Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

2 Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa
political, and labour rights and for the rule of law. To be sure, war has given way
to peace – but it was and still is a peculiar kind of peace. It is not a civilian peace,
not the peace one breathes on the streets or towns of busy cities or a productive
countryside. It is the peace of intense preparedness for war in the nuclear age. It
is the peace to be found in a colossal fortress or garrison ready to project power
globally and at short notice.
Okinawa has become a US garrison and is living, if not in its belly, then within
its shadow. Contemporary garrisons of this kind and on this scale are hungry beasts
– the biggest in the world – and the US military wanted unlimited access to land,
water, coast, and sky. It also wanted cheap compliant human labour in bulk to
support military personnel and prostitution on industrial scales to satisfy their lust.
Needless to say, Okinawa’s damaged civil society frequently protested but civilian
demands were things that got in the way of US forces’ concentration on war.
In 1972, the administration of Okinawa was ‘returned’ to Japan, but the bases
remained; so did their privileges, perpetuating the threat of rape and crime, accidents,
nuisances, continuing occupation of land, environmental degradation, and a wide
range of health hazards including explosive noise. Having said this, Okinawa has
been the beneficiary of the Japanese government’s special industrialization plans
that brought in enormous funding and subsidized public works projects and these
have served as a form of compensation for accommodating the garrison. However,
most of the benefits of these ‘developments’ have been channelled back to mainland
Japanese construction and tourism industries. The bureaucratic controls imposed by
these projects and programmes have also frequently damaged the natural resources
and undermined the economic self-reliance of local populations. Okinawa has borne
the heaviest physical and moral brunt of the US-Japan security alliance – simultaneously
the victim of US military presence and Japan’s discriminatory treatment
of a minority group. Okinawans, are, as a consequence, amongst the most and longest
abused peoples of the twentieth century.
The stories of suffering and discrimination, however, are accompanied by stories
of protest and resistance. This book is about the Okinawans’ political responses
to their abuse and marginalization. One of its larger intentions is to demonstrate
that this response is more complex than is often appreciated, if not seamlessly
continuous, stable, or constant in focus. And nor is the protest community a unified,
homogeneous and single-minded collective subject. Indeed it is many-minded; it is
fragmented, it is fractious, and it is diverse. To be sure, the community protest (as
I, for all its fractiousness, still call it) is uniquely and distinctively Okinawan. But
this identity arises as much from a history of protest which has evolved, adapted,
refocused, and flexibly strategized over the half century or more of its existence as
it does from harmony, continuity, and stability. It arises as much from debates within
the community and from growing diversity as it does from consensus and unity.
In recognition of this diversity, the Okinawan anti-base protesters have attracted
external support from a wide range of international peace, environmental and
feminist activists, scientists, journalists, and academics. My book is about the story
of this complexity and it attempts to show, amongst other things, that collective
identities, fraught and unstable though they become, can survive and encompass