Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

39 Subsequent to the defection of the Democratic Party members, the Land Council
(tochikyō) replaced the Five Group Coalition. Yara Chōbyō from the Okinawa Teachers’
Association became the leader of this coalition and Ahagon Shokō, representing farmers
of Ie-jima, became Deputy Chair.
40 The board of executives issued a statement: ‘The University Board and Chancellery
rejects Communism based on Article 14 of the University clause of the Ryūkyū
Education Law, and follows the instructions of the US as the protector of the free world
against the Communist threat in the Orient. We regret the behaviour of our students who
conducted anti-US demonstrations and their offence inflicted on all the Americans and
the US staff stationed in the Ryūkyūs. The University is responsible for the
demonstrations against the US, the founder and the financial source of the University
. . . and hereby bans students from joining any activities on or off campus without
permission’ (Okinawa Taimusu, 11 August 1956 quoted in Miyazato 1966: 103).
41 The delegates included the Chief Executive, Chair of the Democratic Party, Chair of
the Parliament, the landowners’ representative, a local council representative, and a
judiciary officer (Miyazato 1966: 130).
42 With twice as much rent, paid yearly, and renewed every five years (Arasaki 1995: 36,
Miyazato 1966: 130–1).
43 Two male residents, aged 28 and 38, were killed when they were dismantling old US
air force explosives to obtain scrap metal in 1959. The victims’ families relied on incomes
from selling US scrap materials, after their land was taken (Kamei 1999).
44 This figure was included in the petition made in 1973 by the Ie Village Assembly, against
the US use of defoliants.
45 These ideas were expressed in essays by the OPP founder, Senaga Kamejiro, in the local
newspaper Uruma Shimpō and journal Jinmin Bunka (Arasaki 1976: 39).
6 The second wave: towards reversion
Notes 191
1 A substantial amount of cobalt was found in locally produced seafood.
2 Residents in local communities fought their own struggles against the US military’s
operations and further private property acquisitions in places such as Ie-jima (Ahagon
1998), Konbu (Okinawa Taimusu Sha 1997: 233–6) and Chibana (Jinmin, 11 January
1969). For example, the land struggle in Konbu is recorded in Gushikawa Shishi
(Gushikawa Shiyakusho 1970: 908–10).
3 This figure was calculated from the supposition that each of the 7,362 full-time prostitutes
made $20 per night. The number of the prostitutes was estimated by the GRI (Sturdevant
and Stoltzfus 1993: 251–2), and is significantly lower than the figure estimated by Selden
in the above quotation.
4 This information was obtained from the survey conducted in Koza, by Professor Ishihara
Masaie’s research team at the Okinawa International University (Tomiyama 1996: 30,
n14).
5 Arashiro became a teacher, following in the footsteps of his schoolteachers who were
engaged in the reversion movement. In 1981, the Japanese government paid his
grandmother compensation of ¥891,880 (approximately $7,432). Arashiro used this
money to write a textbook on the history of Okinawa for high-school students, which
was published in 1997 (see Arashiro 1997, Okinawa Mondai Henshu Iinkai 1995: 72).
6 Crimes committed by US citizens reported to the Legislature were 981 cases in 1961,
1,078 in 1962, 1,131 in 1963, 973 in 1964, 1,003 in 1965, 1,407 in 1966 (Ryūkyū
Shimpōsha 1968: 138).
7 In May 1954 Deputy Governor General David Ogden commented that, if the Okinawans
wished to return to Japanese administration, US forces would completely withdraw from
the Far East, leaving Japan vulnerable to the communist threat. Therefore, Okinawans,
as loyal Japanese citizens, could not want reversion (cited in Oguma 1998: 513).