoko Life Protection Society members set up picket fences 

and a ‘surveillance tent’, and protest placards with anti-heliport messages such as 

‘Do Not Disturb Our Sleep’ and ‘Nature, Life and Health: Our Treasure’ (Okinawa 

Times Evening Edition 7 May 1997). 33 The workers’ unions played an important 

role in starting a local opposition, using their trademark mobilizing capacities. 

In late April, an informal discussion forum entitled ‘Absolutely No to Heliport’ 

was held at the Nago City Community Centre. At the forum, an anti-base union 

member from Ginowan City, where Futenma is located, reported the reality of living 

next to the Futenma Air Station. The forum did not take the standard style of 

meetings where a series of anti-base organizations’ representatives gave speeches. 

The attendants discussed the possibility of demanding the mayor’s resignation 

and the Nago residents’ referendum on relocation. One attender comments, 

‘Ordinary people were talking about things freely as you would in everyday life. 

I felt, in this atmosphere, I could be part of it [the anti-heliport faction]’ (Ueyama 

et al. 2001: 37). Shortly after, the Society of Nago Citizens Opposed to the Heliport 

(Heliport Iranai Nago Shimin no Kai) was born. 

On 28 April 1997, another individual-based organization, the All-Nago Citizens’ 

Group against the Heliport (Heliport Kichi o Yurusanai Min-na no Kai), was 

formed. Its 115 members emphasized a commitment to the principle of citizencentred 

decision-making. Their slogan, ‘An important decision has to be made by 

everyone’ (Heliport Kichi o Yurusanai Min-na no Kai 1999: 85), was later applied 

by all the referendum supporters. This group emphasized that the call for 

referendum was a commitment to the principle of participatory democracy and 

local autonomy. 

Unlike in Henoko, residents of other districts in the sparsely populated Kushi 

region were predominantly opposed to the heliport. Henoko, and other two districts 

in the Kushi region, have received substantial incomes from being adjacent to Camp 

Schwab. The other ten districts, however, have benefited significantly less, although 

located close to Camp Schwab and other US military facilities. The planned 

site for the new offshore base in Henoko is only 5 kilometres from Sedake district 

(population 522). The new base would also affect Sedake residents’ lives 

significantly, with noise and effluent into the ocean. It took much longer for the 

residents in these districts to organize an anti-heliport group, partly because 

residents in these districts had never been involved in residents’ movements before.


On 12 October 1997, the first meeting of the Group of 10 Districts North of Futami 

against the Heliport (Heli Kichi Iranai Futami Ihoku Jukku no Kai, referred to as 

Jukkuno Kai) was attended by 500 people, a quarter of the population. 

As in Henoko, the elderly population were prominent opponents in these districts. 

However, as Spencer points out (2003: 129), it was the Jukkuno Kai members 

who were most committed to foregrounding the theme of environmental protection, 

amongst all the anti-heliport groups in Nago. Much younger than most of the 

Henoko Life Protection Society members, Jukkuno Kai members were also more 

pressingly confronted with the issues of how to make a living and developing an 

industry in a rural economy, without relying on the state-funded public works, 

rent from the military or special subsidies tied to military bases. The population 

was declining in this area, with shrinking agriculture and the younger population 

moving away. ‘Nature’ was the only special asset they had. Yet as in Shiraho, it 

was hard for the people who never lived outside yanbaru to see the special value 

in their natural environment. Migrants from urban Naha and yamato could often 

more clearly articulate the preciousness of the pristine mountains. This is why 

migrants, who moved to yanbaru in search of a better quality of life, have often 

been the most dedicated opponents in the anti-heliport struggle. In the process of 

rediscovering the value of the natural environment and lifestyle of eastern Nago, 

the Jukkuno Kai members held a symposium on ‘sustainable development in 

Okinawa’ with Ritsumeikan and Hiroshima University researchers. The idea of 

affluence was redefined. Self-reliance based on the pride in local-specific natural 

environment and lifestyle was placed above the government-funded industrialization 

destructive to nature. 34 The Jukkuno Kai members started cultivating 

ecotourism by starting a company Eco-Net Chura, introducing visitors to yanbaru 

life – walking in the pristine mountains, forests, sleeping and gorges, under the 

adan (screwy pine) trees, watching sea turtle babies hatch, catching wild boars, 

learning yanbaru folk music, making their own tofu with stone tools and living 

without electricity. The idea of Kin Bay’s Asato Seishin continues to live in the 

development of collective identity of residents’ collective action in opposition to 

the heliport construction. The Nago anti-heliport struggle has been regionalized 

and splintered, yet connected to the tradition of a greater ‘Okinawan’ struggle. 

Since a dugong was witnessed off the coast of northeastern Okinawa during the 

state’s preliminary inspection of the planned ‘heliport’ construction site in May 

1997, 35 Jukkuno Kai’s Higashionna Takuma and colleagues have campaigned for 

dugong conservation as part of the protest against heliport construction. With about 

thirty other Jukkuno Kai members and environmentalists from Naha, including 

Takaesu Asao and Makishi Yoshikazu, who had campaigned in the Shiraho 

struggle, he started diving regularly to survey traces of dugongs’ sea grass grazing. 

More dugongs have been witnessed since then. Discovery of a world heritage 

species, Okinawan dugongs, has boosted the newfound pride in the local-specific 

natural asset of yanbaru. They seemed to be doing their share of work in a campaign 

to stop a huge military facility in their habitat. The whole Nago anti-heliport 

community embraced Okinawa dugongs. Ever since, they have been on the 

pamphlets, signboards, and T-shirts opposing the heliport.


In June 1997, Nago-based anti-base groups and organizations formed a coalition 

of 21 organizations, 36 the Nago Citizens Referendum Promotion Council (Nago 

Shimin Jūmin Tōhyō Suishin Kyōgikai). The Society of Nago Citizens Opposed to 

the Heliport played a central role in the coalition formation. The newly emerged 

citizens’ groups joined forces with progressive political parties, and workers’ 

unions. The Referendum Promotion Council became the official initiator of the 

Referendum Regulation (Shimin Tōhyō Jorei), and started collecting signatures 

on 9 July. The minimum requirement was 757 signatures from Nago residents, 

according to the one-fiftieth of the population mark; however, the Council set a 

goal to collect 12,616 signatures, one-third of the population. 37 In August, the 

Council submitted a request for a Referendum Regulation with 19,735 signatures. 

As a counter-measure, the LDP party members of the City Assembly submitted a 

modified draft for the Referendum Regulation: instead of choice between ‘approve’ 

or ‘object to’ the construction of the offshore heliport in Nago, the modified 

referendum question increased the options: (1) agree with the construction plan, 

(2) agree because environmental measures and economic improvement can be 

expected, (3) oppose, (4) oppose because environmental and economic improvements 

cannot be expected. Thus, with the modification agreed at the City Assembly, 

the Referendum Regulation was passed. The insertion of ‘environmental and 

economic improvements’ was instigated by the pro-base LDP members to make 

it easier for the Nago residents to vote ‘yes’ to the heliport construction. The 

campaign for ‘yes’ votes by the Nago Citizens’ Organization for Revitalization and 

Stimulation (Kasseika Sokushin Shimin no Kai) also started, with abundant 

government funding. 

The Society of Nago Citizens Opposed to the Heliport, the All-Nago Citizens’ 

Group against the Heliport, and also, the Henoko Life Protection Society, defined 

themselves as a ‘citizens’ movement body’ (shimin undōtai) of free-willed 

individuals. They requested the trade unions and political parties to ‘step back and 

restrain themselves’ in consciously establishing a citizens’ movement (Heliport 

Iranai Nago Shimin no Kai 1999: 100). The tendency – earlier recognized in the 

Kin Bay and Shiraho struggle – of more experienced and established political 

organizations to dominate residents’ movements had been recognized as a problem, 

as it alienates other citizens. 

The Referendum Promotion Council emphasized the importance of solidarity 

among parties and unions and the three citizens’ movement organizations (Nago 

Shimin Tōhyō Hōkokushū Kankō Iinkai 1999: 87). Shimin in this context signifies 

ordinariness, non-affiliation to any political organization, and a non-ideological 

position. The self-definition of an organization as a ‘citizens’ movement’ indicates 

the belief that opposition and protest of citizens’ organizations genuinely represent 

the locals, not being dominated by the interests of the established, professional 

organizations. This emphasis is reflected on the choice of Miyagi Yasuhiro – only 

37 years old and politically non-affiliated – as representative of the Referendum 

Promotion Council. 

The progressive political parties and unions, too, regarded the depoliticized image 

attached to the ‘citizens’ as a desirable new actor of the anti-base movement.


Aragaki Shigeo, Secretariat of the Okinawan Socialist Masses’ Party, witnessed 

and endorsed the changing role of political parties and trade unions in the Okinawan 

community of protest: 

The role of progressive political organisations that have long led struggles of 

the Okinawan people since the 1950s land dispute and the 1960s reversion 

movement is changing. Political parties and trade unions should no longer be 

leaders of the movement. The main players are now individual citizens with 

their own motivations to participate in the process of decision-making about 

an important matter. We need to be careful not to dominate the movement, 

and should be focusing on a supporting role. 

(Interview, May 1999) 

The changing self-definition of veteran anti-base unions and political party actors 

of the ‘Okinawan struggle’ signifies a development of tolerance towards diversity 

in the community of protest. It also suggests the formation of a new definition of 

relationships between ‘citizens’ movements’ and party politics or organizational 

interests, which posits the latter in a ‘supportive’ position. 

As elsewhere in Okinawa, labour unions have been prominent anti-base actors 

in northern Okinawa. Along with collective bargaining for better working conditions 

and pay, it has been a central commitment of the Okinawan labour union 

movement to pursue ‘anti-base’ and ‘anti-war’ activities since the 1960s during the 

reversion movement. An active executive member of regional workers’ unions in 

Nago is one such veteran anti-heliport activist who was a helmet-wearing student 

activist in the 1960s and believed Okinawans could get rid of the bases by going 

back to Japan. He still sees the current ‘Okinawan struggle’ as a continuation of 

the reversion movement: 

We are still trying to come to senses with the question, ‘What was reversion 

all about?’ Daily struggles in Okinawa are struggles against the continuing 

marginalisation of Okinawa by the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty, despite 

Okinawa’s reversion to Japan and entitlement to its Constitution. Today, in 

the anti-heliport struggle, the role of the workers’ unions and political parties 

should be ‘supporters’ of the residents in the community. On the other hand, 

the unions are still the main actor in the citizens’ movements (shimin undō) 

in Okinawa. 

(Interview, February 2002) 

With a central position given to the individual non-affiliated citizens, the whole 

anti-heliport struggle in Nago has been often described as a ‘citizens’ movement’. 

However, there are still differences between the experienced members and 

newcomers within a coalition against the heliport. The progressive unions 

and political parties still play important roles in terms of mobilizing human and 

other resources and experience. Rather than trying to pressure each other to 

accept a certain strategy and methodology to forge ‘unity’, there seems to be a


greater range of specializations among divided actors within the community of 

protest. This inevitably requires a greater level of tolerance and respect for 

differences. 

Emergence of many women’s groups 

During the campaign for the referendum in Nago, a number of women-only groups 

emerged in protest against the ‘heliport’. It was primarily their sense of emergency 

against the construction of a new heliport that motivated this rush. It was also 

their expression of protest – albeit not an explicit or intentional one – against the 

dictatorial, unifying operating system of the ‘citizens’ movements’ or ‘anti-base 

organizations’ that flattened out individualities and differences under the influence 

of male-seniority rule. 

On the western side of Nago, during the summer of 1997, about twenty women 

who were campaigning for the referendum organized their own group. One of 

them says it was her first experience in joining any protest activity against the US 

military bases. When she started working with the Referendum Promotion Council 

members, she noticed that the campaign activities were conducted strictly under 

the instructions given by senior male members. In leaflets, posters, and speeches 

to the locals, the veteran activists who experienced the reversion movement in the 

1960s and 1970s preferred to use certain internal language popular amongst leftwing 

activists – such as ‘solidarity’, ‘anti-war’, ‘our sacred struggle’ – that sounded 

intimidating and off-putting to younger or inexperienced citizens. She made a 

suggestion: 

Using this kind of language may scare youngsters who may be thinking about 

the implications of the heliport issue in their own way, and may join some 

kind of collective action. Why don’t we try using normal language in daily 

conversation, for example, ‘no-one will find out whether you voted for or 

against the heliport?’ The veterans reminded me that I was only a novice, and 

should listen to the instructions of the more experienced members. But I was 

not alone. About twenty female members were feeling suffocated in the same 

way. So we organized our own group, Nuchi du Takara Woman Powers 

Yarukies (Yaruki means energy or motivation) and decided to go our own way. 

Elite members of the Council welcomed the formation of a newly sprouted 

women’s group, positively evaluating it as a vibrant new move that could 

contribute to the momentum for the referendum. The Council even spared 

campaign funding for the new group, and encouraged us to do whatever we 

wanted for the campaign, 38 such as making pamphlets with cartoon characters 

and daily conversational language that looked drastically different from the 

familiar, ‘progressive’ style that people were used to looking at. 


Residents in Ginowan City, where Futenma Air Station is located in central 

Okinawa (see Map E), see and hear the helicopters and combat aircraft training


daily. Kunimasa Mie has lived so close to the base that she could hear English 

conversations from the other side of the fence. The explosive engine noises, and 

neighbours’ physical and psychological problems, have been part of her life, and 

of those close to her. 

When I heard the news that the Futenma would eventually close and might be 

relocated off Henoko, I was really angry. I was also frightened to think about 

the possibility that the citizens’ referendum result might support the heliport 

construction, because of the local industrial sector’s commitment to it. I felt 

the need to inform the local people about what it was like to live next to the 

US Air Force. I looked around and suggested with the people around me to 

do something about it together. The ones who responded were all women, 

about ten of us, to start with. We had no representatives or rules. The name of 

the group was the Gathering of Kamadu (Kamadu-gua no Tsudoi), representing 

a traditional, common female name (literally meaning a big cooking pot). We 

did not want to use the word ‘kai’ (organization or group). We had never 

made pamphlets before but did our best and wrote our feelings and thoughts: 

we didn’t have time. 

(Kunimasa, Interview, May 1999) 

The 15 members of the Gathering of Kamadu were, unintentionally, all female. 

We did not know anyone in Nago, but we started by knocking on people’s 

doors and explained how noisy it was to live next to the air base. The people 

we talked to had no idea. It was my impression that men more often than not 

did not have time for us. Many of them did not take us seriously, or said, ‘Well, 

it’s our turn, isn’t it? In Ginowan, you have tolerated Futenma for more than 

fifty years. If the marine heliport is built, money will come in and the city will 

come to life. That’s how it works. There is nothing we can do about the new 

base,’ which was understandable because the boost in construction industry 

would affect their work. Women seemed to be ready to listen to us more 

carefully and to tell us they were worried, too. 

We had day jobs on weekdays so we travelled to Nago on Saturdays and 

Sundays with our pamphlets. One day we had a joint meeting with the Kushi 

residents living north of Futami (the Jukkuno Kai members). Again, attenders 

were all women. They said ‘we are embarrassed to see that Ginowan people 

were working so hard in our community, while we haven’t been doing 

anything’. So we started to hand out pamphlets and visited houses together at 

night after work and on weekends. In the process of hard work together, a 

bonding developed among us. 

(Kunimasa, Interview, May 1999) 

Subsequently, female members of Jukkuno Kai formed a small women-only group, 

Jannukai (Jan is a local word for ‘dugongs’). During the pre-referendum campaign, 

the women from Ginowan, Kushi, and Nago teamed up in pairs, and made door-

Figure 9.1 Koe, Koe, Koe (courtesy of Kunimasa Mie). Koe = Voice. The design and layout of the pamphlet suggest that it is handmade, not massproduced, 

conveying a sense of ordinariness and accessibility


to-door visits. Women’s participation in the campaign was recognized as the 

Referendum Promotion Council as ‘a decisive contribution to the result of the 

referendum’ (Nago Shimin Tōhyō Hōkokushū Kankō Iinkai 1999: 59). 

A number of female individuals in Okinawa were concerned with the consequences 

of the construction of the heliport. In Onna village, about ten politically 

inexperienced women (in their thirties and forties) organized to discuss the heliport 

issue, and joined the referendum campaign. Many had never had anything to do with 

politics before the heliport issue came up, and did not know how to start a ‘protest 

movement’. 39 The offices of established political parties and trade unions or any 

‘anti-military’, ‘peace’, ‘anti-Ampo’, ‘anti-war’ organizations sounded unapproachable 

to them. Those who found ‘approachable’ groups close to where they lived, 

for example, the Society of Nago Citizens Opposed to the Heliport, helped collect 

signatures or distributed pamphlets. In the process of trying out new experiences in 

political activities, female locals separately formed female-only anti-base groups. 

Kunimasa explains that communications and building teamwork were easier in 

women-only groups because they had so much in common. For example, their 

schedule similarly centred on children, annual rituals, and family affairs. Their handmade 

pamphlets were casual and informal but, unlike the stereotypical anti-base 

pamphlets, expressed their feelings. Their style of collective action particularly 

appealed to those who silently felt fearful of the new heliport and its effects, but did 

not have access to traditional anti-base protest organizations, or did not know exactly 

how to express their concerns. 

The meaning of ‘ordinary, inexperienced women’ becoming the subject of 

collective action was significant. Women had always been present in the ‘Okinawan 

struggle’, during the 1950s land struggle and the reversion movement. In the 

Okinawan community of anti-base protest, however, a majority played supportive 

roles as wives and secretaries of male protesters. Typical women’s roles would be 

to make tea and prepare meals in the protest offices, for example, and the wives of 

male activists contributed to their husbands’ protest by undertaking housework, 

part-time work, and child-rearing so that their husbands could focus on their 

protest activities until late at night. Most women accepted such roles and did not 

consider otherwise. 40 Kunimasa comments that Kamadus’ status as a small group 

of ‘ordinary’ women not accustomed to political action appealed to other protesters: 

the first step taken by obviously novice protesters sent a significant vibration to 

change the usual ways of collective action in the community of protest (Interview, 

May 1999). 

These new-found, female-only groups have not explicitly expressed a feminist 

message, apart from saying ‘we are concerned with the construction of a new 

base from a woman’s perspective, as mothers, for our children’, relying on a rather 

essentialist image of women. When they are given a public presence, Okinawan 

women activists are often represented as ‘mothers’, or romanticized carriers of 

a primordial religious aspect of life who are closer to nature, and antithetical to 

war and military bases. During the campaign against the bases, women’s messages 

as mothers against the new base construction were taken full advantage of by male 

members against the heliport, and were among the most oft-used expressions during


the referendum campaign. One member, who also joined the referendum campaign 

as an ‘ordinary, inexperienced activist’ and a mother, says, ‘These days, when I 

hear the word “mother” in relation to the base issue, I feel instantly exhausted; I 

feel my ‘motherhood’ is being used’ (Interview, February 2002). The internal 

gendered power relations and the role of women in subordinate positions within 

anti-base organisations had not become a major, public issue. 

Nevertheless, during the anti-heliport struggle, the anti-base women stepped into 

a new realm of collective action, which is to change, or be aware of, the gender 

dynamics within the community of protest, often expressed in humorous, casual 

comments such as: ‘We cannot leave this to the men any more’. Forming femaleonly 

groups separately was an act of ‘saying sayonara’ to a male and senioritydominated 

anti-base organization, without explicitly engaging in confrontation with 

specific individuals, namely, experienced male activists in their forties and fifties 

who were sometimes perceived to be limiting the expansion and improvement of 

the protest movement. Organizing female-only collective action separately from 

male counterparts was itself a political statement. It questioned the subject of 

‘citizens’ movements’, and the lack of recognition and tolerance towards diversity 

in the community of protest in Okinawa. 

Immediately before the referendum, women’s groups from all over Okinawa 

engaged in a joint activity. As the pro-base group’s campaign was becoming 

increasingly aggressive, the Kamadu, Jannukai, and the Jukkuno Kai members 

planned a rejuvenating demonstration called michi-junay, which looked like a 

traditional Okinawan eisah performance on the street. They were first worried 

how many people would turn up. However, to their deep encouragement, women’s 

groups including Yarukies, OWAAMV and groups from elsewhere, such as Onna 

village, came to join this michi-junay in Nago. This occasion was very special. This 

is when the ‘Reach to the Heart Women’s Voice (Kokoro ni Todoke Onna-tachi 

no Koe) Network’, an Okinawa-wide women’s network, was formed. Takaesu 

Ayano, a female coffee shop manager from southern Okinawa, says, ‘I could not 

just watch these women. They really sounded like they were personally addressing 

me, “Let’s do this together”‘ (Interview, May 1999). She contacted her female 

friends in Okinawa and in mainland Japan, and raised funds for a newspaper 

advertisement of women’s opposition to the heliport construction. The Network 

further engaged in humorous and inspiring collective action in Naha and Tokyo. 41 

The unai method of these women showed that it was all right to have no experience 

in political activism or not to belong to an established organization. As individuals 

with passion and ideas, it was also possible to bond and work together with people 

in different places, backgrounds, and opinions. It was the unai method that helped 

bind women from different locations within Okinawa. 

The referendum was held on 21 December 1997. The majority – 53.8 per cent 

– of Nago residents voted against the heliport construction. 42 Nevertheless, Nago 

Mayor Higa officially approved the heliport construction in Henoko on the condition 

that the state provide special assistance for the local economy, and then resigned 

on 24 December. The referendum result, earned by hard work and democratic 

procedures, was squashed by the state power. This event was traumatic, to put it


mildly, for the opponents and, at the same time, for the history of the Okinawan 

anti-base struggle. Since then, the anti-heliport struggle in Nago has continued. 43 

A new Governor of Okinawa was elected, supported by the LDP, and has 

emphasized effective bargaining with the Japanese government and officially 

accepted the new heliport in Henoko in late 1999. New Nago mayor Kishimoto, 

whose support base is the construction industry, followed suit. 

Partly because of the inter-regional (physical and psychological) distance 

between the north and south in Okinawa, and partly because of the emphasis on 

the residents as subject of residents’ movements, participation in the anti-heliport 

in Nago has not always been easy for those who live in other parts of Okinawa. 

Women’s groups crossed these barriers and developed inter-regional bonding. This 

has further encouraged female and male individuals who wished to act in protest, 

using their original ideas and energy, rather than relying on organizations. The 

greatest advantage of the individual-based protest is the freedom from the need 

for lengthy consensus building (need to have proper organizational meetings, need 

to discuss with other members. etc.), which allows quick decision-making and 

timely actions. 

Subsequent protest actions of the Okinawans have become increasingly swift, 

individual action-oriented, supported by a loose network and NGOs, and globally 

influential. This was highlighted by the ‘human chain’ that surrounded the Kadena 

Air Base before the 2000 G8 summit in Nago (27,000 participants), joined by a 

number of international social movement organizations gathered in Okinawa to 

attend forums and workshops on the Third World’s debt release, the environment, 

people’s security, women and labour, among other things. However, in the community 

of protest, still influential is the repertoire of protest accumulated in the 

past struggles, and lessons and critique gained in the long-term reflections of an 

‘Okinawan Struggle’. 

The campaign for protection of the Okinawa dugongs has opened doors to a 

network of global environmental and conservation movements. Nago anti-base 

residents such as Higashionna and Miyagi Yasuhiro, with the Dugong Network 

Okinawa, the World Wild Fund Japan and Save the Dugong Campaign Centre, 

have engaged in research on the dugongs surviving in the local Okinawan waters 

and requested the Japanese and Okinawan governments to set up specific protection 

policies for dugongs, among others, investigating the impacts of the planned heliport 

construction on the dugong habitats. They have also developed collegial relations 

with marine biologists specializing in dugongs in mainland Japan and overseas. 44 

Higashionna has started Save the Dugong Foundation, based in Sedake, to collect 

funding needed for research and conservation. He also built a ‘dugong home’ 

(dugong no sato) to host visitors, including many high-school students, to show 

them the local, abundant, natural resources on the east coast of Okinawa. 

Higashionna says: 

I thought simply repeating the anti-base mantra could not stop the heliport. 

Okinawans had been saying the same thing for decades, but the bases were 

never removed. We needed something different, more interesting and closer


to life. That is why I think it’s important to stress the need to protect the local 

environment. Most people, even Nago citizens on the west side, have never 

seen what the ocean looks like and how beautiful it is. It is necessary to have 

everyone visit the east coast of Nago, and ask them, ‘What do you think? Are 

you going to let them build the new base here?’ It is important to start here 

[eastern Nago]. The Shiraho struggle has been very important because we were 

able to persuade the government to admit it would be wrong to build an airport 

on the world heritage coral reef. If we can make Nago home to lots of dugongs, 

the next struggle will be much easier. 


Just as Takaesu, Muzik, and Yamazato went to the 1988 session of IUCN in 

Costa Rica to publicize the need for Shiraho coral conservation to the international 

community, Higashionna, Takaesu Ayano, and other Okinawan delegates went 

to the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Conference held in Amman, Jordan, 

in October 2001. The delegates demonstrated traditional Okinawan eisah at the 

conference, prepared about five thousand leaflets written in English, T-shirts, 

and other dugong paraphernalia and lobbied for the support of resolution to 

protect Okinawa dugongs (Interview, February 2002). They also submitted a 

petition with fifty thousand supporting citizens’ signatures to the IUCN, and, with 

the support of other English-speaking environmental NGOs, successfully obtained 

an IUCN resolution, which recommended the US and Japanese governments to 

introduce steps to protect dugongs. 45 The international publicity of Okinawan 

dugongs, following a process of lobbying, 46 and international conferences on 

sea mammals and coral reef, 47 has alarmed many US-based environmental 

NGOs. The Center for Biological Diversity, with a coalition of US and Japanese 

environmentalist NGOs, filed a lawsuit in San Francisco District Court and 

asked the US Department of Defense to comply with National Historic Preservation 

Act. In March 2005, the judge’s verdict ordered Rumsfeld to comply with the Act 

and investigate the possible effect the airbase construction would have on the 

Okinawa dugongs. 48 This news was reported with enthusiasm at the protest 

encampment site in Henoko. Here, the elderly Henoko Life Protection Society 

members in their eighties and nineties and their supporters had been watching and 

obstructing the Japanese government’s geological survey that attempted to drill 

holes under water, which was a necessary procedure for the off-shore military 

airport construction. The sit-in and vigilance continued around the clock unbroken 

from April 2004 to September 2005. In violent clashes with the survey boat crew, 

several protesters were injured, and it was a miracle that no one was killed. 

Consequently, the US and Japanese governments gave in to the pressure of 

protesters locally and around the world. They, however, moved the planned 

construction site from the reef area in Henoko to Camp Schwab (to which the 

protesters cannot gain access). 49 Nothing is built yet, and Futenma Air Base has 

not moved after almost a decade since its relocation was announced.


Conclusion 

The 21 October protest in 1995 marked the third peak of the postwar mass protest 

in Okinawa, preceded by the 1956 all-island struggle, and mass rallies in the 1960s 

(Arasaki 2000). ‘New social movements’, developed in Okinawa since the Kin Bay 

struggle, have continued to play a key role in the ‘third wave’ and recent antiheliport 

struggle. Emphasis on the individual ‘citizen’ as the subject of action, and 

a greater number of female participants, have been seen in the Okinawan community 

of protest at least since the 1970s. However, the emergence of the ‘gender’ framing 

and the ‘unai’ method of the OWAAMV and the multiple, new women-only 

groups significantly changed the internal dynamics in the protest community. The 

traditional ways of doing protest have been challenged by the presence and 

performance of the women’s network. 

On the other hand, this chapter has observed important continuity in these ‘new 

social movements’, including the women’s group’s activities and the ‘local’ groups 

from the past ‘Okinawan Struggle’. The historical narrative of marginalization – 

past war experience and the victimized image of ‘Okinawa’ – are resurrected in 

today’s anti-base protest. In this sense, the myth of an ‘Okinawan struggle’ is as 

alive as ever. Today, however, different actors exploit it for different agendas using 

different techniques. It is an idea that is compatible with many definitions of who 

‘we’ are and what is at stake for varying constituencies within the community of 

protest.

Conclusion 

The expression ‘Okinawan Struggle’ (Okinawa tōsō) conjures up an image of neat 

homogeneity. Yet the reality of this ‘people’s movement’ is different: fragmented, 

untidy, diverse, and marked by conflicting ideas, definitions, and methods of protest. 

At the same time, interaction between different actors, their shared repertoires 

of protest, and often shared histories and memories have produced a ‘community 

of protest’ bonded by the enduring myth of an ‘Okinawan Struggle’. How do 

diversity and unity co-exist in the community of protest? What does the intensified 

fragmentation mean for the strength, orientation and prospects of an ‘Okinawan 

Struggle’? 

The most persistent and the most ‘unifying’ concern of the protesters has been 

war itself – war and the peculiar life of Okinawan Main Islanders unfolding within 

its shadow. The war machine assembled by the US in the postwar decades not only 

stands as a massively intrusive material presence in urban Okinawan daily life, it is 

also a profoundly monumental presence. In August 2005, in Igei District near Camp 

Hansen, angry residents were protesting against the US Army’s special rifle training 

using live rounds just 300 metres from the residential area. 1 Despite the protest, the 

training commenced, filling the whole district with the sound of gunfire. Elderly 

residents stood cold and stiff, as the memories of the Battle of Okinawa and their 

contemptuous treatment by the US military rulers came back. Six decades after the 

‘end’ of the Battle of Okinawa, these residents were experiencing war materially 

and as a (‘living’) monument. 

The huge military complex hosted by the Okinawans serves as constant reminder 

of the extraordinary trauma of war, of the Battle of Okinawa. This is what the foreign 

military bases, ‘security’ alliances, and global military strategies represent. But 

they also represent preparation for war, war on standby. For those living at some 

distance from the ‘bases’ – in mainland Japan, in particular – it can look as though 

very little is going on. Nothing could be further from the truth: Immanuel Kant 

(writing in the eighteenth century) observed that ‘tense and unremitting military 

preparations . . . even in the midst of peace’ can lead nations to the ‘complete 

exhaustion of their inner powers’. The Okinawans have been forced to travel daily 

on this wretched road to the ‘complete exhaustion [their] of inner powers’ for 

some six decades. The refusal to simply yield to these huge pressures is the common


commitment of all members of the community of protest, regardless of their specific 

difference in political, ideological, or practical orientation. 

Some Okinawans have attempted to accept their ‘fate’ realistically, even positively 

– focusing on business opportunities, Japanese special subsidies, and the rent that 

the bases in Okinawa generate. For example, in 2000, three Ryūkyū University 

professors (academic advisers to Governor Inamine) advocated the ‘Okinawa 

Initiative’ in accepting ‘their role as host to the bases as the only economically viable 

option’ (Yonetani 2003b: 251). 2 As Yonetani (2003b) carefully demonstrates, 

the ‘Okinawa Initiative’ reveals that the political economy of bases is intricately 

connected to the way Okinawans understand and interpret the past. The ‘Okinawa 

Initiative’s’ framing of the past – which also characterizes the local conservative 

political wing – dismisses ‘emotional’ focus on Okinawa’s victimization. Particularly 

controversial are representations of the Japanese state and military’s abuse and 

murder of local residents during the Battle of Okinawa. 3 The ‘Okinawa Initiative’ 

protagonists recognize the validity of Okinawan history of marginalization – 

including forceful US land acquisition during the postwar occupation, the 1972 

Okinawa reversion deal that permanently entrenched the US military presence, and 

the 1995 rape incident. Yet they argue that the anti-base Okinawans’ constant 

reference to it leads only to a futile and never-ending political opposition (Maeshiro 

et al. 1998: 24). Instead ‘Okinawa Initiative’ recommends that Okinawans see the 

bases as ‘assets’ that demonstrate Okinawa’s ‘greatest contribution’ to the US–Japan 

security alliance, and to the nation’s defence. The ‘Initiative’ ideologically resonates 

well with twenty-first century mainland Japanese neo-nationalism that glorifies 

Japan’s wartime past and rejects the ‘masochistic’ admission of its past atrocities 

(Yonetani 2003b: 254–55). Despite this, the military bases have come to be understood 

mainly as an economic issue and their association with war downplayed. The 

late Prime Minister Obuchi’s selection of Nago as the host city of the Kyushu– 

Okinawa G8 Summit in 2000 reinforced this perspective. So did the introduction 

of a new ¥2,000 bill decorated with the ancient Ryūkyūan court’s Shurei Gate. 4 In 

this political climate, local anti-base protest momentum plummeted in the late 1990s 

and early 2000s. 

Regardless of their differences in framings and styles of collective action, the 

actors in the community of protest all reject the revisionist attempt to rewrite history. 

The abuse and marginalization of ‘Okinawa’ are events not of the past but of the 

present, in the form of an all-consuming monster of war machinery. The commitment 

to represent local experiences of human suffering is the bottom line of collective 

identity – a common definition of who ‘we’ are – that binds the community of protest. 

Yet a consensus at this level does not promise integration of protest – organizationally 

or strategically – into a unified ‘movement’. 

In 2003, Arasaki lamented the lack of prospect for another all-island Okinawan 

mass protest movement. According to Arasaki, this is because all the democratic 

avenues for protest – using legal actions and claiming legally protected rights – had 

been closed. In the late 1990s, the ‘third-wave’ struggle made its mark with 

Governor Ōta’s refusal to authorize the US military’s legal contract to use the 

anti-war military landowners’ property. However, using the majority votes in the

Conclusion 179 

Diet, the central government abolished this municipal authority guaranteed by the 

US Special Measures Law. Arasaki explained: 

Without that kind of viable and reliable legal means [i.e. the Governor’s 

authority assured by the US Special Measures Law], the prospect of mobilizing 

an all-encompassing mass movement is limited. Today, protest movements 

are conducted by smaller groups, making trips overseas (such as to Korea and 

Iraq) . . . However, they do not have general Okinawan public support. 

(Arasaki et al. 2003: 45–6) 

According to this argument, under the US military rule – when the Okinawans were 

deprived of basic civil rights – there was still faith in representative politics, rights, 

and legal processes. The mobilization of mass protest was possible on the basis of 

this faith in democratic processes. However, in the post-reversion period, trust in 

the Japanese democratic system has been seriously and progressively weakened. 

The constitutional rights of the Okinawans are eclipsed by the requirement and 

need to maintain the US–Japan security alliance. The Okinawans are made to feel 

powerless and are unlikely to turn to mass uprising against the military bases. In 

order to understand Arasaki’s pessimism fully, it is necessary to quickly revisit 

the conditions that made mass protest possible in the past and what has changed 

since then. 

In the 1950s and 1960s the anti-base movement was also a repatriation movement, 

aimed at securing rights to live under a pacifist Constitution free from military 

bases and war. In this period the community of protest experienced the most 

successful anti-base coalition under the Council for Reversion. ‘Reversion nationalism’ 

became a hegemonic ideology. Strong identification with mainland Japan 

involved a desire for institutional integration with the Japanese democratic system 

and attachment to the principles of the Japanese Constitution. The central actors – 

unionized workers, teachers, and communist/socialist party members – were 

capable of working together to achieve a common goal. 

On the other hand, the Council of Reversion was unable to represent the dayto-day 

humiliation and danger of those living in proximity to the US military bases. 

The Council’s campaign did not fully address the grievances of workers in and 

around the bases who wished for an anti-US base general strike: in order to achieve 

early reversion, the Council called off the planned general strike which would 

have seriously inconvenienced the US military and the Japanese government. 

Furthermore, the spontaneous Koza riot revealed that the voices of non-unionized 

base town workers and victims of crimes and accidents caused by the US military 

had been unrepresented by the reversion movement. Neither was the plight of many 

thousands of women involved in prostitution addressed. Furthermore, reversion – 

achieved without any major change in the US military presence – was far from 

what most Okinawans, including the Reversion Council, had wanted. 

After the reversion, coalition building became more difficult in the community 

of protest. Pluralization within the community of protest – in terms of protest 

organizations, strategies, and reform agendas – made it almost impossible to form


a united social movement, that is, an ‘Okinawan movement’. As a result, the 

effectiveness of the Okinawans’ opposition against the US military bases suffered, 

as indicated by the ‘low’ period between the second and the third waves of postwar 

Okinawans’ mass protests. In this period, however, new protest voices emerged in 

Okinawa. These included the previously excluded voices of women and local 

environmentalists who became significant new players in the community of protest. 

These protest actors have kept their distance from established unions and political 

parties, and are unlikely to develop into a centralized anti-base coalition. 

Yet this splintered organizational structure of the community of protest more 

genuinely represents the multiple concerns. Individual organizations are less likely 

to lose sight of their own objectives under the pressure of one, hegemonic 

organization and reform agenda. It is as if the post-reversion community of protest 

has developed a silent consensus to resist a centralized, binding organization that 

might threaten to suppress plurality for the sake of achieving one goal. But does 

this, as Arasaki fears, preclude all possible forms of coherent mass protest? Perhaps 

the Okinawan community of protest has slowly built a kind of solidarity not 

grounded on anything as well-defined as a single or overarching principle – whether 

‘reversion nationalism’ or a faith in democratic processes. Today, as the no-war 

clause of the Constitution is about to take its last breath, the faith in Constitutional 

rights as a means for anti-base protest is rapidly dwindling. Nevertheless, as I have 

endeavoured to argue throughout this book, the community of protest is loosely 

but powerfully bound by a myth of an ‘Okinawan Struggle’, which survives in an 

informal repertoire of protest strategy and telling and retelling of shared common 

history of suffering and struggle. 

The climate for protest may be changing again – as the result of a startling Marine 

cargo helicopter crash into the Okinawa International University campus adjacent 

to the Futenma air base in August 2004. 5 The crash provoked thirty thousand 

residents to participate in an anti-US base rally held at the University, requesting 

the immediate closure of the Futenma base. The Futenma base is already due for 

decommissioning – and relocation to Henoko. A poll conducted in the September 

following the crash showed that more than 81 per cent of the Okinawan citizens 

were against this relocation and rebuilding. Five years earlier this figure was just 

45 per cent. The crash has been a reminder that a new base will not just bring new 

economic opportunity. The new base will perpetuate the threat of the war machine 

on local life and safety. Perhaps a ‘fourth wave’ is in the making.

Notes 

1 Introduction: a community of protest in Okinawa 

1 It is possible to view Okinawan anti-base protest as an example of compensation politics 

in regional Japan (see George-Mulgan 2000), as dynamics between local protest against 

unwanted ‘private and public projects, including industrial facilities and waste 

repositories’ and the state’s ‘extensive compensation schemes’ (Lesbirel 1998). NIMBY 

politics is certainly part of Okinawan protest. Indeed most conservative politicians in 

Okinawa initially participate in protest against the implementations of new military 

or industrial facilities, until obtaining satisfactory compensation or promise of 

compensation. 

2 Nevertheless, at a theoretical level, a group of people has been committed to the 

‘Okinawa independence theory’ (Okinawa dokuritsu ron), expressed in a local journal, 

Urumanesia. 

3 Nelson also engages in helping African and Hispanic American children receive more 

education, and often gives talks at schools and group meetings in the US and Japan. As 

a soldier, he trained in a US base on Okinawa (see Nelson 1999). 

4 See, though the list represents only a fraction, for example, Allen 2002, Amemiya 1999a, 

1999b, Hook and Siddle 2003 and Hein and Selden 2003. Work focused on contemporary 

anti-base struggles of the Okinawans also makes clear that there are increasingly diverse 

angles from which to protest (Hein 2001, Inoue et al. 1998, JPRI Staff 1998b, 

McCormack and Yonetani 2000, Yonetani 2001). Local reactions to the state’s attempt 

to consolidate the island as a security outpost have also been reported (McCormack 

and Yonetani 2000). 

5 After the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl in September 1995, in a typical newspaper 

report, ‘the incident has inflamed the 1 million residents of this subtropical island and 

sent their governor to Tokyo to call for closure of the massive US military bases here’ 

(Washington Post 20 September 1995). Hook and Siddle point out that ‘for some 

[Okinawans], the bases are a “good”’ (2003: 4), referring to the landowners who gain 

incomes from leasing their properties to the US military, albeit to a much less degree 

than the pre-reversion period, employment opportunities that the bases provide, and 

indirect benefits to the local economy created by goods purchased by, and construction 

projects for, the US forces. 

6 JPRI is an electronically accessed journal edited by a group of scholars in the study of 

political economy and international relations of East Asia and Japan, headed by Professor 

Chalmers Johnson (see http://www.jpri.org). The JPRI forum has provided significant 

channels through which the battles against continuing discrimination and marginalization 

of Okinawa by mainland Japan are advanced by Okinawans, providing information 

and analyses for an academic and English-speaking readership on the anti-base 

movements in Okinawa. 

7 See Barthes 1972 (1957).

182 Notes 

2 Diversity and unity in the community of protest 

1 In terms of ideology, forms of collective action and agendas, the features of so-called 

new social movements have existed at least since the early nineteenth century as in 

women’s movements and nationalist movements (Calhoun 1995). ‘New social 

movements’ are ‘new’ in terms of their late entry as legitimate areas of sociological 

research. The ‘new social movements’ theory, cultivated by mainly European 

researchers, and the resource mobilization theory (RMT) predominant in North America, 

have challenged the limitation of the classical tradition of the study of ‘collective 

behaviour’. Classical sociological studies have used the term ‘collective behaviour’ to 

describe non-institutional collective behaviour which tends to be treated as a marginal 

and transitional social phenomenon. ‘Collective behaviour’ stands for aberration from 

normal institutionalized procedures of politics, or ‘symptomatic of social malfunctions 

and/or pathology’ (Pakulski 1991: 13). Collective behaviour is understood in terms of 

its anomaly, as a reaction to social tension, crisis, grievance and deprivation, typically 

described as ‘non-institutional’ as opposed to legitimate and part of stable institutions. 

Collective behaviour is primarily an act outside these institutional contexts, and tends 

to be regarded as not a ‘proper object of analysis’ (Scott 1990). 

2 Here I am referring to the pre-reversion period in Okinawa, that is, in the 1950s and 

1960s when it was subjected to the direct US military administration. 

3 Melucci contends: ‘To understand how a “social movement” succeeds or fails in 

becoming a collective actor is therefore a fundamental task’ of the researcher (Melucci 

1996: 80). Melucci is sympathetic to the ‘new social movements’ school, and has focused 

on the greater significance and power of cultural, non-institutional dimensions of 

collective action in contemporary technology-oriented society, which still tend to be 

excluded from the formal arenas of ‘politics’. He emphasizes the importance of ‘the 

plurality of aspects present in the collective action’ and of explaining the processes in 

which social movement actors are ‘constructed’ and ‘how they are combined and 

sustained through time’ (Melucci 1996: 70). 

4 According to Melucci, knowing and deciding who ‘we’ are requires interacting and 

negotiating among ‘different orientations’ of the protest actors (Melucci 1995: 43). A 

Japanese sociologist Yamanouchi writes that Melucci’s idea of new social movements 

is about seriously engaging with fluid and heterogeneous identities. However, he is 

critical of the tendency to simply celebrate diversity of multiple identities, as if the 

internal relations among such identities are non-problematic. Yamanouchi points out 

that Melucci’s work leaves out analyses on mutual relations among different identities 

with different characteristics (Yamanouchi 1996: 346). 

5 See note 1. 

6 Olson’s (1965) analysis of individuals’ decisions to join the collective activities focuses 

on rational aspects, such as calculating the costs and returns. According to this ‘rational 

actor’ model, social movements are constantly restricted by the problem of ‘free riders’, 

benefiting from the results without paying the cost of participation. Olson’s theory offers 

limited explanations as to why individuals take part in collective actions despite the 

costs of participation. 

7 Snow et al. (1986) and Snow and Benford (1992) have adopted the concept of ‘frame’ 

from Goffman’s same idea, ‘to denote “schemata of interpretation” that enable 

individuals “to locate, perceive, identify and label occurrences within their life space 

and the world at large” (1974: 21 in Snow et al. 1986: 464). Snow and Benford’s (1992) 

conceptualization of the dimensions to do with perceptions and meanings in the realm 

of culture is meant to overcome RMT’s weakness to treat the ideas and meanings as 

given, dissociated from the interactive contexts in which they are produced. ‘Frames’ 

are also meant to bridge those dimensions related to the ideas, perceptions, and meanings 

that are socially constructed, with existing RMT research areas on political opportunity, 

participation, and movement mobilization.

Notes 183 

8 Related to this point, in one of his lectures on ‘when myth becomes history’, Lévi-Strauss 

mentioned ‘the gap which exists in our mind to some extent between mythology and 

history can probably be breached by studying histories which are conceived as not at 

all separated from but as a continuation of mythology’ (Lévi-Strauss 1979: 43). 

3 Annexation and assimilation: ambiguous origins 

1 The word ‘marginalization’ is used here to include references not only to Okinawans 

as victims of aggression but to all kinds of marginal positions and denial of equal 

treatments. 

2 This is not to say that the preceding historical events are irrelevant, yet this study defines 

the late nineteenth century as a starting point of the founding component of the myth 

of Okinawan struggle that is specifically addressed to the marginalized position of 

Okinawa as a minority. On earlier historical events in Ryūkyū before the late nineteenth 

century and their significance on the formation of the Ryūkyūan identity see Smits 

(1999). 

3 The Ryūkyū kings engaged in formal tributary trades with China, formed relations 

with Korea and mainland Japan, and engaged in trading activities with other regions in 

Asia ranging through the Philippines, Malacca, Java to Bengal (Kerr 1958: 126–9, also 

see Takara 1993). By the early fifteenth century, the Chūzan king (a city state in the 

central region) unified the Okinawa Main Island, and the Shuri court placed military 

and administrative outposts in other groups of islands in the Ryūkyū archipelago 

(Amami, Yaeyama, and Miyako regions) under its control, with similar tributary 

relations to China’s, although Shuri’s rule of those remote islands was far more 

oppressive. The kingdom as a trading outpost in the southern seas thrived during the 

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Kerr 1958: 124). The poll tax continued to dominate 

islanders’ lives until the late nineteenth century in remote islands, even after it was 

abolished in the Main Island. 

4 Satsuma promoted the impression that Ryūkyū was an ‘ethnically different’ country 

from them, not only to exploit Ryūkyū’s trading rights with China but also to demonstrate 

their strength by colonizing a people of supposedly different ethnicity. 

5 On this subject see Takara (1993, 1998). 

6 Ryūkyūwas one of the smaller and weaker states under China’s political sphere of 

influence, but it was allowed to keep its autonomy. In exchange, Ryūkyū paid tribute 

to Chinese political sovereignty by adjusting to Chinese customs and culture, and by 

sending ships regularly to China with gifts. The Ryūkyūan kings were enthroned by 

the Chinese emperor’s missions, and obtained considerable wealth from trade with 

China, which was the basis of their political power. 

7 The king of Ryūkyū was added to the newly established Japanese aristocratic group, or 

‘peerage’, together with other previous feudal lords in mainland Japan (Oguma 1998: 

19, Taira 1997: 154). Some of the government elite, especially in the Parliament, were 

opposed to granting the Ryūkyūans, who were ‘aliens’, an equal level of nobility with 

other Japanese (Ōta 1972: 87). 

8 At the time, nevertheless, Japan was still militarily much weaker than the European 

and North American states, and was not confident enough to provoke any further conflicts 

with China or any other powers through illegitimate military aggression. With British 

mediation, the incident was settled with a treaty between China and Japan. The most 

effective way for the Japanese government to justify the aggression to the Chinese 

representatives and the British mediators was to argue that the victims from Miyako 

Island were officially ‘Japanese people’, and that the Ryūkyū islands were part of 

Japanese territory. Driven by strategic imperatives, the government inserted a sentence 

in the treaty document regarding the Ryūkyū people as ‘Japanese’ (Oguma 1998: 25–6). 

China and Ryūkyū initially judged that the incident had been already settled between 

them, following the ‘rules and procedures’ of their well-established amicable relations.

184 Notes 

As far as they were concerned, Japan had no direct relevance to the matter (Taira 1997: 

155). 

9 China made an official protest against Japan’s assault on Ryūkyū’s diplomatic rights, 

which the Japanese government practically ignored. Chinese rule over Ryūkyū had for 

a long time been little more than nominal, and the ownership of Ryūkyū, a group of 

small islands, was hardly vital for the Qing dynasty, itself deeply concerned about foreign 

aggression. Nevertheless, China’s biggest concern was that the annexation of Ryūkyū 

would assist Japan’s military advance towards Korea and Taiwan. Therefore, China and 

Japan engaged in prolonged diplomatic negotiations over the takeover of Ryūkyū, with 

US President Grant as a mediator (Smits 1999: 146). 

10 China rejected this plan, because of its reluctance to award Japan equal privileges with 

the Western powers. 

11 Land tax reform was introduced in 1899–1903 (1873 in mainland Japan); a municipal 

system was introduced in 1908 (1879 in mainland Japan); military conscription of 

Okinawans started in 1898 (1872 in mainland Japan); election of prefecture assembly 

was introduced in 1909 (1890 in mainland Japan). Most notably, Okinawans were 

allowed to elect their own parliamentary delegates to the Diet only in 1912, 22 years 

later than in other prefectures in Japan. 

12 Unlike in Taiwan, cost-effective plantation-style sugar farming was not implemented 

in Okinawa (Tomiyama 1997: 80). 

13 The Okinawan Industrial Promotion Plan invested ¥1.6 billion, from 1932 to 1934, in 

economic restructuring of designated villages, and towards the cancellation of public 

debts. The source of funding was the governmental tax paid by the Okinawans, which 

exceeded public expenditure in Okinawa during the previous year (Ōta 1972: 276–7). 

14 Morris-Suzuki refers to Fukuzawa Yukichi’s (famous theorist and educationist in the 

late nineteenth century) notion of civilization as involving ‘successive stages of 

development’ (Morris-Suzuki 1998: 24), starting from the state of closest affinity to 

nature, progressing to the achievement of freedom from natural restriction by way of 

technology and production (Fukuzawa 1997 [1875]). 

15 Smits refers to Anderson’s account of nationalism (Anderson 1991, Duara 1995) in 

explaining the development of nationalism in Japan in the Meiji period and the role 

played by the ‘spatial and temporary imagining’, that is, integration of distant 

communities beyond immediate human contacts into a Japanese nation. This placed 

Ryūkyū at the tail end of cultural progress in the scale of ‘linear and progressive’ 

advancement of the time (Smits 1999: 151). 

16 Portraits of the emperor were distributed in Okinawan schools first (Oguma 1998: 38). 

17 However, Ōta should not be understood as simply someone who sought Okinawans’ 

assimilation to yamato. Hiyane (1996) points out that the greatest goal of Ōta was to 

establish awareness for Okinawa’s independent history, and his advocacy for 

assimilation was meant to be secondary to this greater role. Ōta is also known as the 

first editor of Okinawa’s oldest local newspaper, Ryūkyū Shimpō (with Okinawa Taimusu 

one of the two widely read local papers today in Okinawa). 

18 Significantly, primary school teachers were recruited for six-week service in 1896, before 

other sectors of the population (Arashiro 1997: 1972). 

19 Between 1898 and 1915, 774 were prosecuted (including jail sentences) for avoiding 

conscription (Yoshiwara 1973: 198). 

20 Out of some two thousand Okinawan soldiers, 205 died in the Japan-Russia war. Ryūkyū 

Shimpō appraised this as a proof of Okinawans’ loyalty and courage (Yoshiwara 1973: 

197). 

21 Originally, this story appeared in Higa 1988 (cited in Tomiyama 1997: 150–1). 

22 Okinawan studies as a field is analysed in detail in, for example, Hiyane 1981, 1996, 

Hokama 2002, Kano 1993, Kinjo and Takara 1984, in English Siddle 1998, Tomiyama 

1998, Yonetani 2000a. 

23 For example Iha 1942, 1974–6.

24 This locates his argument in line with Haneji and Ginowan’s Nichiryū dōso ron. 

Ryūkyūan pro-Japanese politicians such as Haneji Chōshū in 1673 and Giwan Chōhō 

in the 1870s had insisted on the common ancestry of Ryūkyū and mainland Japan 

(Nichiryū dōso ron). Linguistic exploration made by a British scholar, Basil Hall 

Chamberlain, in the late nineteenth century backed this perspective (Siddle 1998: 125). 

25 Iha was strongly influenced by Torii’s research regarding this emphasis. For relations 

between Torii and Iha’s works see Tomiyama (1998). In his later works, he positioned 

Ryūkyū amongst other ‘southern islanders’ including indigenous Taiwanese, Malays, 

and the Ainu, and also pointed out the mainland Japanese ancestral connection with the 

‘southern islanders’, emphasizing the ‘sameness’ there (Iha 1974–6: vol. 11). However, 

Iha distinguished Ryūkyūans from the Ainu and the indigenous Taiwanese in that the 

latter two were described as ‘peoples’ whereas Ryūkyū was a ‘nation’ (Tomiyama 1998: 

171). 

26 In January 1899, Jahana became a member of the Japanese political party, Kenseito 

(Constitutional Political Party) (Isa 1998: 336). 

27 The reasons for excluding Okinawa from the self-government procedure that existed in 

other parts of Japan, and from national elections, are unclear. Parliamentary discussion 

on this topic was suppressed by other agendas that were considered more urgent, such 

as diplomatic concerns. Ōta argues that this case is an example of the traditional 

discriminatory treatment against Okinawa, which has been a consistent feature in 

Japanese politics until today (Ōta 1996a: 189–90). 

28 This is called the idea of han-fukki (anti-reversionism). For further examination of antireversionism 

see Chapter 5. 

4 The Battle of Okinawa and ‘Okinawan Pacifism’ 

Notes 185 

1 The monument, constructed at the major battle site Mabuni Hill in southern Okinawa, 

is an attempt to commemorate the names of casualties in the battles including those of 

all nationalities. See Figal 1997, 2001. 

2 In the 1930s, Okinawans were encouraged to move to new Japanese colonies in 

Manchuria and the South Sea Islands (Mariana, Palau, Caroline, and Marshall). 

3 Many other ships had been sunk before this particular incident, but the military kept 

those incidents secret from Okinawans (Arashiro 1997: 203). 

4 This October air raid forced sixty thousand Okinawans to flee to Kyushu, and twenty 

thousand to Taiwan, before March 1945 (Arashiro 1997: 203). 

5 ‘Tokyo gave little thought to the civil economy on distant Okinawa and did virtually 

nothing to prepare it for the crisis of invasion . . . Okinawa retained importance only as 

a potential field of battle, a distant border area in which the oncoming enemy could be 

checked, pinned down, and ultimately destroyed’ (Kerr 1958: 466). Also, see Ōta 1996b: 

77. 

6 Similar to the Chinese style, Okinawan tombs are traditionally as big as a small house, 

accommodating generations of family members. 

7 The local population was obliged to provide food both for the soldiers and for themselves. 

Foodstuffs or any living necessities were under strict military control, allowing the locals 

little free access to them. The residents worked at construction sites digging caves and 

building airfields from early in the morning, and in the fields, farming, until midnight. 

After the US attacks commenced in the islands, people who took refuge in northern 

Okinawa had no means to survive, other than stealing crops from the local farmers, 

creating deadly tensions within the civilian population (Ōta 1997: 50–1). 

8 Ishii Torao, a commander assigned to Okinawa, described the Okinawan general public 

in a 1934 military document addressed to a mainland army officer: ‘obedient and tame 

reflecting the tropical upbringing, but lacking in independent characters, therefore, not 

to be expected to devote their lives to defend the state’ (Ōta 1996: 60–1).

186 Notes 

9 See http://www.peace-museum.pref.okinawa.jp. This figure includes the number of 

Okinawans who died as a result of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, regardless 

of the time of death. 

10 See Peace Promotion Division, Okinawa Prefecture 2005. Also engraved in the 

Cornerstone of Peace are the names of the 75,941 non-Okinawan Japanese, 14,008 

Americans, 82 from North Korea, 341 from South Korea, 28 Taiwanese, and 82 British 

who died between 22 March 1944 (when the 32nd Okinawa Defence Troop started) 

and 7 September 1946, as a result of the Battle of Okinawa (as of 23 June 2004, see 

Peace Promotion Division, Okinawa Prefecture 2005). 

11 In particular, the Sakima Museum in Futenma specializes in anti-war arts. The museum 

was built on private property which used to be inside the major US Marine Corps Air 

Station. The landowner Sakima Michio demanded the US return his property for the 

museum construction, which eventuated in November 1994 (Ikehara, Chibana, Sakima 

and Matayoshi 1996, Sakima 1997). 

12 As discussed in Chapter 1, a ‘frame’ here refers to a set of ideas that locate, perceive, 

identify, and label ‘events within their life space or the world at large’ (Goffman 1974: 

21, cited in Snow and Benford 1992: 137), thereby giving specific meaning to the act 

of protest. The protesters are also ‘actively engaged in the production and maintenance 

of meaning’ of collective action (Snow and Benford 1992: 136). 

13 The Okinawa Prefecture Tourist Volunteer Guides’ Society (Okinawa Ken Kankō 

Borantia Gaido Tomo no Kai) was founded by the Okinawa Convention and Visitors’ 

Bureau, an organization engaged in research activities related to marketing tourism in 

Okinawa. 

14 The Okinawa Foundation (Okinawa Kyōkai) is under the auspices of the Japanese 

government (the Cabinet Office). Until 1972, it was formally known as the Southern 

Brethren Support Society (Nanpō DōhōEngokai), formed in mainland Japan in support 

of Okinawa’s repatriation to Japan. 

15 According to a local newspaper article, some 130,000 students on average visit Okinawa 

in a year (Ryūkyū Shimpō 25 May 2001). 

16 This accompanied censorship on Japan’s past aggression towards civilians in Asia, 

including the Nanking Massacre during WWII. Since criticism amplified towards the 

revisionist falsification of Japanese history books, Okinawan and mainland Japanese 

critics had publicly called for recognition of cruelties imposed on the Okinawan residents 

by the Japanese military (see Taira 1998). 

17 This section is informed by Itokazu’s biographical accounts recorded in Itokazu Keiko 

Kōenkai (accessed 23 September 2005). 

18 Kawamitsu says when the Network was formed in the early 1990s, most members were 

schoolteachers, but nowadays ‘mothers’ seem to constitute a conspicuous portion 


19 Himeyuri (Princess Lily) Troops were one of the schoolgirl troops who worked during 

the Battle as ‘field nurses’, who died tragically in the Battle and are commemorated in 

a museum, Himeyuri Peace Memorial (Himeryuri Heiwa Kinenkan), specially dedicated 

to them. They are perhaps the most famous war victims in Japan, widely publicized by 

a film, the Tower of Himeyuri (Himeyuri no tō) remade in 1982. On victimization of 

the Himeyuri Troop, and its replication in the rape case of a 12-year-old girl in 1995, 

see Angst (2001). 

20 Monbushō ordered, with regard to these countries: that agitation for Korean 

independence following the 1910 annexation by Japan be described as ‘rioting’; that 

the movement of the Japanese army into the Asian continent in the 1930s be described 

as an ‘advance’ rather than an ‘invasion’; and that in accounts of the 1937 episode known 

in the West as the Rape of Nanking, when Japanese forces entered that city and 200,000 

to 300,000 Chinese women, children and POWs were left dead, the event being described 

as an effect of the ‘confusion’ of the times and the casualty figures being reduced (Field 

1993: 62–3).

Notes 187 

21 Since 1965, Ienaga has filed three lawsuits. The first suit was settled as late as 1993: 

the Supreme Court judged in favour of the constitutionality of the state’s textbook 

screening (Nozaki and Inokuchi 2000: 114–19). 

22 Field heard the stories of the survivors: ‘Not only did Japanese soldiers drive Okinawans 

from their shelters into certain death, suffocate their crying babies, and kill those who 

had already surrendered and were then sent back by Americans to persuade their fellows 

to do the same; their presence both explicitly and tacitly prompted episodes of Okinawan 

collective suicide’ (Field 1993: 63). 

23 Chibana, born after the war, a mainland Japanese writer Shimojima Tetsurō, and 

the representative of the Chibichirigama Bereaved Families’ Association, Higa 

Heishin, could break the silence among Yomitan survivors, because none of them 

lost direct members of their families in the event (Chibana 1988: 140–1). The villagers 

also had a project to build a Statue of Peace made of plaster by sculpture artist Kinjō 

Minoru, in which a whole village was involved, completed in 1987 (Chibana 1988: 

144–7). 

24 For her biographical record in English see Keyso 2000. 

25 In 1996, at other peace museums elsewhere in Japan, in particular in Osaka, Kanagawa, 

Nagasaki, and Hiroshima, there was pressure from the nationalist-revisionists – 

represented by right-wing organizations such as the Japan Conference (nihon kaigi) 

and conservative politicians including former Prime Minister Hashimoto – on exhibiting 

materials that show cruel Japanese military war conduct in the Asia-Pacific region, 

particularly related to the Nanking massacre and ‘comfort women’ (Nakakita 2000: 

233–4). 

5 The first wave: opposition to US military land acquisition 

1 As of the Battle of Okinawa, the islands of Okinawa were placed under direct US military 

administration, based on US Military Directive No. 1, issued by Admiral Nimitz on the 

US landing on the Kerama Islands on 26 March 1945. As early as 1945, US President 

Roosevelt and surrounding government staff were in agreement that ‘the United States 

should preserve its “national security interests” by indefinitely controlling key islands 

in the Pacific’, and to take ‘the full power of arming them and using them to protect the 

peace and ourselves during any war that may come’, and ‘a definition of trusteeships 

or mandates’ of these islands would be necessary at a Peace Conference in San Francisco 

(Dower 1971: 155–6). 

2 This was partly because of the disagreements between the US State Department and 

military officers, on how to formalize US rule over Okinawa to maximize US security 

interests, in consideration of the developing Cold War. The State Department 

recommended the international trusteeship of Okinawa under the United Nations charter 

rather than unilateral occupation (Miyazato 2000: 45), which would have been more 

agreeable to the Soviet Union and China. However, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme 

Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), and George Kennan, who headed the Policy 

Planning Staff and an advocate of the ‘containment’ policy towards the Soviet Union, 

fiercely criticized this view. MacArthur defined Okinawa as crucial for US air and 

amphibious capabilities in the Pacific defence cordon (Miyazato 2000: 27), which 

included Hawaii, Guam, Micronesia, and the Philippines (Dower 1971: 161). Kennan 

also enthusiastically stressed the strategic importance of the US military force deployed 

on Okinawa for the Cold War security formula. Moreover, with frequent labour strikes 

and continuing economic crises and the potential major influence of communism 

in Japan, the US military presence was justified to deter political instability (Eldridge 

1999: 165). 

3 The legal justification was ‘the Hague Convention no. 4, of 18 October 1907’ (Section 

III, Article 52) (Watanabe 1970: 36). 

4 However, under the US Navy administration, there was a degree of positive attitude on

188 Notes 

the US side to respect the will of the Okinawan people in political representation, 

compared to under RYCOM (Kano 1987: 69–71). 

5 From 1952 on, nevertheless, when the US administration of Okinawa was formalized, 

USCAR regarded land acquisition as a legal activity that required private contracts 

(Arasaki 1995: 27). 

6 Previously, governorship was held by SCAP in mainland Japan, and Military Governors 

of RYCOM had assumed the highest authority as Deputy Governors. 

7 Initially when the US Navy was in charge of the civil administration, it summoned 128 

Okinawans from 39 concentration camps all over Okinawa Main Island, to form the 

Okinawans’ Consultative Assembly (Okinawajin Shijunkai). This Assembly was a 

consultation body and locals’ autonomy was strictly limited; its role was no more than 

answering the US military’s queries on local affairs, communicating locals’ requests to 

the US military (Asato 2001: 74). In April 1946, the US set up the Okinawan People’s 

Government (Okinawa Minseifu) and the Okinawan Assembly (Okinawa Gikai) and 

appointed a local Governor. This was a pure formality. 

8 In December 1949, the OPP had two hundred members, whereas the Okinawa 

Democratic League had two thousand (Nakano 1969: 64). 

9 The Japanese Communist Party also issued a ‘Message to Celebrate the Independence 

of the Okinawan People’, published in Akahata, 20, 6 March 1946, defining the US 

occupation force as a ‘liberation force’, which put an end to Japan’s colonial domination 

over Okinawans, with a ‘democratic revolution’ (Arasaki 1969: 40–1). 

10 Maids, who were predominantly female and a common job in Okinawa at the time, in 

Senaga’s (1959) accounts, are invisible apart from in a passing association with the 

construction workers. 

11 In December 1952, Commanding General Lewis of USCAR pressured GRI Chief 

Executive Higa into rejecting the legislation. Nevertheless, waterside workers and 

GRI public servants formed their own labour unions in 1953. The second May Day 

rally in the same year turned into a major occasion, attracting more than a thousand 

workers, the OPP and OSMP members, and some Ryūkyū University students. 

Encouraged by these events, for the second time the Parliament passed the three labour 

laws and the Chief Executive signed for their enactment in October 1953 (Nakachi 

1989: 69). 

12 Nevertheless, involvement in such organized labour movement was limited to certain 

professions such as waterside, base, transport, postal, construction, and other predominantly 

male workers. Female maids, for example, who worked for the construction 

workers were presumably under similar conditions, but had no organizational 

representation. 

13 In this period, ‘the Ryūkyūs’ and ‘Okinawa’ appeared to have been used interchangeably 

among the residents, perhaps mainly because the US military administration abolished 

‘Okinawa’ during Japanese administration. 

14 In Amami and Yaeyama Guntō, residents also elected governors and Assembly members 

who were reversion advocates. 

15 Articles in Konnichi no Ryūkyū were dominated by material issues in order to 

divert Okinawans’ interests from political activism against US military rule and toward 

‘pragmatic’ and ‘constructive’ issues related to reconstructing the local economy 

under the existing political framework. These official publications were an advertising 

vehicle, for the Okinawan audience, of the US efforts such as construction projects and 

economic aid, as well as American-inspired ‘democratization’ ideals (Kano 1987: 

166–99). 

16 An interesting aside on Benedict Anderson’s study of nationalism is worth making – 

alongside an observation about the Okinawans’ independent nation-building prospects. 

Clearly the literacy and institutions of literacy identified by Anderson as crucial to the 

modern nation-building enterprise need to be indigenously or autonomously controlled 

and driven. A shared language, shared newspapers, and shared schools can be built on

Notes 189 

a foreign – even imperial – language but, as instruments of communication, they need 

to be under the control of those bidding for independence (as with the French language 

in Vietnam to use a nearby example). At the same time, and as the Okinawan experience 

makes clear, languages, even native language appropriated and controlled by a colonizing 

power, is of little value to independent nation-building. In another world, one in which 

the US did not exist, ‘Ryūkyūan’ language and culture might have provided a route to 

independence and freedom, but when the Americans appropriated this culture (as they 

did the land) and used it for their own purposes they rendered it useless. In this imaginary 

world in which the US did not exist and in which the Okinawans would not so quickly 

have embraced the Japanese as possible saviours, ‘Ryūkyūan’ language and culture 

might have done the trick. In the real world however, Okinawan independence faced 

other and greater obstacles: not just the theft of their culture but the apparently 

irreversible misfortune of being claimed as a spoil of war to serve as a superpower 

military base of the utmost strategic importance. And all of this, in a world in which 

that superpower claims to be utterly incontestable in geopolitical terms. 

17 Upon the US State Department’s request, the American Consular Unit obtained the 

translation of Heiwa to Dokuritsu no tame ni (For peace and independence) No. 349, 1 

April 1954, which was ‘published by the Japanese Communist Party as a directive for 

Communist anti-American activities on Okinawa’ (American Consular Unit 1955: 3). 

18 An editorial of the Okinawa Taimusu wrote, ‘It is not wrong for the People’s Party to 

take active part in the activities directed for benefiting the property-less masses. But if 

that party should, with revolution by violence as its ultimate goal, agitate the proletariat 

masses with the view to bring them under its control in order to mobilize them for radical 

political or economic struggles, that party can only be called a communistic party that 

intends to make the proletariat masses into Communists, however tactfully that party 

may camouflage its colour.’ ‘It is only too evident that such communistic activities can 

not be permitted in the US, which is adamantly opposed to Communism, nor in Okinawa 

which is under her administration’ (Okinawa Taimusu 7 November 1954 cited in 

American Consular Unit 1955: 2). 

19 In 1953, US Secretary of State Dulles announced the return of the Amami Islands 

to Japan, and spoke of the necessity of continuing US power and the right to administer 

the ‘remaining’ Ryūkyū Islands ‘so long as conditions of threat and tension 

exist in the Far East’ (US Department of State Bulletin 1954: 17 quoted in Nakachi 

1989: 62). 

20 Until the position of High Commissioner was introduced, the Deputy Commander held 

the highest position of the military government in Ryūkyū. The Deputy Commander’s 

position was next to, and was designated by, the Commander-in-Chief of SCAP in 

Tokyo. The Deputy Commander’s range of authority was not as wide as that of the 

High Commissioner’s. For detailed study on the responsibilities and influence of the 

High Commissioners on Okinawa see Ōta 1996a. 

21 Originally suggested by General Douglas MacArthur, this clause became a problem 

for Japanese conservatives and for the US regional security planners for it became an 

obstacle for Japan to contribute military forces in the Cold War regional security order. 

However, the peace clause survived, supported by the general public in Japan weary of 

war and militarism, and by the neighbourhood countries invaded by Japan during the 

Pacific War. 

22 The rent rate was set by the US military at 6 per cent of land value, for a duration of 16 

years (Arasaki 1995: 31). 

23 Asahi Shimbun 3 February 1955. They also wrote to mainland citizens’ organizations 

such as Jiyū Jinken Kyōkai (Freedom and Human Rights Association) and Nihon 

Seinendan Kyōgikai (Japan Youth Group Association) (Ahagon 1973: 106). 

24 Okinawa-jin Renmei (Okinawans’ Association, later called Okinawa Kenjin-kai), a 

network of mainland residents of Okinawan origins, aimed to help Okinawans recover 

from war devastation and build democracy and reconstruction of Okinawa. Okinawa-

190 Notes 

jin Renmei criticized the Japanese government for deserting Okinawa, and sent a request 

to General MacArthur for support (Arasaki 1969: 24). 

25 The Asahi report opened up discussion among the mainland Japanese: a famous writer, 

Ishikawa Tatsuzō, advocated ‘standing up for our brethren Okinawans’ (Asahi Shimbun 

14 January 1955), which encouraged the isolated Okinawans and their land struggle and 

reversion campaign (see Chapter 4). In this climate, mainland Japanese residents 

originally from Okinawa formed an LDP-sponsored organization, Nampō DōhōEngokai 

(the Southern Brethren Support Society), established in November 1956 to facilitate 

economic aid to Okinawa. 

26 An estimated 300 armed soldiers with military vehicles, tear gas, and stretchers 

surrounded the area. Tents and telephone systems were set up. The residents thought 

WWIII had started. The military gave the mayor a notice, which ordered the evacuation 

of 15 households, and warned that individuals who attempted to get in the way would 

be arrested (Ahagon 1973: 87). 

27 The farmers surrounded the inspectors and disrupted the land surveys, shed tears and 

begged, ‘Please, stop. Please.’ Some gave inspectors eggs from the village as a gift, 

which successfully hindered the job. Newspapers described these actions as ‘farmers’ 

violence toward land survey’ (Arasaki 1995: 47). 

28 Ahagon tape-recorded the Ryūka read by elderly Maja women in the tents, in order to 

play them to the people who might visit Ie-jima later from mainland Japan. 

29 In December 1965, 38 landowners in Konbu hamlet in Gushikawa village started their 

land struggle after the owners received notification of land acquisition from the US Forces. 

The Gushikawa Village Assembly made an opposition statement against the acquisition 

in February 1966, and the landowners formed the Konbu Land Protection Society (Konbu 

Tochi o Mamoru Kai), and built a ‘struggle hut’ (tōsō goya), where the landowners and 

supporters guarded their properties (Gushikawa Shiyakusho 1970: 908–10). 

30 On Okinawan emigrants’ lives in Bolivia see Amemiya 1999a, 1999b. 

31 Eventually, the sentence of the US sergeant was reduced to 45 years’ imprisonment 

(Okinawa Taimususha 1996: 23). 

32 A novel, Cocktail Party, by Ōshiro Tatsuhiro (1967) depicts the process in which a 

rape incident broke the charade of a ‘good relationship’ between the US military and 

local residents, and brought the powerlessness of the local residents to the surface (see 

Molasky 1999, Rabson 1989). 

33 The Yumiko-chan incident was recalled again in September 1995, when the rape of a 

12-year-old girl created momentum for the ‘third wave’ Okinawa struggle (Okinawa 

Taimususha 1996: 23). 

34 The Report justified the long-term necessity of securing the US bases on Okinawa for 

(1) allowing nuclear deployment (this was impossible in Japan because of its 

constitutional refusal to retain nuclear weapons), (2) for containing communism, and, 

(3) for preventing regional warfare across East and Southeast Asia. 

35 Tomiyama associates this point with his research on the self-censorship against asserting 

Okinawan-specific attributes among the Okinawan migrants in mainland Japan in the 

1930s (Tomiyama 1997). 

36 For example, in the statement of the general meeting of Tochiren on 14 June 1956 

(Arasaki 1969: 111–12). 

37 About ten thousand Japanese political party and trade union members came to a rally 

in Osaka and proclaimed their support for the four principles, Okinawa’s reversion, 

and protection of Okinawa as a part of Japanese territory. A similar rally was held in 

Tokyo. The participants of those rallies included more than forty political parties and 

unions, including the most powerful Liberal Democratic Party (Hiyane 1982: 286). 

38 Within the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party, there were opinions which 

stressed the strategic significance of maintaining US military capacity on Okinawa, 

and more moderate advocates for ‘scaling down’ the base facilities to the level 

comparable to bases on the mainland (Watanabe 1970: 133).

39 Subsequent to the defection of the Democratic Party members, the Land Council 

(tochikyō) replaced the Five Group Coalition. Yara Chōbyō from the Okinawa Teachers’ 

Association became the leader of this coalition and Ahagon Shokō, representing farmers 

of Ie-jima, became Deputy Chair. 

40 The board of executives issued a statement: ‘The University Board and Chancellery 

rejects Communism based on Article 14 of the University clause of the Ryūkyū 

Education Law, and follows the instructions of the US as the protector of the free world 

against the Communist threat in the Orient. We regret the behaviour of our students who 

conducted anti-US demonstrations and their offence inflicted on all the Americans and 

the US staff stationed in the Ryūkyūs. The University is responsible for the 

demonstrations against the US, the founder and the financial source of the University 

. . . and hereby bans students from joining any activities on or off campus without 

permission’ (Okinawa Taimusu, 11 August 1956 quoted in Miyazato 1966: 103). 

41 The delegates included the Chief Executive, Chair of the Democratic Party, Chair of 

the Parliament, the landowners’ representative, a local council representative, and a 

judiciary officer (Miyazato 1966: 130). 

42 With twice as much rent, paid yearly, and renewed every five years (Arasaki 1995: 36, 

Miyazato 1966: 130–1). 

43 Two male residents, aged 28 and 38, were killed when they were dismantling old US 

air force explosives to obtain scrap metal in 1959. The victims’ families relied on incomes 

from selling US scrap materials, after their land was taken (Kamei 1999). 

44 This figure was included in the petition made in 1973 by the Ie Village Assembly, against 

the US use of defoliants. 

45 These ideas were expressed in essays by the OPP founder, Senaga Kamejiro, in the local 

newspaper Uruma Shimpō and journal Jinmin Bunka (Arasaki 1976: 39). 

6 The second wave: towards reversion 

Notes 191 

1 A substantial amount of cobalt was found in locally produced seafood. 

2 Residents in local communities fought their own struggles against the US military’s 

operations and further private property acquisitions in places such as Ie-jima (Ahagon 

1998), Konbu (Okinawa Taimusu Sha 1997: 233–6) and Chibana (Jinmin, 11 January 

1969). For example, the land struggle in Konbu is recorded in Gushikawa Shishi 

(Gushikawa Shiyakusho 1970: 908–10). 

3 This figure was calculated from the supposition that each of the 7,362 full-time prostitutes 

made $20 per night. The number of the prostitutes was estimated by the GRI (Sturdevant 

and Stoltzfus 1993: 251–2), and is significantly lower than the figure estimated by Selden 

in the above quotation. 

4 This information was obtained from the survey conducted in Koza, by Professor Ishihara 

Masaie’s research team at the Okinawa International University (Tomiyama 1996: 30, 

n14). 

5 Arashiro became a teacher, following in the footsteps of his schoolteachers who were 

engaged in the reversion movement. In 1981, the Japanese government paid his 

grandmother compensation of ¥891,880 (approximately $7,432). Arashiro used this 

money to write a textbook on the history of Okinawa for high-school students, which 

was published in 1997 (see Arashiro 1997, Okinawa Mondai Henshu Iinkai 1995: 72). 

6 Crimes committed by US citizens reported to the Legislature were 981 cases in 1961, 

1,078 in 1962, 1,131 in 1963, 973 in 1964, 1,003 in 1965, 1,407 in 1966 (Ryūkyū 

Shimpōsha 1968: 138). 

7 In May 1954 Deputy Governor General David Ogden commented that, if the Okinawans 

wished to return to Japanese administration, US forces would completely withdraw from 

the Far East, leaving Japan vulnerable to the communist threat. Therefore, Okinawans, 

as loyal Japanese citizens, could not want reversion (cited in Oguma 1998: 513).

192 Notes 

8 The JCP, which had celebrated Okinawa’s independence from Japan immediately after 

Japan’s war defeat (see Chapter 4), drastically changed its position and defined 

Okinawa’s return to Japan as ‘the inseparable and highly important part of the liberation 

of the Japanese people from American imperialism’. It was the only mainland Japanese 

political party to demand that the US bases be withdrawn from the island (Watanabe 

1970: 117). 

9 Upon the US State Department’s request, the American Consular Unit obtained the 

translation of Heiwa to Dokuritsu no tame ni (For peace and independence) No. 349, 1 

April 1954, which was ‘published by the Japanese Communist Party as a directive for 

Communist anti-American activities on Okinawa’ (American Consular Unit 1955: 3). 

10 At the time, the US authorities monitored and tried to move back Amami people in 

Okinawa Main Island. For details see Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 70–2. 

11 In March 1953, upon Democratic Party’s request, the USCAR even interfered with and 

cancelled the elected Legislature seat of an OSMP candidate, Tengan Chokō, to replace 

him with a Democratic Party candidate. After this so-called ‘Tengan incident’, OPP 

members and some ex-OSMP members formed the ‘Committee for the Struggle against 

Colonialism’ in protest against US manipulation of party politics. The USCAR ordered 

it to be dissolved, ‘without any room for discussion or questions’, on the grounds that 

its name suggested hostile propaganda against the US military (Gabe 1969: 55). 

12 Preceding the Naha mayoral election in 1958, Minren conflicted severely with the non- 

Minren OSMP members on candidate selection. The OPP and Minren chair Senaga 

demanded that the OSMP should agree with a Minren candidate, Kaneshi Saichi. In the 

end, Kaneshi was elected over the OSMP candidate, Taira Tatsuo, who was supported 

by the Liberal Party against Minren (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 98–9). 

13 Other member organizations included the League of Okinawan Women’s Groups, 

(Okinawa Fujin Rengōkai, Okifuren), Jichirō Okinawa Branch, Okinawa Children’s 

Protection Society (Okinawa Kodomo o Mamorukai), Okinawa Liberty Society 

(Okinawa Jiyū Kyōkai), Okinawa Waterside Workers’ Union (Okinawa Kōwan Rōdō 

Kumiai), Okinawa Textile Workers’ Union (Okinawa Seni Rōdō Kumiai), and the 

Okinawan Traffic Workers’ Union (Zen Okinawa Kōtsū Rōdō Kumiai). 

14 Yara refused this position because of the ‘damage he caused to the reversion movement’ 

earlier. In 1954 the USCAR cancelled the OTA leaders’ (Yara and Kyan Shinei’s) 

passports on their way to receive school reconstruction funding in Tokyo. This was 

part of the US military’s policy to monitor and suppress political activities for reversion 

(Tōyama 1987: 405). 

15 The Secretary General of the Council worked for two years without getting paid. Only 

in 1966 was the Council able to employ a person as full-time staff (Tōyama 1987: 406). 

16 In 1959, a new conservative party, the Okinawa Liberal Democratic Party (Okinawa 

Jiyū Minshutō), was formed, as a result of the internal divisions and election defeat of 

the Ryūkyū Democratic Party. In October 1964, a further division resulted in a new 

conservative party called the Liberal Party (Jiyūtō). Shortly after this, in December 1964, 

the Liberal Democratic Party and Liberal Party were integrated into the Okinawa 

Democratic Party (Okinawa Minshutō.) 

17 In mainland Japan, the ICFTU had a strong influence on labour unions after the US 

Occupation, especially on excluding the Communist Party’s (in Okinawa, the OPP’s) 

influence in the labour movement. The ICFTU membership constantly created a 

source of controversy among union members. In Okinawa, those who promoted 

ICFTU membership valued the lobbying power on the US authorities, and the opponents 

– often those affiliated to the Communist Party – criticized the ICFTU policy of drawing 

its members away from staging ‘class struggles’ autonomous of the state (Maehara 

2000: 35–7). Zengunrō also joined the conservative ICFTU, after some internal 

controversy. 

18 The small Union office in Urasoe village had only one full-time female worker, helped 

by union executives who had finished their main work. Uehara notes that as well as the

Notes 193 

poor public transport and few affordable motor cars, the mental and physical work 

involved was enormous, which strained the members’ family life (Uehara 1982: 77). 

19 Officially, the Zengunrō strike did not request the removal of the bases. In fact, the 

organizer announced that the strike was totally unrelated to the anti-base movement 

(Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 177). 

20 The US military threatened the base workers with severe counter-action against those 

who participated. The High Commissioner issued a ‘general labour ordinance’ as a 

substitute for Ordinance No. 116, which improved the wages and other working 

conditions, but added severe punitive clauses for strikes and picketing within military 

facilities (Uehara 1982: 272–3). 

21 Baldwin visited the victims of the 1959 Miyanomori Primary School plane crash 

incident. With missionary Harold Rickard, he also met Ahagon Shōkō and other 

Ie-jima farmers (Ahagon 1989: 136). 

22 On Jahana see Chapter 3. 

23 This view, importantly, was consistent with the nationalist wish for Okinawa’s 

reintegration of the conservative politicians in mainland Japan. However, the Japanese 

conservative state elites considered maintaining the US military presence in Okinawa 

most crucial for the US-Japan security alliance. In the end, they found a way to get 

both. 

24 In the first rally, 45 Okinawan participants and 41 from the mainland met on the ocean 

(Tōyama 1987: 411). 

25 The diary of Prime Minister Satō Eisaku contains descriptions of the patron-client 

relationships developed between Satō and Yara. See Satō 1997, vols 3 and 4. 

26 In the reversion campaign, the physical dimensions involved in diminishing ‘Okinawanness’ 

to become Japanese, which Tomiyama (1997) stressed, were resurrected. 

27 In 1962, the US President John F. Kennedy made the High Commissioner’s appointment 

of the GRI Chief Executives formal (KyōkōNihō Tōsōshi Henshū Iinkai 1998: 158–9). 

Leaders of the main party were nominated. Until then, according to the US presidential 

order in June 1957, the Legislature Chair had nominated the Chief Executives. 

28 In principle, however, both conservative and progressive parties demanded the public 

election of Chief Executives in the short or long term (Tōyama 1987: 416). 

29 Similarly, the Council organized subsidiary rallies in five places (Itoman, Nago, Ishigaki, 

Taira, and Koza) before the October rally in Naha (Sokoku Fukki Tōsōshi Hensan Iinkai 

1982: 199–200). 

30 In the pre-reversion era, Route 1 was designed as a purely military road and was 

functioning as the most important pathway across the island with US military vehicles 

transporting goods and people en route to military operations and trainings for Vietnam. 

The traffic hazard created by the demonstration caused serious inconvenience and the 

authorities’ retalitation was severe. Today this road is called Route 58. 

31 The Okinawa Human Rights Association’s Fukuchi Hiroaki arranged the collective 

action of the group. The members included the Chief Executives of Okinawa Taimusu 

and Ryūkyū Shimpō, the Chair of OTA, the University of Ryūkyū’s Dean of Science, 

and Chair of the mayors’ association. The group also directly appealed to Satō in Tokyo 

(Tōyama 1987: 451). 

32 Deployment of the US forces on Japanese territory became part of Japan’s responsibility 

under new Ampo, which was positively undertaken by the LDP government. This 

sufficiently assured the US forces freedom to use Okinawa without controlling the civil 

administration of the island (Tanaka 1997). 

33 In July 1965, Edwin Reischauer, the US ambassador in Japan, advised the US State 

Department that the transferring administration of Okinawa to Japan was the decisive 

factor for a stable US–Japan relationship. Despite opposition from the military and the 

US Defense Department, which tended to regard the administration of Okinawa as crucial 

for maintaining US forces there, the US State Department took Reischauer’s advice 

seriously (Gabe 2000: 57–62).

194 Notes 

34 It was Yara Chobyo, leader of the OTA, who advocated the legalization of Okinawan 

public educators’ status, but without the restriction of these political rights (Tōyama 

1987: 432–33). 

35 The Japan Teachers’ Union had already engaged in a similar struggle against the 

introduction of teachers’ evaluation system (Kyōkō Nihō Tōsōshi Henshū Iinkai 

1998: 98). 

36 The treaty’s new formal name was the ‘Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security 

between Japan and the United States of America’, still in effect today. This presumed 

‘equality’ is controversial. Article VI of the treaty specifies Japan’s duty to provide for 

the US bases within its territory, although US responsibility to protect Japan’s security 

is not specified as a duty of the US in the treaty (Gabe 2000: 14–18). 

37 Furthermore, mainland Japanese anti-Ampo organizations, such as the Stop Ampo 

National Committee (Ampo Soshi Kokumin Kaigi), did not suggest any joint collective 

action with the Okinawan anti-base activists when the US Congress passed the 

construction of a Mace B missile base in Okinawa in 1960. The Ryūkyū Legislature 

made a protest statement (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 118). 

38 Oda Makoto, a leading figure of Beheiren, wrote: ‘Realistically speaking, we are all 

guilty of complicity in the Vietnam War. We must recognise that each of us is among 

the perpetrators. In my opinion, this is why we must conduct our opposition movement 

all the more forcefully. But to put it less practically and more in terms of basic principles, 

if we don’t take a clear position against the war and seek peace here and now, perhaps 

the hand [holding the gun] will be ours one day. To the extent that we don’t firmly nail 

down our basic principles as individuals, perhaps we will have to fire the bullet on orders 

from the state’ (Oda 1967, cited in Havens 1987: 120). 

39 In this meeting, the students expressed their support for a US Army soldier, Lieutenant 

Richard Stink, who was suspended by the military for his refusal to go to South Vietnam 

because the ‘Vietnam War is not worth losing one soldier’s life’ . . . A few days later, 

some students handed leaflets titled ‘Oppose Vietnam War: To Create a Movement for 

Peace’, written in English, to the US soldiers in Koza City (Arasaki 1969: 211). Most 

US soldiers tore up and threw away the leaflets. However, an anecdote tells that one or 

two African-American soldiers gave back a dollar note, which encouraged the students 

(Nakano and Arasaki 1970: 36–7). This anti-militarist Okinawan repertoire of protest, 

‘not to alienate the foreigners with slogans like “Yankee go home” but instead to reach 

out to those who had doubts about the war’ (Havens 1987: 123) transferred to the 

mainland anti-war activists in Japan such as Beheiren members. Some Beheiren members 

‘began distributing leaflets to American sailors outside the navy base at Yokosuka on 

Dec 1 1966’ (Havens 1987: 123). 

40 Another term ‘Ryūkyū-Ko’ (the Ryūkyū Arc) was also used, to describe the significance 

of the Ryukyu archipelago as an entity independent from mainland Japan. 

41 For example, the quotation by the Okinawan Human Rights Association at its opening 

ceremony (see Chapter 5). 

42 Among his colleagues who are similarly distanced from organizational opposition is 

Takara Ben, a high-school chemistry teacher and a poet, who publishes widely in local 

newspapers and books (Takara 1996). He promotes the idea of Okinawa’s independence 

more vocally in a journal, Urumanesia. He has also organized solidarity-building events 

with a group of Ainu activists. 

43 Kina Shōkichi is a prominent Okinawan folk-pop musician. His 1997 album, ‘Change 

all the weapons into musical instruments’ (subete no buki o gakki ni), is also a slogan 

of his wide range of collective actions, including overseas activities, such as the ‘White 

Ship of Peace’ trip to the Native American community in 1998, and local activities 

such as the Nirai Kanai Festivals. In February 2002, Kawamitsu travelled to India with 

Kina and Takaesu Asao, who was also an activist who participated in the Shiraho struggle 

(see Chapter 6), representing a non-government organization, the Peacemakers’ 

Network, and met with the Indian Defence Minister, George Fernandes, who supported

Notes 195 

his project of collecting all the weapons in the world and replacing them with musical 

instruments, by sending a weapon to Okinawa, in order to build a Peace Monument 

(Kina Shōkichi, Interview, February 2002). 

44 The Okinawa Democratic Party changed its name to the Okinawa Liberal Democratic 

Party in December 1967. 

45 The Japanese government hinted at the possible removal of B-52s from Okinawa, after 

the June or July completion of the new military airport in Thailand, which had been 

under construction (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 187). 

46 Nakasone Satoru, Secretary General of the Council for Reversion, commented in 1969, 

‘The intervention of the Chief Executive in the organizational decisions ignores the rules 

and principles of mass movements. Such intervention breeds distrust amongst the rankand-file 

members. We need to have a candid discussion with Chief Executive Yara.’ 

Kishimoto Toshizane, Socialist Party Chair, stated, ‘The use of power and influence of 

the minority figures to interfere with the mass organizations’ decisions significantly 

contradicts the principle of democracy.’ Nakamatsu Yōzen, an OPP member, 

commented, ‘Protecting Chief Executive Yara should not mean condoning his mistake 

at the expense of weakening the mass movement. His failure should have been corrected 

in the course of developing the mass movement correctly. In this sense, political parties 

are also responsible for the Chief Executive’s misdeed and self-criticism is necessary’ 

(Kawamitsu 2000: 240–1). 

47 For full text of this joint statement see Database of Postwar Japanese Politics 

and International Relations, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 

2004. 

48 Zengunrō workers were on strike for 48 hours, 8–9 January, and for 120 hours from 

19 January (Nakano and Arasaki 1976: 200). 

49 Various mainland Japanese individuals travelled to Okinawa to support the ‘Okinawa 

Struggle’, which had been isolated from mainland progressive political organizations. 

These sympathizers included radical New Left sectarian activists, intellectuals and 

famous writers such as Ōe Kenzaburō, who questioned, ‘Is it possible to change myself 

into a Japanese that is not the Japanese we are?’ during his sojourn in Okinawa (Oe 

1970). 

50 A member of the Naha City Assembly, Takazato Suzuyo, recalls that the aggressive 

behaviour displayed by US soldiers in the local community was exceptional during the 

Vietnam War. Particularly in 1967, there was a series of robberies and murders of bar 

hostesses committed by returnee soldiers from Vietnam (The Okinawan Women Act 

Against Military Violence 1998: 56). 

51 The aforementioned female bar owner was clearly not associated with this Society (Ishida 

1993: 85). 

52 In total, 476 police officers from all over Okinawa Main Island were mobilized, and 

21 people were arrested (Okinawa Shiyakusho Kikakubu Heiwa Bunka Shinko-ka 

1999: 68). 

53 According to the ‘Summary Police Report on the Koza Riot of 20 December’, the 

occupations of arrested suspects included a Koza City Hall staff member, four military 

employees, a car company employee, a glass manufacturer employee, a construction 

worker, a university student, a high-school student, a bartender, a taxi driver, a waterside 

worker, an electric retail owner, two unemployed, an upholsterer, a hotel worker, a 

milling company employee, a mechanic, and a company worker (Okinawa Shiyakusho 

Kikakubu Heiwa Bunka Shinko-ka 1999). 

7 The anti-war landowners and the progressive coalition: 

the constitutional framing of protest 

1 In other parts of Japan, the US forces and the Self-Defence Forces occupy properties 

mostly owned by the state. The state owns 34.1 per cent of the land used by the US

196 Notes 

military bases on Okinawa, as opposed to 87.5.5 per cent in mainland Japan (Okinawa 

Ken Sōmubu Chiji Koōshitsu Kichi Taisakushitsu 2005: 13). 

2 As a representative body of contract landowners, Tochiren has concentrated on 

negotiation with the state for better contract terms and higher rent on behalf of the 

landowners. In 1995, Tochiren officially declared its opposition to the termination of 

military land leases, that is, it opposed the withdrawal of the US military from Okinawa 

(Kurima 1998: 279). 

3 The transfer of money from the US and Japan to the GRI was ¥41.7 billion in 1969; in 

1978, Okinawa Prefecture received ¥637.6 billion from Japan’s state budget (Kurima 

1998: 5). An aggregate direct income from the US bases, which included US military 

personnel and their families’ spending, wages and salaries of the local base employers, 

and the rent paid for the land privately owned by the local landowners, declined 

drastically from 36.8 per cent of the entire incomes obtained from outside Okinawa 

Prefecture in 1970 to 14.6 per cent in 1974 (Kurima 1998: 32). 

4 The non-contract landowners’ properties were often returned to the objectors in 

small plots amidst the massive US bases – dreaded by the owners, for they could 

not be used for residence, farmland, or any economic activities. The government 

also returned contract landowners’ properties simply because they were located 

adjacent to non-contract properties. Because the return of undesired military properties 

reduced regular income, bitter conflicts arose between some non-contract and 

contract landowners. Some objectors were ostracized in their communities and 

workplaces; some were estranged from family members and relatives (Arasaki 1995: 

78–82). 

5 The size of the land surface exclusively used by the US military bases on Okinawa, 

after reversion, was 24,000 ha, 15 per cent less than before reversion, and 23,519 ha in 

2000 (Okinawa Ken Sōmubu Chiji Kōshitsu Kichi Taisakushitsu 2000: 1). 

6 The Agreed Minute of the Joint Communiqué of Nixon and Satō on 21 November 1969 

states, ‘in time of great emergency the United States Government will require the reentry 

of nuclear weapons and transit rights in Okinawa with prior consultation with the 

Government of Japan. The United States Government would anticipate a favourable 

response. The United States Government also requires the standby retention and 

activation in time of great emergency of existing nuclear storage locations in Okinawa: 

Kadena, Naha, Henoko and Nike Hercules units’ (Purves 1995–2005). 

7 As a result of the massive employment reductions the US military conducted before 

reversion, local base workers had declined in number from 21,000 in 1970 to 7,980 

in 1978. The zengunrō members declined to 5,000 from more than 18,000 (Uehara 

1982: 454). 

8 As seen most prominently in the emergence of ‘anti-reversionism’ (han-fukki) in the 

late 1960s, explorations were made towards a uniquely ‘Okinawan’ identity, defined 

by a historical, cultural, and ethnic background separate from yamato. Arakawa Akira, 

Takara Ben, Kawamitsu Shinichi, and others contributed to the exploration of an 

independent Okinawa at the ‘mental’ level. The critical and politically active Okinawans’ 

desire to express Okinawa’s distinctiveness arose in reaction to the decline of ‘reversion 

nationalism’ and disappointment with the 1972 reversion of Okinawa as a means to 

turn Okinawa into a fortress of the US–Japan Security Alliance. 

9 Some One-tsubo members are contract landowners who receive substantial incomes 

from their other properties within the bases, but in principle share with the anti-war 

landowners the will to oppose the US bases (Arasaki 1995: 152). 

10 The GRI, led by Governor Yara, protested that this law was unconstitutional because 

it breached the right to private ownership (Article 29) and unjustly discriminated against 

Okinawa thereby breaching the principle of equality under the law (Article 14). The 

law, furthermore, ignored the process required by Article 95, that a majority of residents’ 

votes in a referendum is necessary for setting a special law applied in one municipality 

(Arasaki 1995: 77–8).

Notes 197 

11 The new law responded to Governor Yara and the landowners’ demands to reidentify 

the land registrations lost in the processes of war evacuation and subsequent military 

occupation. 

12 Forceful entries into the military facilities happened in Ie-jima, the Japanese Self- 

Defence Air Force Base, and other bases such as Kadena Air Base. 

13 Each application requires about 11 public hearings until the Land Expropriation 

Committee’s final decision. The expropriation of non-contract landowners’ properties 

is a long process, which takes normally from six to twelve months. 

14 The duration of the original land leases was twenty years, based on the longest lease 

regulated by Article 604 of the Civil Code. 

15 Of the properties used by the US military, municipalities (cities, villages, and towns) 

own 29.2 per cent (Okinawa Ken Sōmubu Chiji Kōshitsu Kichi Taisakushitsu 2000: 11). 

Until a conservative mayor was elected in November 2001, as an anti-war municipality, 

Naha City had refused to sign the lease of the 2.6 per cent (1.5 ha) of the Naha Military 

Port (Okinawa Taimusu 14 November 2000). See note 1. 

16 On 17 November 1990, Ōta Masahide had been elected the new Governor, after the 

conservative OLDP Governor, Nishime Junji (1978–90). One of the procedures required 

for the compulsory expropriation of non-contract landowners’ properties by the US 

Military Special Measures Law was the notification (kōkoku) of, and making the case 

for, public inspection (jūran) by the mayors of the municipalities where the properties 

in question were located. As an expression of opposition to the US military occupation, 

the mayors of Naha city, Okinawa City, Ginowan City, Chatan town, and Yomitan 

village had rejected this procedure. Then, the Governor had the responsibility to sign 

on behalf of the mayors, which was conducted by Governor Nishime of the OLDP 

regularly. As a progressive governor, Ōta was committed to the removal of the US 

military bases, and was publicly opposed to the compulsory use of non-contract 

landowners’ land. Ōta had an option to reject this responsibility. However, after much 

consideration, Ōta agreed with the procedure, on condition that the central government 

increased its commitment to the necessary legalization and financial assistance for future 

returns of the private properties currently occupied by the US bases (Arasaki 1995: 

197–9). 

17 Rengō is the largest organization in the Japanese labour movement. It was formally 

inaugurated in November 1989 with eight million members after Sōhyō(General Council 

of Japanese Trade Unions) was dissolved. 

18 For example, in April 2002, the Okinawa Peace Movement Centre and tōitsuren held 

a joint rally called ‘Mamorō Kenpō,Kōchōkai Hōkoku Shūkai’ (Protect the Constitution, 

a public hearing report), against the legislation related to attacks by other countries 

against Japan, which legalizes the war preparation activities of the state, the US military, 

and the SDF (Okinawa Taimusu 23 April 2003). 

19 Other major activities included making ‘human chains’ around the Futenma Marine 

Corps Air Station in 1995 and 1998 in protest against the US military presence and 

war. There were similar protests against the Kadena Air Base in 1987, 1990, and 2000. 

20 Onna village is located in the northern region of Okinawa Main Island. Its 1989 

population was 8,840, who mainly engaged in farming. In the late 1980s, tourism was 

the rising industry in this village. Camp Hansen (US Marine Corps) occupied 29.6 per 

cent of the village. The destruction of, and threat to, the natural and human environment 

caused by the US live fire training had been generating grievances, especially the 

destruction of Mount Onna (onna dake)(Tokushu Butai Kensetsu oyobi Jitsudan Shageki 

Enshū Hantai Onna Son Jikkō Iinkai 1990: 33). 

21 Only 159 people lived in Toyohara district in 1993. It is located within Motobu village 

in the northern region. 

22 Leader Nakamura Fumiko was from Motobu village (Chapter 4). 

23 Other examples include opposition to the live firing training across Prefecture Road 

104 (which would be closed during the training), in Kin town (Okinawa Taimusu Sha

198 Notes 

1997: 134–6). The SACO agreement in 1996 decided to stop the live firing training 

except for those using 155 mm bullets. These trainings were moved to Hijūdai Training 

Area in Ōita Prefecture. 

24 Residents’ movements normally refer to the collective action taken up by people who 

reside in particular communities regarding the issues that affect the living conditions 

in those communities. Participants of citizens’ movements usually engage in collective 

action as citizens, without the emphasis on where they live. According to Ikemiyagi, in 

Okinawa the relationship between residents’ movements and citizens’ movements is 

often complementary. The former is usually the direct subject of collective action 

peculiar to their residential location, in which the latter plays a ‘supporting role’ 

(Ikemiyagi Interview, May 1999). 

25 Other cases Ikemiyagi has been involved in include the Kadena Air Base Noise Case 

(kadena bakuon soshō), initiated by about 906 residents who lived around the base, 

and who suffered from the explosive noise, demanding to stop the night flight training 

from 7pm to 7am. The case was first taken to court in February 1982, and closed in 

May 1998 with indemnity payment, but no flights stopped. One of the plaintiffs, Matsuda 

Kame, notes that she lost interest in the case because the noise was getting worse and 

worse (Hiramatsu 2001: 154–5). 

26 For example see Japan Revolutionary Communist League Marxist Faction 2005; Japan 

Revolutionary Communist League (JRCL) 2005; and New Anti-Ampo Action 

Committee 2005. 

27 During the second-wave Okinawa Struggle, the hinomaru flag was a symbol of resistance 

against US military rule, and the home country to which the reversionists wished to 

return. After reversion, the political meaning of the flag has significantly changed for 

the Okinawan community of protest. In 1987, Chibana Shōichi, a ‘peace guide’ resident 

of Yomitan village, and later an anti-war landowner, burned the hinomaru flag in front 

of the crowd at a National Sport Meet event. The flag had created a political controversy 

before the Sport Meet, about whether or not raising the flag at the venue in Okinawa 

was appropriate, yet the flag burning was sensational enough to make Chibana a 

celebrity, attracting both sympathizers and violent threats from right-wing thugs. 

Chibana’s act represented the negative emotions of the Okinawans towards the flag 

(see Chibana 1992, Field 1993). 

28 Article 9 constitutes of two separate clauses: (1) ‘Aspiring sincerely to an international 

peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign 

right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international 

disputes.’ (2) ‘In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, 

and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of 

belligerency of the state will not be recognized’ (translated in Parisi 2002). 

29 A recent public hearing statement made by an anti-war landowner of a property in Camp 

Zukeran criticized today’s social neglect of the peace Constitution and its principles, 

warned against the ongoing process of facilitating the state’s ability to conduct war, 

and gave a reminder of the 1925 Peace Preservation Law that removed the freedom of 

expression (Okinawa Hitotsubo Hansen Jinushikai Kantō Burokku 27 April 2005). 

30 According to Zukeran, the conservatives, such as Liberal Democratic Party members, 

often criticize the One-tsubo anti-war landowners as ‘a group influenced by an extreme 

ideological belief’ (1997: 194). He rejects this criticism by explaining that ‘the respect 

[for the Constitution] is the collective feeling of all Okinawans, not an extreme 

ideological position’ (emphasis added, 1997: 194). 

31 Political scientist Professor Egami Yoshinori, who teaches at Ryūkyū University, argues 

that the OSMP has been a local party supported by the population, who prefer not to 

identify themselves with either conservative or radical political ideas. Politically, it is 

‘progressive’ and anti-base; however, its populist appeal mainly drives from being the 

only local party without any affiliation with the mainland Japanese parties (Interview, 

April 1999).

Notes 199 

32 At the time, the US was trying to justify permanent use of Okinawan land in the Price 

Report, which recommended the purchase of the US land right for 99 years, which met 

the Okinawans’ 1956 all-island resistance. 

8 Kin Bay and Shiraho: emergence of new social movements 

1 Direct income generated from the US military consists of local consumption made by 

the US military personnel and families, salaries paid to locally employed military 

workers, and rent paid to the landowners of the properties occupied by the US military. 

(Kawase 2000: 56) 

2 For this purpose, on the day of Okinawa’s reversion, 15 May 1972, the Okinawa 

Development Stimulation Committee (Okinawa Shinkō Kaihatsu Shingi-kai) was 

established within the Okinawa Development Agency. 

3 However, the central government shielded Okinawa effectively from multinationals’ 

direct investments and placed Okinawa under its immediate control, which eliminated 

the opportunity for Okinawa to become a thriving autonomous economic zone, attractive 

to foreign investments and business opportunities (Howell 2000). 

4 The basis of this ‘special treatment’ of Okinawa, according to one of the policy-makers 

who were involved in making the current Plan, is ‘the unusual various conditions under 

which Okinawa is located’, which refers to the military bases (Okinawa Taimusu 

20 July 2003). 

5 This mechanism of dependence of the local communities on the base-related subsidies 

is explained clearly in Kurima 1998: 219–319. Also, see Miyamoto 2000: 4–18. 

6 He refers to the uneasiness he felt at the time of the 1968 Chief Executive election 

when asked by the conservative camp: ‘the LDP is planning to induce the oil 

multinational, Gulf, which will lead to the construction of a power station and other 

industries such as aluminium. What is your plan on industrial development?’ (Yara 

1985: 266) 

7 Typical examples include the anti-konbinaatō (industrial complex) movement in 

Mishima, Shizuoka, and the ‘Big Four’ pollution incidents, including mercury poisoning 

which killed and permanently crippled many residents in Minamata, and Niigata, an 

extremely painful degeneration of human bones caused by cadmium-contaminated rice 

in Toyama, and asthma caused by air pollution in Yokkaichi. 

8 In November 1972, the representative of the committee requested the Yara Government 

to facilitate Arabia Sekiyu’s (Arabia Oil) operations (Yara 1985: 269). 

9 The Kin Bay Protection Group tacitly obtained the opinion statement submitted to Yara 

from the attorneys, and sued the Yara government over the unconstitutional landfill 

authorization. However, the attorneys refused to fight against the progressive governor 

and did not participate in the court case (Kinwan o Mamoru Kai 1978: 3). 

10 The construction site was moved to Miyara Makinaka, further inland from Shiraho (Map 

8.2). The Miyara residents, mostly farmers, firmly opposed the airport construction. 

Even though the necessity for a new airport was generally agreed in Ishigaki Island and 

the greater Yaeyama region, the project came to a halt. In March 2000, a prefecture 

committee, specifically set up by the Inamine prefecture government to solve the 

protracted New Ishigaki Airport problem, selected a new construction site in the Kara 

Mountain area, again immediately next to Shiraho. If built, the wall of the new airport 

would be right in front of the Shiraho reef, where the world heritage coral is. The main 

opponents of this site, convinced of the destructive impact of the predicted red soil 

effluent on the coral reefs, have been non-governmental environmentalist organizations 

such as the World Wild Fund for Nature Japan (WWFJ) and the Japan Union for Nature 

Conservation (Zenkoku Shizen Hogo Rengō). However, this time, the residents’ 

opposition movement that expanded globally in the 1980s was not repeated. Residents’ 

movements, in general, are an extremely difficult and exhausting business, which involve 

emotional conflicts, especially with other local residents.

200 Notes 

11 This expectation often results in disappointment with the ignorant and unenlightened 

‘mass’, as witnessed in the lament of leading activists such as Ikemiyagi and Yonemori 

towards the immaturity of the Japanese masses when it comes to their apathy towards 

participating in collective action to enhance the public good as ‘citizens’ (Yonemori, 

Interview, April 1999; see Ikemiyagi’s interview in Chapter 6). 

12 McKean notes, accurately, ‘The Japanese refer to any protest movement consisting of 

residents of a particular locality as “residents’ movements” (jūmin undō), but sometimes 

reserve the term “citizens’ movements” (shimin undō) for the most experienced groups, 

those which use the most sophisticated political tools and which become principally 

concerned with the issue of citizen participation’ (McKean 1981: 6). The most often 

used example of a citizens’ movement, in this sense, is the Beheiren movement. 

13 Yaeyama Chikurō is affiliated with other District Union Councils in Okinawa and the 

Okinawa Peace Movement Centre. 

14 The photograph was given to the local fisher folk who guided the photographer on a 

boat, and was passed on to Yonemori (Yonemori, Interview, 13 April 1999). 

15 In Shiraho, one does not need to be a trained professional fisher to obtain fish, seashells 

and sea grasses. Farmers, housewives, old people, and children obtained their daily food 

supplies and pocket money by collecting fish and sea grasses (Aosa is one of the typical 

kinds). In 1979 a local newspaper reported a farming Shiraho woman who commented, 

‘I can make ¥10,000–15,000 a day, by collecting aosa’ (Yaeyama Mainichi Shimbun 

31 January 1979). 

16 In particular, in this region, traditionally, female dance meetings (usudehku) and youth 

dancing festivals (eisah) are performed annually. 

17 However, bringing in bipartisan political issues has created internal conflicts among 

villagers in Yakena, for example (Ōshiro Fumi, Interview, May 1999). 

18 Since the anti-CTS protest activities in the 1970s, Ōshiro, and other villagers, for 

example, engage in researching classical songs and dances in usudeku. (Interview, May 

1999). 

19 Quoting the local newspapers’ report that a police officer had committed trespass, sexual 

assault, and murder of a female university student, Ōshiro’s poetry read, ‘Junsa 

gwa nukurenu, Kenri fuimawachi, Yuruya innai, Inagu sagute’ (An authoritative police 

officer during the day is a dog at night going after women) (Ōshiro cited in Asato 

1981: 168). 

20 Sasaki-Uemura explains a general factor that constrained participation in residents’ 

movements in the 1960s and 1970s, with regard to mainland Japanese men: ‘They 

generally had to commute farther to and from work, and they increasingly were expected 

to engage in after-hours activities with their co-workers. They were thus for the most 

part physically absent from the places they lived. Hence, few men felt free enough 

from work-related constraints to become involved in these movements’ (Sasaki-Uemura, 

2001: 145–6). 

21 The direct translation of shima society is ‘island society’, but ‘closed, small community’ 

is a more accurate meaning of the term. 

22 They also discovered that one of the utaki was contained within the CTS site, which 

provided another incentive to fire up opposition (Asato 1981: 60). 

23 The members included nine mostly senior professors of biology, marine biology, 

economics, transport engineering, and social policy from the University of the Ryūkyūs, 

which was the only state university in Okinawa, and the members were regarded as the 

most authoritative in their fields. This added weight to the influence of the Committee’s 

opinion on the legitimacy of the landfill project. 

24 However, Ui witnessed the limited public access to the report: the report was put on a 

small table in the corner of a corridor of the Prefecture Hall, blocked by busy office 

workers passing by. The planners of the airport had a strict policy of secrecy, which 

gave the impression of dishonesty, and no respect was given to the citizens’ right to 

access information on public projects (Ui 1986).

Notes 201 

25 Ui Jun is a scientist and environmental activist, specializing in pollution and 

environmental engineering. His study of the Minamata disease contributed greatly to 

the Minamata residents’ movement and raised public awareness on the political aspects 

of industrial pollution (Ui 1968). Ui has also contributed to the development of public 

education on pollution and environmental issues in Japan by conducting ‘pollution study’ 

lectures at Tokyo University after hours, which are open to the general public (Ui 1971 

[1990]). When he was concerned with the airport construction in Shiraho, he had just 

moved to Okinawa from Tokyo University to concentrate on the devastating effects of 

the post-reversion industrialization policies on Okinawa’s environment (Interview, 

March 1999). 

26 The Examination Group included 27 academic staff from Ryūkyū University and a 

substantial number of staff from Okinawa University joined the Examination Group 

(Sugioka 1989: 146). 

27 The members of the Examination Group based in Naha – Ukai Teruki, Tabeta Masahiro, 

Fukunaka Ken, Ui Jun, and architect Makishi Yoshikazu – issued two booklets: Problems 

of the New Ishigaki Airport Construction Plan (Shin Ishigaki Kūkō Kensetsu Keikaku 

no Mondaiten) and Problems of the New Ishigaki Airport Construction Plan Part II. 

The first booklet scrutinized the government’s environmental evaluation report of the 

airport construction (Shin Ishigaki Kūkō Kensetsu o Kangaeru Kai 1986). 

28 Legally, the airport construction required the local fishing population’s consensus to 

cancel their allocated fishing right in the area where the landfill was planned. In June 

1980, the Yaeyama Fishing Co-operative agreed to sell the fishing right of the Shiraho 

marine district to the government, despite the opposition of the Shiraho Co-op members, 

who belonged to the Shiraho Community Centre. The Shiaraho fishers filed a court 

case against the state and the prefecture government. In March 1984, 33 Shirahoans 

(Fishing Co-op members) made a complaint against the Yaeyama Fishing Co-operative 

and the prefecture government, on the grounds that the decision was made in a meeting 

that was not attended by more than half of the union members, and was therefore invalid. 

The Shiraho residents were confident of victory. However, on 24 December 1985, the 

Naha Local Court found in favour of the prefecture government and the Co-operative’s 

argument. 

29 The Attorney Group, based in Osaka with 372 members, after 1988 supported the Shiraho 

struggle by submitting petitions and providing legal support for the court cases (Shiraho 

o Kangaeru Osaka Bengoshi no Kai 1989). 

30 The Shiraho court cases were mostly cancelled in the middle, in the course of 

development of the airport issue. 

31 There were residents’ groups in each area, including CTS Hantai Yonaguni Jūmin no 

Kai (Yonaguni CTS Opposition Residents’ Organization) and Uken Mura Edateku Jima 

Sekiyu Kigyō Yūchi Hantai Sonmin Kaigi (Uken Village Edateku Island Villagers’ 

Council against Oil Companies). 

32 Amami and surrounding islands, administratively under the Kagoshima Prefecture, used 

to be part of the Ryūkyū kingdom, until being separated early in the seventeenth century 

by Shimazu’s colonization. In this sense, islands of Amami and Okinawa have basic 

cultural and linguistic commonalities. 

33 In total, 25 issues of this newsletter were published from July 1977 to September 1984. 

34 Seven years later, the Society wrote, ‘The concept of the Ryūkyūko region as a sphere 

of residents’ movements was now established amongst the movement activists across 

the region’ (CTS Soshi Tōsō o Hirogeru Kai 1981: 20–2). 

35 Out of 34,936 people in Yaeyama region, 54 per cent had malaria and 10.5 per cent 

died (Noike 1990: 133). 

36 Yamazato is originally from Ishigaki City. She used to be a member of the Concerned 

Citizens’ Group, based in Ishigaki City. As a teenager, she worked as a guide and as an 

assistant for an American scientist who was conducting a geological survey of Ishigaki 

Island. The survey was conducted under the US military government at the time, and

202 Notes 

was intended to provide detailed knowledge of the strategic environment of the island. 

Yamazato agreed to work for the scientist because she ‘wanted to learn the English 

language’. However, she has always felt guilty for collaborating with the US military, 

mainly because she lost her family members in the War. Her determination to prevent 

future war on the island motivated Yamazato to move to Shiraho in 1983, and to engage 

in the protest activities against the new airport plan (Interview, May 1999). 

9 The third wave and beyond: The power of Unai and the dugongs 

1 The group’s other representative is Itokazu Keiko, whose involvement in the anti-war 

movement is discussed in Chapter 4. 

2 With Okinawa’s reversion to Japan, legislation against prostitution was introduced. 

Nevertheless, the sex industry around the bases continued with migrant workers 

predominantly from the Philippines, who were often trafficked into Okinawa illegally 

through underground crime syndicates (Sturdevant and Stoltzfus 1993). 

3 Francis has lived in Japan since 1968, as a Christian missionary, and had worked for 

women’s rights in Japan. Since 1989, she has lived in Okinawa and engaged in activities 

for peace, writing about base issues and women’s issues in Okinawa (Francis, Interview, 

May 1999). 

4 They visited after Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, and saw the hardship of the residents 

in Olongapo City after the Subic US Navy Base was returned (Ginowan Seminar House 

1995; Takazato 1996: 168–9). Subsequently the Okinawans sent sewing machines to 

the Buklod Centre in the Philippines, to help the women to find effective ways to obtain 

income and prospect for economic autonomy. Since then small groups of female and 

male Okinawans have frequently visited the Buklod Centre. 

5 Amerasian children ‘live with severe prejudice and suffer discrimination in education 

and employment due to their physical appearance and their mothers’ low status. Those 

with African-American fathers face even worse treatment than those having white 

fathers’ (Kirk et al. 2000: 1). 

6 Other topics were: ‘the environment and women’, ‘ūji zome’ (traditional dyeing as an 

example of sustainable local-oriented industry, using sugar cane), ‘structural violence 

against women’, ‘comfort women (during WWII) in Okinawa’, ‘action against nuclear 

weapons’, ‘war and malaria’ (during WWII, especially in the Yaeyama region), ‘women 

and peace panel exhibition’, ‘traditional culture and gender discrimination’, ‘ageing 

society and welfare’, ‘women and labour’, ‘the unai network’ (NGO Forum Beijing 95 

Okinawa Jikko Iinkai 1996). 

7 What motivated them to publicize this case quickly was the memory of a rape case two 

years earlier of a 19-year-old local woman, who was abducted, driven to the base and 

raped by a US soldier. It was only after the soldier left the country after being charged 

that the local newspaper reported the case. Four months later, the victim dropped the 

case, owing to the shame and isolation. As a result, the rape may not even remain on 

the criminal record of the discharged soldier. Because rape and sexual violence are 

recognized as a shame, rather than human rights violation, the journalists and police 

either hush up or scandalize the subject. The rape victims needed to obtain public support 

immediately, which required more than a request for enhanced discipline to the US 

Consulate and the Defense Facilities Bureau (Takazato 1996: 22–5). 

8 As discussed in Chapter 7, over a third of the land occupied by the US military and the 

Japanese Self-Defence Force comprises privately owned properties. After Okinawa’s 

reversion, landowners of these properties received rent from the Japanese government 

on the basis of legal lease contracts. An estimated thirty thousand landowners received 

annual rents, whereas those who refused to contract received compensation. Under the 

US Military Special Measures Law, the US military continued to legally occupy these 

properties owned by the dissenting landowners.

Notes 203 

9 Former Governor Nishime of the Okinawa Liberal Democratic Party regularly signed 

accordingly. In 1990, Ōta did too, on the condition that the central government increase 

its commitment to the necessary legalization and financial assistance for promoting the 

return of US military-occupied properties to the owners. 

10 The Governor had nevertheless been preparing for the refusal well before the September 

1995 rape case. In fact, he was determined to do this especially since the ‘Nye Report’ 

in February announced the maintenance of status quo troop presence in East Asia, 

especially Okinawa. Joseph Nye, then Assistant Secretary of Defense for International 

Security Affairs, instigated a Pentagon report – often referred to as the ‘Nye Report’ – 

in which he declared the necessity to keep the hundred thousand troops in Korea and 

Japan, including more than forty thousand in Okinawa. See Department of Defense, 

Office of International Security Affairs 1995. 

11 Ōta, historian and now a member of the Upper House, wrote more than sixty books on 

war and peace in Okinawa, Okinawan society and politics, and the history of Japan- 

Okinawa relations. Also a survivor of the Battle of Okinawa, he eagerly supported the 

non-belligerent principle of the Japanese Constitution. He practised a ‘peace policy’, 

which involved the construction of the Cornerstone of Peace (see Chapter 4). During 

his term in office, Ōta travelled to the US every year to negotiate directly with 

government officials, congress members, and state leaders to reduce the military presence 

on the island. As well as visiting Washington, DC, every year, the Governor invited 

members of the US lower house and the Security Committee, journalists, and military 

advisers in order to show them people’s lives in Okinawa, crowded amidst the US 

military facilities. In particular, Ōta argued for the reduction of the US forces in Okinawa, 

especially the Marines (Ōta and Ikezawa 1998: 53–5). On Ōta see, for example, Humphry 

2002; Johnson 1995; Ōta 2000a. 

12 After reversion, Chibana’s father owned the property in Yomitan and refused the contract 

as an anti-war landowner; however, in April 1976 he was pressured into signing the 

contract by the Japanese government’s strategy to return anti-war landowners’ properties 

together with those of other contract landowners in the community who were receiving 

rent. After 20 years, in 1992, Chibana senior decided to pass on the property to his son, 

who was an adamant and famous anti-war and anti-military Okinawan activist (Chibana 

2000). 

13 In April, the Lower House passed the US Military Special Measures Law reform bill, 

which allowed the US military to use privately owned land without landowners’ consent 

after the lease expires, until the Prefecture Land Expropriation Committee granted 

another lease (Okinawa Times 6 April 1997). Furthermore, if the Committee rejected 

or delayed lease authorization, the lease was still legal, with the matter being forwarded 

for the Construction Minister’s consideration. With another major reform of the Local 

Autonomy Law, which passed the Diet in July 1999, the authorization of land 

expropriation for the US military’s use shifted from the mayors and governors to the 

state. This made it impossible for a municipal authority to defend anti-war landowners’ 

dissent. 

14 The main instigators of this referendum were Rengō Okinawa and the progressive 

political parties and unions, including the OSDP (Okinawa Social Democratic Party) 

and the JCP members, who had won the majority of seats in the mid-1996 Prefecture 

Assembly election after 16 years in opposition, and members of Rengō, Kenrōkyō, and 

a majority of Zenchūrō. The Okinawa Prefecture Government set up the Co-ordination 

Committee for the Promotion of the Prefecture Referendum (Kenmin Tohyō Suishin 

Kyōgikai), and allocated a budget of approximately ¥480 million (Eldridge 1997). 

15 A small faction which split from Zenchūrō, as well as restaurants, bars, and small 

business owners in ‘base towns’ especially Kin Town, the All-Okinawan Rental Housing 

Committee and Tochiren with an estimated 28,000 members, also opposed the 

referendum for their specific interests (RyūkyūShimpō 18 August 1996, Okinawa Times 

21 August 1996, Eldridge 1997).

204 Notes 

16 In order to maintain coalition with the LDP and its position as a main party, the Socialist 

Democratic Party (formerly Japanese Socialist Party) had temporarily suspended its 

basic opposition to the US military bases, the SDF, and the security alliance with the 

US. Its anti-militarist position was regarded as ‘not an imminent agenda’ at the time 

(Arasaki 1996: 60–1). 

17 This observation is based on my observation through informal personal communications 

during my fieldwork in 1999 and 2002. 

18 The funding for REIKO shrank by ¥650,000 between 1996 and 1999 (Angst 2001: 

259; Okinawa Times 4 June 1999; REIKO 2001: 16). 

19 Professor Betty Reardon at Columbia University, who teaches peace education, visited 

Okinawa in September 1997, gave talks on militarism and women and studied the 

situation of US bases on the island (Yui: Okinawan Women Act Against Military and 

Violence Newsletter 10 January 1997). 

20 These particularly hazardous facilities for the locals had been considered urgently in 

need of some kind of resolution. In April 1994, the director general of the Japanese 

Defence Agency demanded that the US Secretary of State should work for resolution. 

However, no progress had been made ‘until the Secretary of State Perry received a wakeup 

call by the 1995 rape incident’ (Funabashi 1997: 351). 

21 The final report stresses that the US and Japan have responded to the Okinawans’ anti- 

US base feelings, by making dramatic change in the US military presence: 

‘approximately 21 per cent of the total acreage of the US facilities and areas in Okinawa 

excluding joint use facilities and areas (approx. 5,002 ha/12,361 acres) will be returned’ 

(Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs 1997). 

22 There were three major candidate locations. To the first possibility, the Kadena 

Ammunition Storage area, three local assemblies of Chatan town, Kadena town, and 

Okinawa City were jointly opposed (Ryūkyū Shimpō 17 September 1996). Another 

candidate was Nakagusuku Bay, adjacent to a US navy port (known as the White Beach). 

Likewise, residents in Katsuren town and Tsuken Island next to White Beach expressed 

clear opposition to the plan, owing to anticipated effects of the ‘heliport’ on the local 

fishing industry (Ryūkyū Shimpō 25 September 1996). These two possibilities were 

scrapped for various reasons, including the staunch residents’ opposition. 

23 See McCormack 1998. 

24 The trip from Naha to Nago City is time-consuming and expensive. Driving between 

Nago and Naha using the freeway costs about ¥3,000 (just under US $30) both ways. 

The bus services charge about ¥4,200 for the round trip. Each way the bus journey 

takes at least two and a half hours. 

25 The Nago District, a small area in the west side of today’s Nago City, used to be a 

town. In August 1970, Nago town and four nearby villages, Kushi, Yagaji, Haneji, and 

Yabe, merged into Nago City. 

26 For example, in some communities, until a few decades ago, marrying outside the hamlet 

was banned, for fear of losing the labour force. Also, in some communities, villagers 

who violated the code of behaviour of the community had to pay a certain amount of 

money to the community, until someone else did the same. Inheritance of family estates 

and assets with tōtōme(a family ancestry card, a wooden plaque with ancestors’ names 

on it, passed down from generation to generation) to the eldest sons is still preferred 

(Takahashi 2000: 244–51). 

27 Inoue explains that the friendliness and openness to outsiders (the US military) and 

visitors co-exists with tenacious traditional rigidity of kinship rule that excludes outside 

influence from the core power structure, which is believed to keep the community 

together. These contradictory elements make up a distinct Henoko identity different 

from any other ‘Okinawan’ identities (Inoue 1999: 298–314). 

28 Nago municipalities received ¥261,869,000 in 1998 (Okinawa Ken Sōmubu Chiji 

Kōshitsu Kichi Taisakushitsu 2000: 46–7). Henoko also receives ¥120,000,000 in 

compensation for access to the forest area occupied by Camp Schwab (Okinawa

Notes 205 

Taimususha 1998: 51). Thanks to the government subsidies, Henoko holds numerous 

community events, sometimes spending several million yen on one event (Okinawa 

Taimususha 1998: 50). 

29 Villagers rarely express anti-base opinions, given that many community members work 

for the base or live on rent (Okinawa Taimususha 1998: 37). 

30 Some Henoko residents still make a living out of fishing in the ocean next to Camp 

Schwab, watching the US amphibious tanks coming in and out of the ocean. In the reef 

area, because of the red soil contamination, fish have greatly decreased in numbers 

(Ishikawa 1998). 

31 In July and November 1996, the mayor organized citizens’ rallies opposing the 

relocation, with respectively 4,100 and 2,600 residents attending against the construction 

of an alternative sea-base facility. In January 1997, he criticized the Japanese 

government’s ‘base rotation’ (Kichi no tarai mawashi) policy, that is, ‘passing unwanted 

US military facilities around to the northern region, without obtaining consent from the 

local residents’ (Okinawa Times 22 January 1997). Higa also attacked Governor Ōta 

for giving silent agreement on relocations to the northern region, in contrast to the 

Prefecture’s firm opposition to the relocation suggested in the Nakagusuku Bay area 

(Okinawa Taimususha 1998: 31). However, the mayor continued negotiating with the 

Government officials such as the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister, Okamoto 

Yukio, on boosting the Government’s economic revitalization scheme for Nago 

(Okinawa Times 11 April 1997). 

32 Participant organizations included the Okinawa Prefectural Labour Union Committee 

(Hokubu chikurō), Japanese Trade Union Confederation Northern Regional Council 

(Rengō Okinawa Hokubu Chiiki Kyōgikai), All-Japan Prefectural and Municipal 

Workers’ Union Northern Branch (Jichirō Hokubu Soshibu), Nago City Municipal 

Workers’ Union (Nago Shishokurō) and the Okinawa Peace Centre (Hokubuchiku Rōdō 

Kumiai Kyōgikai 1999: 87). 

33 The Coalition initiated locals’ ‘surveillance’ activities to stop the inspections by 

organizing a rally at the Henoko Fishing Port (Ryūkyū Shimpō Evening Edition 6 May 

1997). Some of the locals and union members got on small boats and physically clashed 

with the Bureau’s inspection vessels. About 280 locals gathered, mainly from Henoko, 

which was reported by the local media. 

34 On the ‘sustainable development in Okinawa’ research see Miyamoto and Sasaki (eds) 

2000. In the 1970s, the ‘inverted affluence theory’ (gyaku kakusa ron) was pursued with 

enthusiasm by the Nago City’s planners including Kishimoto Tateo – ironically, the 

current mayor who has committed himself to increasing subsidies from the Japanese 

government. 

35 Dugongs are large marine mammals, still occasionally found off the coasts of northern 

Okinawa. They are an endangered species, which used to live throughout the Okinawa 

region. ‘Disappeared from elsewhere in Okinawa, the current distribution of the dugongs 

is only along the northeastern coast of the main island of Okinawa, and the number is 

thought to be very small, possibly less than 50 animals’ (Save the Dugong Campaign 

Centre, 2003). 

36 Member organizations were the OSMP Nago Branch, OSDP Nago Branch, Japan 

Communist Party Northern Regional Committee, Komei Party Nago Branch, the 

Okinawa Prefectural Labour Union Committee Northern Branch, Rengō Northern Cooperation, 

Jichirō (All Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers’ Union) Northern 

Headquarters, Jichirō Nago City Hall Workers’ Union, All-Medical Doctors’ Union 

Okinawa Airakuen Branch, Okinawa Peace Movement Centre Northern Branch, and 

the One-tsubo Anti-War Landowners’ Organization Northern Bloc. Other members 

included the Nago City Peace Committee, a branch of a nationwide network and an 

offshoot of the Japan Communist Party, the New Japan Women’s Association Nago 

Shibu (NJWA), and 11 Nago City Assembly’s anti-base members representing 

progressive political parties (Nago Shimin Tōhyō Hōkokushū Kankō Iinkai 1999: 75).

206 Notes 

37 Signatures from one-third of the population were enough to request the mayor’s 

resignation: ‘this was a warning towards the mayor: it showed our capacity to collect 

signatures for his resignation’ (Nago Shimin Tōhyō Hōkokushū Kankō Iinkai 1999: 

46). There were 18 ruling party members of Nago City Assembly who were against the 

referendum before the signature collection, as opposed to 11 who supported it. However, 

given the number of the signatures, both the mayor and the ruling party members were 

pressured to pass the regulation (Nago Shimin Tōhyō Hōkokushū Kankō Iinkai 1999: 

46–7). 

38 However, the campaign for the Nago mayor election, subsequent to the referendum 

and Higa’s resignation, was a different story. Veteran party and union members excluded 

inexperienced ‘citizens’ from the selection process of an anti-heliport candidate. On 

this occasion, the progressive political parties and unions’ election expertise and 

organizational interests dominated the campaign (Kyoda 1998). A Jannukai member 

recalls not being able to conduct their original activities (Mashiki et al. 1999). ‘Unity’ 

of the anti-heliport coalition was achieved under the top-down, hierarchical (mostly 

male-seniority) order. 

39 There were experienced female activists in Nago, such as members of women’s divisions 

of regional workers’ unions, local women’s associations or other older organizations 

such as Okifuren and NJWA. 

40 Wives of anti-war landowners and anti-base activists discuss their experiences in Ikehara 

et al. 1996. 

41 In January 1998, the Reach to the Heart Women’s Voice Network met Ōta at the lobby 

of the Prefecture Hall, and asked him not to accept the new base. This was a spectacular 

event, with the lobby filled up with 300 women (Kunimasa, Interview, May 1999). 

Governor Ōta had made difficult decisions to mend relationships with Tokyo, to save 

the local economy from subsidies drying up, by being more moderate on the base issues. 

Subsequently, Ōta readjusted his position on the heliport, and expressed his opposition 

officially, even though the connection of the two events was unclear. Following this, 

the Network members did a michi junay in the streets of Ginza in Tokyo. They made it 

into a performance of a sale of the new base, with the premium of government’s special 

subsidies, in a tarai (washing basin), playing a pun on tarai mawashi (passing from 

one place to another) of Futenma Base. As of 2005 the Network is still active. In July 

they did another michi junay in Naha. 

42 In total, 82.45 per cent (31,477 votes) of the eligible voters cast their votes. The 

breakdown of the votes was: (1) I agree with the construction plan . . . 8 per cent, (2) 

I agree because the environmental measures and economic improvement can be expected 

. . . 37 per cent, (3) I oppose the construction plan . . . 52 per cent, (4) I oppose because 

environmental measures and economic improvements cannot be expected . . . 1 per cent, 

(5) Invalid 1 per cent. 

43 The Referendum Promotion Council renamed itself the Anti-Heliport Coalition (Heliport 

Hantai Kyōgikai). 

44 Helen Marsh at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, who has visited 

Okinawa and given seminars, is one of the regular supporters (Save the Dugong 

Campaign Centre 2002: 4). 

45 See, for example, Save the Dugong Campaign Centre 2002, 2003; World Conservation 

Union (IUCN) 2001. 

46 Following the IUCN meeting, Miyagi Yasuhiro of SDCC and Ōnishi Masayuki, a 

linguistics professor at Meiō University in Nago, developed a support network with the 

Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) and the Centre for Marine Conservation. 

Also, Miyagi and Ōnishi travelled to Washington to talk to the president and vice 

president of the Marine Mammal Commission who planned to investigate and write 

reports about the dugongs (Marine Mammal Commission March 2001: 129–30). The 

Commission is an independent administrative body that monitors US government

activities and advises Washington on the protection of ocean mammals such as manatees 

(Ōnishi, Interview, November 2000). 

47 The Center for Biological Diversity (2 July 2004) reports ‘889 of the world’s leading 

coral reef experts from 83 countries participating in the 10th International Coral Reef 

Symposium in Okinawa, Japan, have signed a resolution calling on the governments of 

Japan and the United States to immediately abandon their joint plan to construct an 

offshore airbase atop a coral reef on the eastern coast of Okinawa’. 

48 The National Historic Preservation Act ‘requires agencies of the US government to 

conduct a full public process before undertaking activities outside the United States 

that might impact the cultural and natural resources of other nations’. The lawsuit was 

represented by a non-profit public-interest law firm, Earthjustice (US Newswire 2 March 

2005). 

49 On this period of protest in Henoko against the Futenma base relocation, see McCormack 

2005; McNeil 2005; Makishi 2006; Urashima 2006. 

Conclusion 

Notes 207 

1 In the postwar period the residents have experienced 15 stray shooting accidents caused 

by the US Marine training range, which hit houses and farms, and in 1964 hit a local 

girl in her leg. Because of the proximity to the residential area, the ‘Japanese government 

plans to build a replacement facility near Camp Hansen’s Range 16, about 1,000 yards 

from Igei. However, there is no timetable for that project’ (Stars & Stripes Pacific Edition 

26 July 2005). 

2 See Maeshiro et al. 1998; Takara et al. 2000 

3 See the 1999 Peace Memorial Museum dispute in Yonetani 2003a and Chapter 4 of 

this book. 

4 The Shurei Gate is named after the idea of politeness and courtesy, associated with the 

traditional Ryūkyūan character in interactions with the Chinese and other nations. It was 

destroyed in the Battle of Okinawa, and reconstructed in 1958. Arakawa locates the 

¥2,000 bill as a significant event in the Okinawans’ history of marginalization. By 

claiming the image specifically from the Okinawan (Ryūkyūan) past, the bill marks 

consolidation of the assimilation of potentially alien Okinawa to Japan (Arakawa 2000b: 

17–58). 

5 On 13 August 2004, after 2 pm, a United States Marine Corps cargo helicopter lost a 

vital part in the air, and crashed into one of the buildings of Okinawa International 

University. The helicopter belonged to the Futenma US Marine Corps Air Base, located 

next to the University in the middle of a densely populated Ginowan City with the 

population of 90,000. Its rotor created a hole into a campus concrete wall, its body turned 

into a fireball, three US soldiers were injured, but no local was killed as the incident 

happened during a summer term break (The New York Times 13 September 2004).

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Index 

‘A’ sign businesses 80, 102 

Abe Ryoichi 144 

absolute pacifism 8, 36–7, 41–52, 69, 123; 

criticism of 95 

‘Absolutely No to Heliport’ forum 165 

Ahagon Shōkō 54, 55, 64, 66, 67–8, 

69–70, 74 

Ainu Moshiri and Uruma Society 112 

aircraft accidents 79, 99, 162, 180, 207 

all-island coalition 5, 8–9, 53–76 

All-Nago Citizens’ Group against the 

Heliport 165, 167 

All-Okinawan Labour Unions’ Association 

84 

All-Okinawan Military Workers’ Union 

(Zengunrō) 84–5, 99, 102, 110 

Allen, M. 4, 5 

Amami 143, 201 

Amerasian children 154, 202 

Anderson, B. 17–18, 188–9 

Angst, L.I. 71, 158, 159 

Aniya Masaaki 46 

annexation 8, 21–35 

Anti-Heliport Coalition 206 

anti-militarism 3, 94–5, 119; reversion 

and 98–102; Shiraho struggle 146–7; 

women’s movement 150–1, 151–4 

anti-reversionism (han-fukki) 34, 96–8, 

185 

anti-war landowners 9, 74, 106–26, 156–7, 

157–8; strategy and activities 113–18 

Anti-War Landowners’ Organisation 

108 

Anti-War Students’ Congress 95, 194 

April 28 anniversary 83, 87, 94, 119–20 

Arabia Sekiyu (Arabia Oil) 131 

Aragaki Shigeo 168 

Arakawa Akira 31, 32, 33–4, 97–8, 144, 

145 

Arasaki Moriteru 47, 52, 94, 101, 178–9; 

anti-war landowners 111, 112–13, 

114–15, 156–7; Expand the Anti-CTS 

Struggle Society 144; land acquisition 

struggle 65, 66, 143; self-determination 

76; three waves of Okinawan struggle 

5–6, 15 

Arashiro Toshiaki 80–1, 191 

Arime Masao 117–18 

Asahi Shimbun 65–6, 190 

Asato Eiko 144 

Asato Seishin 134–5, 138, 140 

assimilation 21–35; policy 25–6 

attorneys 117, 131–2, 142–3, 199 

Attorneys’ Organization (bengo-dan) 143 

August 15 anniversary 94 

autonomy 137 

B-52s 77, 79, 99, 100 

backwardness 26 

Baldwin, R. 85, 193 

Barrel, T. 5 

Battle of Okinawa 1, 3, 54, 95, 148, 164, 

177; anti-war landowners 121–2, 124; 

Okinawan residents in 37–41; and 

pacifism 8, 36–52 

beggars’ march 68–9 

Beheiren (anti-Vietnam movement) 94 

Benford, R.D. 16, 17, 182 

boat rallies 86–7 

brothels 40, 153 

Camp Hansen: August 2005 protest 177, 

207; rape incident of 1995 1, 10, 150, 

151–2, 154–5, 158–9, 181 

Camp Schwab 101, 162, 163, 165 

caves 39 

censorship: museum displays 48–50; 

textbooks 42, 44

228 Index 

Center for Biological Diversity 175, 207 

Central Terminal Station (CTS) dispute 

9–10, 127, 128–32, 133–49 

Chibana Shōichi 45, 47, 156, 187, 198, 

203 

China 22, 23, 183, 184 

Chinen Kokichi 63 

Christy, A.S. 30 

citizen subject 134 

Citizens’ Council for Peace 47 

citizens’ movements 13, 117, 134, 198, 

200; movement for referendum 163–9 

citizens’ rallies 71, 81, 89; 21 October 

1995 150, 156 

class 33; class-based organizations 81–6 

coalition for reversion 81–6 

Cockburn, C. 158 

Code of Regulations for Petition Activities 

67–8 

Cold War 55 

collective action frames 16, 17, 182 

collective behaviour 182 

collective identity 14, 17, 18; early 

development of Okinawan identity 

26–30; new social movements 

137–40 

collective suicides 38–9, 40; challenging 

the idea of 44–5 

comfort stations 40, 153 

Committee for the Struggle against 

Colonialism 192 

communication 17–19, 19–20 

communism 81–2 

community events 138 

community of protest 1–10 

compensation 63, 108 

Concerned Citizens’ Group against the 

Airport 136 

conscription 26, 27–8 

constitutional framing of protest 106–7, 

118–25 

constructivism 14, 17 

contract landowners 74, 108 

coral 133, 137–8, 141–2, 145 

Cornerstone of Peace 37, 40–1, 43, 48, 

185, 186 

Council for Reversion 83, 87–8, 88, 90, 

101–2, 106, 109–10, 111, 179 

crime, by US soldiers 80–1, 102–4, 

191 

Crook, S. 13 

cultural policy 60 

customs, preservation of 24–5, 31 

cycles of protest 15 

development 2, 25, 129–30, 184 

discrimination 28 

diversity 3, 4, 11–20, 106; social 

movement theory 12–19 

Dower, J. 122 

dugongs 166, 174–5, 205 

Eco-Net Chura 166 

Edinburgh, Duke of 142 

education 26–7; ‘two laws on education’ 

struggle 91–3 

Egami Yoshinori 198 

Eisenhower, D.D. 61 

emigration 28 

emperor as divine being 26 

employment 80 

environmental framing of protest 106, 107, 

127–49 

environmental impact assessments 141, 

142 

ethnic pride 72 

ethnic self-determination 75–6 

ethnic self-perception 30 

Expand the Anti-CTS Struggle Society 

144–5, 201 

external experts 140–2 

famine 24–5 

farmers: displaced and employment by 

US military 79–80; Ie-jima struggle 

53–4, 54, 55, 62–70, 74–5, 143, 190; 

Miyako Island protest 31 

feminist activist network 154 

Field, N. 44, 187 

Figal, G. 48, 52 

films 45–7 

first wave of Okinawan Struggle 5, 8–9, 

53–76, 106 

Five Group Coalition 72–4 

Five Party Coalition 165, 205 

flag, hinomaru 45, 119, 198 

food 39–40, 185 

‘four principles for land protection’ 65, 

71–2 

Fourth World Conference on Women, 

Beijing 154–5, 202 

framings of protest 16, 17, 106–7; absolute 

pacifism 41; constitutional 106–7, 

118–25; environmental 106, 107, 

127–49; gender 106, 107, 150–76; 

localist 137–40, 148; reversion 

movement 86–8 

Francis, C. 154, 202 

Fukuchi Hiroaki 46, 85

Funabashi, Y. 155 

Futenma air base 10, 150, 180, 207; 

relocation 49, 162–3, 169–70 

Gabe, M. 72 

Gathering of Kamadu 170, 172 

gender framing of protest 106, 107, 

150–76 

general strike 99–102, 179 

Government of the Ryūkyū Islands (GRI) 

55–6; Chief Executive election 88–90, 

99–100 

Gusukuma Seian 31 

Habermas, J. 13 

Hanashiro Seihan 145 

hand-made pamphlets 171, 172 

Haneji Chōshū (Shōjōken) 97 

Hashimoto, Prime Minister 162 

Hatoyama, Prime Minister 73 

Heart Dyed in Ocean Colour, The 142 

heliport struggle 49, 95–6, 161–75 

Henoko 163–4, 165, 204–5 

Henoko Life Protection Society 164, 165, 

167 

Higa Shuhei 57, 64, 65, 72, 73 

Higa Tetsuya 164, 173, 205 

Higa Yasuo 139–40 

Higashionna Kanjun 29 

Higashionna Takuma 166, 174–5 

High Commissioners 61–2 

Himeyuri Peace Memorial Museum 43 

Himeyuri Troop 43, 186 

hinomaru flag 45, 119, 198 

historical narrative of victimization 21 

history, myth and 19 

Hook, G. 21 

‘House of the Peoples’ incident 27 

identity see collective identity 

Ie-jima farmers’ struggle 53–4, 54, 55, 

62–70, 74–5, 143, 190 

Ienaga Saburō 44, 187 

Iha Fuyū 22, 29–30 

IhaYōichi 50 

Ikemiyagi Toshio 117, 136–7, 142, 198 

Iken Kyōtō (Okinawa Supporting Council 

for the Legal Actions against 

Unconstitutionality) 109–11, 119–20, 

125, 126 

Inamine Keiichi 48, 49, 50–1 

industrial promotion 2, 25, 130, 184 

informality 20 

Inoue, M. 204 

Index 229 

intellectuals 29, 140–2 

international activism 140–2, 152–3, 

174–5 

International Confederation of Free Trade 

Unions (ICFTU) 84, 192 

Irei Takashi 71, 82, 140, 144 

Isahama hamlet 70 

Ishihara Masaie 42, 46 

Ishihara Shinichirō 133 

island-wide struggles 6 

Itagaki Taisuke 32 

Itokazu Keiko 42–3 

Jahana Noboru 8, 22, 31–4, 185 

Jannukai 170 

Japan 49; annexation and assimilation 8, 

21–35; Battle of Okinawa 37–41; 

ethnic attachment to 87–8, 110; fiscal 

leverage and general strike 100; and 

Ie-jima struggle 65–6; postwar pacifism 

122–3; residents’ movements 134; 

reversion see reversion; rise of third 

wave of protest and 155–6; Ryūkyū 

disposal 22–3; severance of Okinawa 

from in 1952 62; solidarity with 

mainland Japanese protest 

organizations 93–4; special adjustment 

budget 158; support for reversion in 73 

Japan Communist Party (JCP) 56, 82, 86, 

192 

Japan-Ryūkyū Common Ancestry Theory 

97 

Japan Socialist Party (JSP) 93 

Japanese Constitution 9, 47, 48, 62, 79, 

189; constitutional framing of protest 

106–7, 118–25 

Japanese language 26–7, 40, 88 

Japanese Teachers’ Union (Nikkyōso) 47, 

93, 194 

Japanese Women’s Association 46 

Japanization 28–9 

Johnson, C. 8, 161 

Johnson, L.B. 90, 93 

JPRI 5, 181 

Jukkuno Kai (Group of 10 Districts North 

of Futami against the Heliport) 165–6, 

170 

Kadena Air Base 43–4, 79, 99, 111; human 

chain protest 174 

Kakazu Hill 43 

Kansai Okinawans’ Organization 28 

Kant, I. 177 

Kawamitsu Akihiro 43

230 Index 

Kawamitsu Shinichi 98, 194 

Kennan, G. 187 

Kenrōkyō (Okinawa Prefectural Labour 

Union Committee) 84–5, 100 

Kerama Islands 38 

Kin Bay Life Protection Society 131, 

134–5, 145, 199 

Kin Bay struggle 9–10, 127, 128–32, 

133–49; in the lineage of the ‘Okinawa 

Struggle’ 143–7 

Kina Shōkichi 98, 156, 194–5 

Kirk, G. 154, 161 

Kishi Nobusuke 93 

Kishimoto Tateo 95–6 

Ko¯dōkai 24, 32 

Koe, Koe, Koe pamphlet 171 

Kohazu Eikou 34 

Kokuba Kōtaro 70 

Kokuba-kun incident 81 

Konbu hamlet 69, 190 

Korea 154 

Korean War 55 

Koza Livelihood Protection Society 103 

Koza riot 102–4, 179 

Kunimasa Mie 170, 172 

Kurihara, A. 13–14 

Kuwae Chōkō 59 

Kyan Shinei 57 

labour legislation 59 

labour movement see unions 

land acquisition struggle 5, 8–9, 53–76 

land committees 59 

Land Expropriation Committee 114–15, 

157 

Land Expropriation Law 114 

land lease contracts 62–3, 74; Governor’s 

signature for anti-war landowners 155, 

202–3; Murayama and signing of 

157–8 

Land Registration Identification Law 113 

Landowners Union (Tochiren) 59–60, 108, 

196 

language 17–19; Japanese language 26–7, 

40, 88 

learning, shared 15–16 

Lévi-Strauss, C. 19, 183 

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 49, 91 

life improvement movement 28–9 

lifestyle 137–8 

literacy 17–19 

litigation 117, 142–3, 201 

localist framing of protest 137–40, 148 

lump sum payment policy 64, 65, 74 

MacArthur, D. 187 

Maedomari Shoei 133 

Maja 63, 65, 66–9, 74 

Makishi Yoshikazu 142, 166 

Marine Mammal Commission 206–7 

Matayoshi Ichirō 82 

materialism 13 

Matsukata, Interior Minister 24 

Matsuoka Seiho 88 

May 15 anniversary 119 

McCarthy, J. 14 

Meiji government 22–3 

Melucci, A. 14, 17, 96, 182 

michi-junay 173, 206 

middle classes, new 12–13 

migration 28 

military bases 1–2, 3, 5, 55, 177–8, 181; 

income from 128–9, 199; ‘Okinawa 

Initiative’ 178; peace education tours 

43–4; source of anger to Okinawans 77, 

78–81; women’s movement 151–4; 

workers 58, 78, 98–9, 102 

military conscription 26, 27–8 

Minren (Protection of Democracy 

Communication Council) 82–3 

missile practice range 63 

Mitsubishi Kaihatsu 131–2 

Miyagi Etsujirō 46 

Miyagi Harumi 38–9 

Miyagi Island Land Protection Society 131 

Miyagi Yasuhiro 41, 167, 174, 206–7 

Miyako Island 23, 31, 183 

Miyako Socialist Party 56 

Miyanomori Primary School 79 

mokunin kōsakuchi (permitted farming 

area) scheme 75 

Molasky, M. 71 

Monbushō 42, 44, 186–7 

Morii Yoshikatsu 144 

Morris-Suzuki, T. 25 

Mukaezato Kiyoshi 136 

Murayama Tomi’ichi 157–8 

Murphy, R. 141 

Muzik, K. 141–2 

myth 6–10; myth of Okinawan struggle 

31–4, 51–2; storytelling, myth-making 

and unity 19–20; women’s movement 

and myth of a unified ‘Okinawan 

Struggle’ 158–61 

Nago Citizens’ Organization for 

Revitalization and Stimulation 167 

Nago Citizens Referendum Promotion 

Council 167, 169, 170, 206

Nago City 49, 178 

Nago heliport struggle 49, 96, 161–75 

Naha 38, 82, 117, 197 

Naha City Council 42 

Naha Defence Facilities Bureau 114–15 

Naha Military Port strike 58 

Nago referendum 10, 163–9, 173–4, 206 

Nahakara Zenchū 29 

Nakakita, R. 49 

Nakamura Fumiko 45–7 

Nakamura Jissaku 31 

Nakano, Y. 85, 94, 101 

Nakasane Genwa 57 

Nakasone Isamu 101 

Nakasone Seizen 46 

Namizato Seiji 63, 66 

Narahara Shigeru 31–2 

National Historic Preservation Act 175, 

207 

nationalism 17–18, 188–9; reversion 

see reversion nationalism 

Nelson, A. 4, 181 

New Ishigaki Airport Construction 

Examination Group 141, 201 

New Ishigaki Airport Construction 

Promotion Organization 132 

New Ishigaki Airport Discussion 

Committee 140–1, 200 

New Ishigaki Airport struggle 9–10, 127, 

132–3, 133–49, 199 

new social movements 3, 7–8, 116, 180, 

182; collective identity and framing of 

protest 137–40; and diversity 12–19; 

emergence of 9–10, 127–49; 

organization and participants 133–7; 

social movement theory 7–8, 12–19; 

strategy and repertoire of protest 

140–3; third wave 161–75 

NGO Beijing 95 Forum Okinawa Action 

Committee 154–5 

Nishime Junji 99 

Nixon, R. 101–2 

Noike, M. 146 

Nuchi du Takara Woman Powers Yarukies 

169 

nuclear weapons 77, 79, 101 

Nye Report 203 

Obuchi Keizo 49 

ocean 137–8, 146 

Oda Makoto 194 

Ōe Kenzaburo 34 

‘off limits’ sanctions 73–4, 80, 102 

Offe, C. 12 

Index 231 

offshore boat rallies 86–7 

Oguma, E. 29 

Okamoto Keitoku 144 

Okazawa-Rey, M. 154, 161 

Okinawa Agricultural Bank 32, 33 

Okinawa Defence Troops 38, 39 

Okinawa Democratic League 56, 57 

Okinawa Development Agency 129–30 

Okinawa Foundation 42, 186 

Okinawa Historical Film Society 45–7 

Okinawa Human Rights Association 85–6 

‘Okinawa Initiative’ 178 

Okinawa International University 

helicopter crash 180, 207 

Okinawa Islands Reversion to the Home 

Country Preparatory Council 62 

Okinawa Jiron 32 

Okinawa Kurabu 32–3 

Okinawa Marine Exposition 1975 141 

Okinawa Peace Committee 116 

Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum 36, 43, 

48–51 

Okinawa Peace Movement Centre 115–16, 

165 

Okinawa Peace Network 36, 43 

Okinawa People’s Party (OPP) 56, 60–1, 

82, 94, 110 

Okinawa Prefectural Labour Union 

Committee (Kenrokyo) 84–5, 100 

Okinawa Prefecture Council for Reversion 

to the Home Country see Council for 

Reversion 

Okinawa Prefecture Labour Union 

Committee 164 

Okinawa Prefecture Tourist Volunteer 

Guides’ Society 42, 186 

Okinawa Prefecture United Action 

Communication Conference 116 

Okinawa Regeneration and Development 

Plan 129–30 

Okinawa Reversion Agreement 109 

Okinawa Socialist Mass Party (OSMP) 57, 

60, 61, 82, 94, 110, 121, 198 

Okinawa Socialist Party (OSP) 56, 83, 94, 

110 

Okinawa Teachers’ Association (OTA) 

57–8, 87, 91–2, 110 

Okinawa, Yaeyama and Shiraho Ocean 

and Life Protection Group 136, 141, 

145 

Okinawan Citizens’ Life Protection 

Coalition 99, 100–1 

Okinawan identity, early development of 

27–31

232 Index 

Okinawan Industrial Promotion Plan 25, 

130, 184 

Okinawan Prefectural Assembly 50–1 

Okinawan Principals’ Organization 

(Kōchōkai)56 

Okinawan studies 29 

Okinawan Women Act against Military 

and Violence (OWAAMV) 43, 51, 152, 

160–1 

Okinawan Women’s Peace Caravan in 

America 161 

Okinawans’ Association 65, 189–90 

Okinawans’ Consultative Assembly 188 

One-Foot Movement Organization 45–7 

One-tsubo anti-war landowners 111–13, 

114–15, 117, 118, 126 

Ōnishi Masayuki 206–7 

Onna village 116–17, 172, 197 

oral communication 18–19, 19–20 

Ōshiro Fumi 139–40, 200 

Ōshiro, N. 39 

Ōshiro Shinya 46 

Ōta Chōfu 22, 27, 32, 184 

Ōta Masahide 23, 25, 46, 133, 164, 203, 

206; Battle of Okinawa 37, 38, 39, 40; 

non-contract owners’ land lease 155, 

157–8, 197; revision of SOFA 155; 

sued by Murayama 158 

pacifism 115–16, 122; absolute 8, 36–7, 

41–52, 69, 95, 123 

‘palm-tree hell’ 24–5 

parliamentary elections 33, 185 

peace education tours 41–2, 43–4 

‘peace guides’ 41–4 

Peace Memorial Museum 36, 43; 

debate 48–51 

peace movement see pacifism 

people’s movements 13–14 

People’s Rights Movement 8, 31–4 

petroleum storage facility 9–10, 127, 

128–32, 133–49 

Philippines 152, 154, 202 

poetry 138–9, 200 

poison gas 101 

political opportunity structure 15 

political organizations, birth of 56–60 

political parties 12, 56–7, 82–4, 110, 

167–8; see also under individual names 

politics of sameness 29–30 

poll tax 31 

post-industrial society 12–13 

Prefecture Land Expropriation Committee 

114–15, 157 

prefecture referendum 157, 158, 203 

Preparatory Council for Promoting 

Reversion 61 

‘preserving old customs’ policy 24–5, 31 

Price Report 71–2, 190 

print media 17–19 

Progressive Attorneys’ Organization 

131–2, 199 

progressive coalition 9, 106–26 

progressive nationalism 86–8, 110 

prostitution 40, 80, 152–3, 202 

protest community 1–10 

public hearings 114–15 

Public Property Law 113, 196 

Puhvel, J. 7 

radio unai festivals 153 

rape 158–9, 160–1, 202; land acquisition 

and 70–1; 1995 case 1, 10, 150, 151–2, 

154–5, 158–9, 181; Yumiko-chan 

(1955) 70–1, 158–9 

Reach to the Heart Women’s Voice 

Network 173, 206 

Reardon, B. 161, 204 

red soil 133 

referendum: citizens’ movement for 

163–9; Nago 10, 163–9, 173–4, 206; 

prefecture 157, 158, 203 

Referendum Promotion Council 166–7, 

169, 172, 206 

Referendum Regulation 167 

REIKO 160, 204 

Rengō Okinawa 156, 157 

repertoires of collective action 15–16, 17; 

residents’ movements 140–3 

repertoires of story-telling 18–19 

Republican Party 57 

residents’ movements 9–10, 13, 117, 

127–49, 198, 200 

residents’ rallies 71–2 

resource mobilization theory (RMT) 

14–15, 16 

reversion 5, 9, 13, 77–105, 106, 168; 

coalition for 81–6; emergence of 

reversion campaign 60–2; framing of 

the reversion movement 86–8; growing 

US incentives for 90–3; land struggle 

and 72–5 

reversion nationalism 77, 86–8, 109–10, 

119–20, 179; in crisis 93–8 

revisionist history 49 

RYCOM (Ryūkyū Command) 54–5 

Ryūkyū Democratic Party 57, 73, 82 

Ryūkyū disposal 23

Ryūkyū kingdom 21, 22–3, 183–4 

Ryūkyū poetry 138–9, 200 

Ryūkyū University Study Group on 

Marxism 95 

Ryū kyū ko 143–5 

Ryūkyū Residents’ Movements 

Communication Camp 145–6 

sacred places 139–40 

Sakihara Seishu 47, 134, 139, 144, 145 

San Francisco Bay Area Okinawa Peace 

Network 154 

San Francisco Peace Treaty 60–2, 76, 83 

Sasaki-Uemura, W.M. 134, 139, 200 

Satō Eisaku 91, 100, 101–2, 109; visit to 

Okinawa 88–90 

Satsuma 22, 183 

Save the Dugong Foundation 174 

schoolteachers 46–7, 57–8, 87–8, 91–3 

Scott, A. 12, 15 

second wave of Okinawan Struggle 5, 9, 

77–105, 106 

Selden, M. 80 

self-victimization 21, 48, 94–6 

Senaga Kamejiro 60, 82, 124 

Shigemitsu, Foreign Minister 73 

Shimabukuro Zenpatsu 30 

Shimabukuro Zenyū 113, 114–15, 123–5, 

157 

Shimao Toshio 97, 143, 144 

Shiraho anti-airport movement 9–10, 127, 

132–3, 133–49, 199; in the lineage of 

the ‘Okinawa Struggle’ 143–7 

Shiraho Community Centre 132–3 

Shiraho District Opposition Committee 

against the Construction of New 

Ishigaki Airport 132, 137 

Shiraho First Community Centre 135 

Shō Tai, King 23, 32 

Shurei Gate 178, 207 

Shuri Castle 43 

Siddle, R. 21, 26, 30 

Smits, G. 24, 31, 32, 33 

Snow, D.A. 16, 17, 182 

social movement theory 7–8, 12–19; 

see also new social movements 

Society of Nago Citizens Opposed to the 

Heliport 165, 167, 172 

South Sea Islands 38 

Special Action Committee on Okinawa 

(SACO) 162–3 

special adjustment budget 158 

‘special catering districts’ 80; Koza riot 

102–4 

spies 40 

spinning mill folk song incident 29 

state 15 

Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) 13, 

155, 156, 157 

storytelling 19–20; repertoires of 18–19 

strikes 58–9, 99, 102; general strike 

99–102, 179 

suffrage 32–3 

sugar farming 24–5, 80 

suicides, collective see collective suicides 

surveillance huts 116, 117 

Taira, K. 44 

Taira Osamu 47 

Taira Tatsuo 57, 61 

Taiwan 23 

Takaesu Asao 141, 142, 166 

Takaesu Ayano 173, 175 

Takara Ben 194 

Takazato Suzuyo 152, 153, 154, 154–5, 

159–60 

Tanaka, R. 5 

Tarrow, S. 15 

Tashiro Antei 29 

Tazato Tomoyasu 70 

textbook censorship 42, 44 

third wave of Okinawan Struggle 5, 10, 

106, 150–76 

three waves theory of Okinawan Struggle 

5–6 

Tilly, C. 15, 15–16, 17 

Tochiren (Landowners’ Union) 59–60, 

108, 196 

Toguchi Sumiko 154 

Tokashiki Island 38 

Tomā Jugō 73 

tombs 39 

Tomiyama, I. 24, 28–9, 29–30 

Torii Ryūzō 29 

Torii Station 43–4 

Tōyama, S. 86, 90 

Toyohara district 117, 197 

trade unions see unions 

traffic accidents 80–1, 103 

Tsuboi Shōgorō 29 

Tsushima-maru 38 

‘two laws on education’ struggle 

91–3 

Uehara Kōsuke 5, 78, 84, 113 

Uehara Taro 108 

Uema Kōsuke 32 

Ui Jun 141, 200, 201 

Index 233

234 Index 

unai method 151–4, 159, 173; 

see also women’s movement 

unions 12, 110, 135, 147; land acquisition 

struggle 57–60, 188; reversion 84–5, 

85–6; third wave of struggle 164–5, 

167–8; see also under individual names 

United States (US) 154; Battle of Okinawa 

37–41; Center for Biological Diversity 

lawsuit 175; film footage 46; incentives 

for reversion 90–3; military bases see 

military bases; military land acquisition 

policy 5, 8–9, 53–76; postwar 

occupation of Okinawa 1–2, 54–6 

United States Civil Adminstration of the 

Ryūkyū Islands (USCAR) 55–6, 73–4, 

82 

United States-Japan Joint Communiqué 

93 

United States-Japan Security Treaty 

(Ampo) 9, 61, 108, 113, 122–3; 

anti-Ampo protest 86–7; negotiations 

for extending 90–1; renewal in 1960 

93, 194 

United States Military Special Measures 

Law 114, 115, 157, 178–9, 203 

unity 11–20; myth of a unified ‘Okinawan 

Struggle’ 158–61; persistent 

representations of 4–6; storytelling, 

myth-making and 19–20 

University of the Ryūkyūs 74, 191 

Utsumi (Miyagi), E. 160 

victim-consciousness 48, 94–6 

victimization, historical narrative of 21 

Vietnam War 90, 94–6, 194 

Volunteer Association of Shiraho-Born 

Residents against the New Ishigaki 

Airport 136 

war 3, 146, 177; see also Battle of 

Okinawa 

women: Fourth World Conference on 

154–5, 202; residents’ movements 139- 

40 

women’s movement 10, 150–1, 151–4; 

and myth of a unified ‘Okinawan 

Struggle’ 158–61; women-only groups 

and anti-heliport struggle 169–75 

workers 58–9, 84–5; see also unions 

working conditions 78 

World Conservation Union (IUCN) 141–2, 

175 

World Wildlife Fund 142 

Yaeyama District Workers’ Union 135, 

147 

Yaeyama Island 23 

Yaeyama Labour Party 56 

Yaeyama and Shiraho Ocean Protection 

Group 136 

Yakabi, O. 30, 50 

Yamakado Kenichi 144 

Yamazato Setsuko 142, 146–7, 201–2 

yanbaru (mountain and forest) 163, 164, 

166 

Yaponesia 143 

Yara Chōbyō 57–8, 83, 85, 192, 199; 

Chief Executive of GRI 99–100, 130; 

general strike 100–1; Kin Bay 130, 

131–2 

Yomitan village 45, 79 

Yonemori Yūji 136, 137–8 

Yonetani, J. 29, 178 

Yoshiwara, K. 27, 32 

Yui Akiko 159 

Yumiko-chan rape (1955) 70–1, 158–9 

Zald, M.N. 14 

Zamami Island 38 

Zenchūrō 110 

Zengunrō 84–5, 98–9, 102, 110 

Zukeran Chōhō 121–2, 198

Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

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