Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

74 Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa
in central Okinawa, this ‘off limits’ policy inflicted severe economic damage on
the local business communities, including retail sales, entertainment, and the sex
industry. As a result, the Koza City mayor resigned from the Five Group Coalition.
It was a tactic on the part of the USCAR to divide the island-wide coalition
(Miyazato 1966: 101-2). At the same time, the US administration announced the
suspension of university funding to suppress the protest activities of the University
of the Ryūkyūs students. The USCAR proclaimed that the ‘off limits’ policy would
be continued unless the University of the Ryūkyūs took proper action to punish
and control its ‘communist’ students, to which the University executives responded
by expelling five students and suspending another. 40 Pressure on the University of
the Ryūkyūs turned into an effective instrument to settle the land dispute for US
authorities (Arasaki 1969: 136).
The OTA, the OPP, and other central reversion protagonist organizations also
retreated from the land dispute and concentrated on the campaign for reversion.
The land struggle no longer included all social sectors. It was reduced to an economic
dispute among individual landowners, a majority of them Tochiren members,
local land committees, and the US military.
In April 1958, the USCAR suspended the lump sum payment policy, which
significantly improved circumstances for the landowners. However, accepting
the lease contract meant that the landowners would accept their land being used
by the US military indefinitely. In May, the surviving Coalition was invited by
Washington to discuss land dispute settlement. 41 Before their departure, Minren
(a new political faction made up of the Naha divisions of the OSMP and OPP)
members strongly opposed the signing of the land contract with the US – because
it would legitimize US domination of Okinawa and national (Japanese) territory.
Despite this, the delegates agreed to the new contract terms for land leases offered
by Washington. 42 As a matter of fact, landowners were allowed to request lump
sum payment of ten years’ rent and many did, signalling a miserable defeat of the
‘four principles’ (Ahagon 1973: 160–1).
In due course, most landowners accepted contracts with the US military, and
many of them started receiving amounts of money they had never imagined – Iejima
farmers included. But Ahagon and others, mainly from Maja, refused to sign
leases because of the implied meaning of such dealing, turning theft or wrongful
occupation into a legitimate transaction. At great cost to themselves, they lived
on farming and compensation from the US military for land use (not based on
legitimate contracts). These Maja farmers became the earliest non-contract landowners,
later called ‘anti-war landowners’ (see Chapter 7). In the community of
protest, the landowners of military properties became divided between a minority
who rejected the land lease with the US for ideological and political reasons, and
the majority who did not, or could not do this for economic reasons.
In the following years in Ie-jima, US training activity frequently resulted in the
death of residents who were collecting scrap metal around the bases for a living, 43
and missile practice and air training injured and killed several villagers, at least,
every year during the intensifying military operations for the Vietnam War. More
than fifty Maja villagers out of the population of 380 were arrested and jailed after