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The Battle of the Okinawans
MAY 14, 2014
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Norihiro Kato
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As President Barack Obama wound up his visit to Japan last month, the Japanese and American governments released a joint statement outlining the outcome of his talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Almost every newspaper article I saw focused on the same few issues — above all, the two leaders’ failure to reach an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade agreement. There was one exception: The Okinawan daily Ryukyu Shimpo ran on its front page the large headline, “U.S. Military Presence in Okinawa to Be Permanent.”
Ryukyu Shimpo had picked up on a sentence in the joint statement that other papers had ignored: “The early relocation of Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to Camp Schwab and consolidation of bases in Okinawa will ensure a long-term sustainable presence for U.S. forces.” Okinawans have been fighting for decades to have the Marines’ air operations removed from the entire Ryukyu archipelago. In January, residents of Nago on Okinawa Island, where Camp Schwab is located, overwhelmingly re-elected a mayor who has vowed to block the plan to resettle Futenma there, rejecting a pro-relocation candidate strongly supported by Mr. Abe’s party.
Okinawans are among the most downtrodden people in the region. In premodern times, the small Ryukyu Kingdom, as it was known then, was a tributary state of China and Japan simultaneously. Japan treated residents badly after fully annexing the islands in the 1870s. The Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II killed one in four inhabitants. In the postwar period the United States turned the Ryukyu Islands into a military colony.
Even since the islands reverted to Japan in 1972, they have been exploited for military purposes as a result of agreements between the Japanese and American governments. The strategic importance of Okinawa Prefecture to the two governments has increased recently owing to its proximity to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, to which both Japan and China lay claim.
This history has instilled tenacity in the inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands. This was demonstrated by a man who met with representatives of the Abe administration in Tokyo just days before Mr. Obama’s arrival there. Anzo Kedamori, the 72-year-old school superintendent of the small town of Taketomi, had been summoned by the Education Ministry for refusing to adopt a new, revisionist textbook in his district’s ninth-grade class.
He was not cowed. Mr. Kedamori insisted that the textbook had not been selected according to the necessary procedures, and protested its failure to discuss Japan’s callous treatment of Okinawa or the problems that the presence of American bases has caused.
The Education Ministry then summoned the superintendent for all secondary schools in Okinawa Prefecture. But he, too, declined to cooperate, saying he would respect the will of teachers in Taketomi.
People like these two men — and the mayor of Nago, who may yet succeed in derailing the government’s plan to relocate Futenma — reveal the strength that comes to people who have been subordinated to greater powers for too long.
At the same time, in a sort of twisted way, they also embody the struggles of the Japanese government that is exploiting them as it tries to escape its reliance on the United States.
The Japanese government’s 2013 budget allocated almost $3.6 billion to cover costs associated with running American bases in Japan and providing for the 38,000 United States military personnel and their 43,000 dependents stationed there. This includes not only utility costs but also luxury housing, pools and golf courses. In 2008, the Japanese government built a middle school for 600 children of American troops at Kadena Air Base that cost twice as much, and was six times as large, as a school built nearby for 645 Japanese children.
According to a statement protesting the relocation of Futenma signed by prominent scholars and peace advocates in January, Okinawa Prefecture constitutes just 0.6 percent of the total land mass of Japan, yet it houses 73.8 percent of the American military bases in the country. The bases occupy almost one-fifth of Okinawa Island alone, including prime farming land. This part of Japan is, one might say, the netherworld to which the Japanese government has tried to banish its awareness of its subordination to the United States.
In 2009, while the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama attempted for the first time since the end of the war to move Japan away from its dependence on the United States, and to emphasize its ties with other Asian countries. His promise to move Futenma out of Okinawa Prefecture was the focus of this attempt. Although Mr. Hatoyama failed in this project, the issue of Futenma hasn’t gone away; the Okinawan people still oppose hosting the bases.
And in their determination they may yet teach the Japanese government a thing or two about what successful resistance looks like.
Norihiro Kato is a literary scholar and a professor at Waseda University. This article was translated by Michael Emmerich from the Japanese.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/o...he-okinawans.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
MAY 14, 2014
Continue reading the main story
Norihiro Kato
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As President Barack Obama wound up his visit to Japan last month, the Japanese and American governments released a joint statement outlining the outcome of his talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Almost every newspaper article I saw focused on the same few issues — above all, the two leaders’ failure to reach an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade agreement. There was one exception: The Okinawan daily Ryukyu Shimpo ran on its front page the large headline, “U.S. Military Presence in Okinawa to Be Permanent.”
Ryukyu Shimpo had picked up on a sentence in the joint statement that other papers had ignored: “The early relocation of Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to Camp Schwab and consolidation of bases in Okinawa will ensure a long-term sustainable presence for U.S. forces.” Okinawans have been fighting for decades to have the Marines’ air operations removed from the entire Ryukyu archipelago. In January, residents of Nago on Okinawa Island, where Camp Schwab is located, overwhelmingly re-elected a mayor who has vowed to block the plan to resettle Futenma there, rejecting a pro-relocation candidate strongly supported by Mr. Abe’s party.
Okinawans are among the most downtrodden people in the region. In premodern times, the small Ryukyu Kingdom, as it was known then, was a tributary state of China and Japan simultaneously. Japan treated residents badly after fully annexing the islands in the 1870s. The Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II killed one in four inhabitants. In the postwar period the United States turned the Ryukyu Islands into a military colony.
Even since the islands reverted to Japan in 1972, they have been exploited for military purposes as a result of agreements between the Japanese and American governments. The strategic importance of Okinawa Prefecture to the two governments has increased recently owing to its proximity to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, to which both Japan and China lay claim.
This history has instilled tenacity in the inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands. This was demonstrated by a man who met with representatives of the Abe administration in Tokyo just days before Mr. Obama’s arrival there. Anzo Kedamori, the 72-year-old school superintendent of the small town of Taketomi, had been summoned by the Education Ministry for refusing to adopt a new, revisionist textbook in his district’s ninth-grade class.
He was not cowed. Mr. Kedamori insisted that the textbook had not been selected according to the necessary procedures, and protested its failure to discuss Japan’s callous treatment of Okinawa or the problems that the presence of American bases has caused.
The Education Ministry then summoned the superintendent for all secondary schools in Okinawa Prefecture. But he, too, declined to cooperate, saying he would respect the will of teachers in Taketomi.
People like these two men — and the mayor of Nago, who may yet succeed in derailing the government’s plan to relocate Futenma — reveal the strength that comes to people who have been subordinated to greater powers for too long.
At the same time, in a sort of twisted way, they also embody the struggles of the Japanese government that is exploiting them as it tries to escape its reliance on the United States.
The Japanese government’s 2013 budget allocated almost $3.6 billion to cover costs associated with running American bases in Japan and providing for the 38,000 United States military personnel and their 43,000 dependents stationed there. This includes not only utility costs but also luxury housing, pools and golf courses. In 2008, the Japanese government built a middle school for 600 children of American troops at Kadena Air Base that cost twice as much, and was six times as large, as a school built nearby for 645 Japanese children.
According to a statement protesting the relocation of Futenma signed by prominent scholars and peace advocates in January, Okinawa Prefecture constitutes just 0.6 percent of the total land mass of Japan, yet it houses 73.8 percent of the American military bases in the country. The bases occupy almost one-fifth of Okinawa Island alone, including prime farming land. This part of Japan is, one might say, the netherworld to which the Japanese government has tried to banish its awareness of its subordination to the United States.
In 2009, while the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama attempted for the first time since the end of the war to move Japan away from its dependence on the United States, and to emphasize its ties with other Asian countries. His promise to move Futenma out of Okinawa Prefecture was the focus of this attempt. Although Mr. Hatoyama failed in this project, the issue of Futenma hasn’t gone away; the Okinawan people still oppose hosting the bases.
And in their determination they may yet teach the Japanese government a thing or two about what successful resistance looks like.
Norihiro Kato is a literary scholar and a professor at Waseda University. This article was translated by Michael Emmerich from the Japanese.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/o...he-okinawans.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
