Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

114 Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa
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