Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

Notes 187
21 Since 1965, Ienaga has filed three lawsuits. The first suit was settled as late as 1993:
the Supreme Court judged in favour of the constitutionality of the state’s textbook
screening (Nozaki and Inokuchi 2000: 114–19).
22 Field heard the stories of the survivors: ‘Not only did Japanese soldiers drive Okinawans
from their shelters into certain death, suffocate their crying babies, and kill those who
had already surrendered and were then sent back by Americans to persuade their fellows
to do the same; their presence both explicitly and tacitly prompted episodes of Okinawan
collective suicide’ (Field 1993: 63).
23 Chibana, born after the war, a mainland Japanese writer Shimojima Tetsurō, and
the representative of the Chibichirigama Bereaved Families’ Association, Higa
Heishin, could break the silence among Yomitan survivors, because none of them
lost direct members of their families in the event (Chibana 1988: 140–1). The villagers
also had a project to build a Statue of Peace made of plaster by sculpture artist Kinjō
Minoru, in which a whole village was involved, completed in 1987 (Chibana 1988:
144–7).
24 For her biographical record in English see Keyso 2000.
25 In 1996, at other peace museums elsewhere in Japan, in particular in Osaka, Kanagawa,
Nagasaki, and Hiroshima, there was pressure from the nationalist-revisionists –
represented by right-wing organizations such as the Japan Conference (nihon kaigi)
and conservative politicians including former Prime Minister Hashimoto – on exhibiting
materials that show cruel Japanese military war conduct in the Asia-Pacific region,
particularly related to the Nanking massacre and ‘comfort women’ (Nakakita 2000:
233–4).
5 The first wave: opposition to US military land acquisition
1 As of the Battle of Okinawa, the islands of Okinawa were placed under direct US military
administration, based on US Military Directive No. 1, issued by Admiral Nimitz on the
US landing on the Kerama Islands on 26 March 1945. As early as 1945, US President
Roosevelt and surrounding government staff were in agreement that ‘the United States
should preserve its “national security interests” by indefinitely controlling key islands
in the Pacific’, and to take ‘the full power of arming them and using them to protect the
peace and ourselves during any war that may come’, and ‘a definition of trusteeships
or mandates’ of these islands would be necessary at a Peace Conference in San Francisco
(Dower 1971: 155–6).
2 This was partly because of the disagreements between the US State Department and
military officers, on how to formalize US rule over Okinawa to maximize US security
interests, in consideration of the developing Cold War. The State Department
recommended the international trusteeship of Okinawa under the United Nations charter
rather than unilateral occupation (Miyazato 2000: 45), which would have been more
agreeable to the Soviet Union and China. However, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme
Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), and George Kennan, who headed the Policy
Planning Staff and an advocate of the ‘containment’ policy towards the Soviet Union,
fiercely criticized this view. MacArthur defined Okinawa as crucial for US air and
amphibious capabilities in the Pacific defence cordon (Miyazato 2000: 27), which
included Hawaii, Guam, Micronesia, and the Philippines (Dower 1971: 161). Kennan
also enthusiastically stressed the strategic importance of the US military force deployed
on Okinawa for the Cold War security formula. Moreover, with frequent labour strikes
and continuing economic crises and the potential major influence of communism
in Japan, the US military presence was justified to deter political instability (Eldridge
1999: 165).
3 The legal justification was ‘the Hague Convention no. 4, of 18 October 1907’ (Section
III, Article 52) (Watanabe 1970: 36).
4 However, under the US Navy administration, there was a degree of positive attitude on