Uniquely Okinawan

Uniquely Okinawan explores how American soldiers, sailors, and Marines considered race, ethnicity, and identity in the planning and execution of the wartime occupation of Okinawa, during and immediately after the Battle of Okinawa, 1945–46.

The first Okinawan immigrants arrived in Honolulu in January 1900 to work as contract laborers on Hawai'i's sugar plantations. Over time Okinawans would continue migrating east to the continental U.S., Canada, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Cuba, Paraguay, New Caledonia, and the islands of Micronesia. The essays in this volume commemorate these diasporic experiences within the geopolitical context of East Asia. Using primary sources and oral history, individual contributors examine how Okinawan identity was constructed in the various countries to which Okinawans migrated, and how their experiences were shaped by the Japanese nation-building project and by globalization. Essays explore the return to Okinawan sovereignty, or what Nobel Laureate Oe Kenzaburo called an "impossible possibility," and the role of the Okinawan labor diaspora in Japan's imperial expansion into the Philippines and Micronesia. Contributors: Arakaki Makoto, Robert K. Arakaki, Hokama Shuzen, Edith M. Kaneshiro, Ronald Y. Nakasone, Nomura Koya, Shirota Chika, Tomiyama Ichiro, Wesley Ueunten.

The phenomenon of “war brides” from Japan moving to the West has been quite widely discussed, but this book tells the stories of women whose lives followed a rather different path after they married foreign occupiers. During Okinawa’s Occupation by the Allies from 1945 to 1972, many Okinawan women met and had relationships with non-Western men who were stationed in Okinawa as soldiers and base employees. Most of these men were from the Philippines. Zulueta explores the journeys of these women to their husbands’ homeland, their acculturation to their adopted land, and their return to their native Okinawa in their late adult years. Utilizing a life-course approach, she examines how these women crafted their own identities as first-generation migrants or “Issei” in both the country of migration and their natal homeland, their re-integration to Okinawan society, and the role of religion in this regard, as well as their thoughts on end-of-life as returnees. This book will be of interest to scholars looking at gender and migration, cross-cultural marriages, ageing and migration, as well as those interested in East Asia, particularly Japan/Okinawa.

This work clearly defines and catalogues the fifty historical hand-held weapons that were used in Okinawa Prefecture and the Ryukyu Islands from the dawn of its history. It show the stages of development and introduction of these weapons to the islands and how they affected the culture through the ages. The 'standard five' popular weapons of the modern era (bo, sai, tonfa, nunchaku & kama) are described in detail with many scale drawings, but surprisingly, it clearly shows the influence of bladed weapons, such as the curved sword. Firearms also made a huge contribution to Ryukyuan weapon development, so these are also introduced in their historical context. Most surprising is the contextual detail of the historic eras, such as the affects of the Satsuma Invasion of the Ryukyu Islands in 1609 & the dissolution of the monarchy in 1879. Contrary to popular myth, between these years Okinawans did not adopt farmers tools for self protection, for quite a different history is revealed herein.

Okinawan people have developed a unique tradition of protest in their long history of oppression and marginalization. Beginning with the Ryukyu Kingdom’s annexation to Japan in the late nineteenth century, Miyume Tanji charts the devastation caused by the Second World War, followed by the direct occupation of post-war Okinawa and continued presence of the US military forces in the wake of reversion to Japan in 1972. 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.

This book examines classical and modern interpretations of education in the context of contemporary Okinawa as a site of neoliberal military-industrial development. Considering how media educate consumers to accept the plans and policies of the powerful, it questions current concepts of development and the ideology that informs national security policies. The book closely examines the signs, symbols, and rhetorical manipulations of language used in media to rationalize and justify a kind of development, which is the destruction of the environment in Henoko. Through careful analysis of public relations literature and public discourse, it challenges the presupposition that Okinawa is the Keystone of the Pacific and necessarily the only location in Japan to host U.S. military presence. Forced to co-operate in America’s military hegemony and global war-fighting action, Okinawa is at the very center of the growing tension between Beijing and Washington and its clients in Tokyo and Seoul. The book represents a case study of the discourse used in society to wield control over this larger project, which is a more developed and militarized Okinawa . Considering how history is given shape through external power structures and discourse practices that seek control over both historical and contemporary narratives, it reveals how public attitudes and perceptions are shaped through educational policies and media.

In 1995, an Okinawan schoolgirl was brutally raped by several U.S. servicemen. The incident triggered a chain of protests by women's groups, teachers' associations, labor unions, reformist political parties, and various grassroots organizations across Okinawa prefecture. Reaction to the crime culminated in a rally attended by some 85,000 people, including business leaders and conservative politicians who had seldom raised their voices against the U.S. military presence. Using this event as a point of reference, Inoue explores how Okinawans began to regard themselves less as a group of uniformly poor and oppressed people and more as a confident, diverse, middle-class citizenry embracing the ideals of democracy, human rights, and women's equality. As this identity of resistance has grown, however, the Japanese government has simultaneously worked to subvert it, pressuring Okinawans to support a continued U.S. presence. Inoue traces these developments as well, revealing the ways in which Tokyo has assisted the United States in implementing a system of governance that continues to expand through the full participation and cooperation of residents. Inoue deftly connects local social concerns with the larger political processes of the Japanese nation and the global strategies of the United States. He critically engages social-movement literature along with postmodern/structural/colonial discourses and popular currents and themes in Okinawan and Japanese studies. Rich in historical and ethnographical detail, this volume is a nuanced portrait of the impact of Japanese colonialism, World War II, and U.S. military bases on the formation of contemporary Okinawan identity.

Heritage Politics: Shuri Castle and Okinawa's Incorporation into Modern Japan, 1879–2000 is a study of Okinawa’s incorporation into a subordinate position in the Japanese nation-state, and the role that cultural heritage, especially Okinawa’s iconic Shuri Castle, plays in creating, maintaining, and negotiating that position. Tze May Loo argues that Okinawa’s cultural heritage has been – and continues to be – an important tool with which the Japanese state and its agents, the United States during its 27-year rule of the islands (1945–1972), and the Okinawan people articulated and negotiated Okinawa’s relationship with the Japanese nation state. For these three groups, Okinawa’s cultural heritage was a powerful way to utilize the symbolism of material objects to manage and represent the islands’ cultural past for their own political aims. The Japanese state, its agents, and American authorities have all sought to use Okinawa’s cultural heritage to control, discipline, and subordinate Okinawa. For Okinawans, their cultural heritage gave them a powerful way to resist Japanese and American rule, and to negotiate for a more equitable position for themselves. At the same time, however, this book finds that Okinawan strategies to deploy their cultural heritage politically are deeply intertwined with, and to a significant extent enabled by, precisely these Japanese and American attempts to govern Okinawa through its heritage. This examination of the political role of Okinawa’s cultural heritage is a window into a wider process of how nation-states and other political formations make themselves thinkable to the people they rule, how the ruled seek out spaces to make claims of their own, and how cultural pasts, once made usable, are implicated in these processes.