Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

60 Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa
It represented the landowners’ interests, and became the central force of the islandwide
coalition for the land struggle in the 1950s. It has continued to represent
landowners to the present, from the perspective of securing existing landowners’
rent incomes. Unsurprisingly, Tochiren has been a conservative, economic-oriented
organization. Despite this, any objections to US land policies were labelled
‘communist’ and provided the US administration with excuses for persecution. For
this reason, the members of the Parliament and Tochiren limited their strategies to
the refusal of lump sum payments and the protection of minimal land rights. Apart
from the case made by the OPP, mainstream discourses of the land struggle in the
early 1950s avoided criticizing the existence of US military bases in Okinawa or
the US–Japan security alliance.
The San Francisco Treaty and emergence of the reversion
campaign
Okinawa’s uncertain status as a territory, part of neither Japan nor the US – and
its future as a nation – gradually became a major topic of Okinawan public debate.
It is important to note at the outset that local perspectives on desirable paths for
Okinawa were deeply divided. For example, the conservative Okinawan Democratic
League members, who advocated independence, expected US patronage for
economic benefits. On the other hand, schoolteachers, as indicated above, were
the strongest advocates for Okinawa’s return to Japan from early on.
In February 1950, Senaga Kamejirō, Chair of the OPP, articulated his party’s
aims for ‘racial self-determination’ and democracy, and argued that ‘Ryūkyūans’ 13
were Japanese, and they should return to Japan (Okinawa Jinminto 1985 in Nakachi
1996: 34). However, it was the Okinawa Socialist Mass Party (OSMP) that most
vocally appealed to the reversion supporters, in particular, to the schoolteachers
(Nakano 1969: 36). 14 From its foundation in 1950, the OSMP stressed Okinawa’s
reversion to Japan as the most important goal.
Hiyane points out that the US administration was inherently vulnerable to
legitimacy crisis in ruling people who were culturally, economically, and socially
foreign (Hiyane 1982: 281). The US administration applied a ‘cultural policy’
to discourage Okinawans’ attachment to Japan and revived the premodern title
‘Ryūkyū’ instead of ‘Okinawa’. It promoted traditional Ryūkyūan culture, such
as local cloth-making, theatre arts, and pottery, through publication of community
journals such as Konnichi no Ryūkyū (Ryūkyū Today) and Shurei no Hikari (Beam
of Politeness) (Kano 1987: 176). The journals, however, reveal only the thinnest
commitment to traditional ‘Ryūkyūan’ culture and are transparently vehicles for
the dissemination of US propaganda. 15 Although they were reasonably popular,
they clearly failed from the point of view of discouraging and containing political
demands for reversion to Japan. 16
The US authorities were aware of the connection between the JCP and the
OPP. 17 The Okinawa Taimusu editorial noted that the impromptu speeches of
the OPP members held all over the island in various local communities had been
extremely popular: the audience responded with clapping and cheering the OPP