Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

The third wave and beyond 157
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.
(Interview, April 1999)
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