Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

54 Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa
Ie-jima farmers demonstrated the Okinawans’ capacity for collective action and
for making political demands. Their legend continues to nourish diverse protest
actors in Okinawa.
Many other local political organizations committed to opposing the authoritarian
US military administration surfaced alongside Ie-jima. These included political
parties, workers’ unions, landowners’ organization, and teachers’ organizations,
and the growth of the campaign for reversion. All of this went into the making of
the ‘first wave’ island-wide mass protest, and the building of a temporary coalition
among protest organizations against the draconian US land policy. This chapter
analyses the implications of the land struggle, for the idea of a ‘movement’ of a
unified ‘Okinawans’.
Postwar US occupation
Ie-jima is a small island (23 square kilometres) located only 9 kilometres northwest
of Okinawa Island. Ahagon Shōkō, the most influential organizer of the Ie-jima
struggle, died in May 2002 at 101 years of age having been born in 1901 in Motobu
village on Okinawa Main Island. Ahagon was a farmer, but not by any means a
typical peasant figure. He became a Christian at 17 but the life of a farmer did not
appeal to him and he wanted an education. His family, however, did not have the
money to send him to school. In the period when many Okinawans were encouraged
by the government to migrate overseas after the ‘palm-tree hell’, Ahagon spent
ten years in Cuba and Peru, still hoping to make money to study one day. He was
finally able to return at the age of 32, moved to Ie-jima, started a small community
shop, and bought a block of farmland in the Maja hamlet/district of Ie-jima –
becoming a farmer after all.
Ie-jima was among the most severely war-damaged areas in the Battle of
Okinawa when the US Forces conducted some of the bloodiest raids. These raids
killed about 1,500 villagers out of a population of 7,500, including Ahagon’s only
son whom he dearly loved and looked forward to cultivating his family farm with.
The hundred households in the Maja district were reduced to 75 and the Maja
villagers were moved around many times by the US forces to other islands, not
returning to their homes until March 1947. At that point, the residents tried to put
the past behind and concentrate on farming (Ahagon 1973: 16–17).
During the Battle of Okinawa, the US military evacuated local civilians in
makeshift tents, away from their homes. 1 In the aftermath of the Battle, confusion,
chaos, and depravation ruled immediate postwar life in the islands across Okinawa,
Amami, Yaeyama, and Miyako. Okinawa was outside the US trusteeship for
Micronesia passed by the United Nations in 1947 and, as the result of Japan’s defeat,
lacked clear definition in terms of international law. Negotiation for a peace treaty
started early but it was a lengthy process. 2 From July 1947, a division of the US
Army which called itself RYCOM or the Ryūkyū Command took over civil
administration. The US military at this stage regarded Okinawans as ‘the enemy’
(Warner 1995: 47), and seized land was considered American property. 3 The US