Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

160 Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa
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.