Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

5 The first wave
Opposition to US military land
acquisition
Introduction
Barely ten years after the Battle of Okinawa, the US military threatened residents’
livelihoods yet again with bulldozers, tanks, and soldiers. Their forceful confiscation
of privately owned properties for military base construction and training was added
to the Okinawan historical narrative of marginalization. Local residents started to
organize protest actions against the US military, and this gave rise to what Arasaki
describes as the first-wave ‘Okinawa Struggle’. This cycle of protest is popularly
known as the ‘all-island struggle’ (shimagurumi tōsō). It has been constantly recalled
as the earliest, and perhaps the most powerful, evidence of the locals’ ability to wage
collective action against the authorities. The ‘first-wave’ postwar Okinawa Struggle
has been a source of inspiration and pride for the local tradition of grassroots political
activism.
In the immediate postwar period, workers, teachers, and landowners started to
form political organizations, many of which are still active. Most local political
parties were also born in this period. Of those involved, farmers were the most
desperate protest actors but the goals of protest remained diverse. Initially this did
not hinder the development of a wide sense of unity but the unity proved to be
both temporary and fragile and the anti-US coalition soon collapsed. That said,
the unity and power demonstrated by this island-wide mass protest against US
land policy was, perhaps, most influential in helping to create what I have called
the myth of a united struggle of the Okinawan people.
This chapter responds to a number of questions: What were the main differences
among the protest actors? What explained the fragility of the all-island coalition?
What made the temporary unity possible? This chapter examines different protest
actors, their social bases, strategies, priorities, and how they came to form a coalition
for one struggle.
As was often the case in Okinawa’s community of protest, multiple struggles
occurred simultaneously in different geographical locations. One of the most
famous of these is the farmers’ struggle in Ie Island (Ie-jima), a legendary struggle
against forced US land acquisition, but it was one of many local struggles. The
Ie-jima struggle, however, represents what is common to many Okinawan struggles
– anti-militarism based on absolute pacifism and non-violent disobedience. The