HIST 296: World War II and the Making of Modern Asia/Pacific - OKINAWA

"Kensei Yoshida's Democracy Betrayed: The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa is easily the best history, analysis, and commentary we have on the United State's domination from 1945 to 1972 over the unlucky people of Okinawa. It is written from an Okinawan perspective. Yoshida is of course aware that when the United State's formal dominion over Okinawa ended in 1972 and it condoned a pro forma "reversion" of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty, the semicolonial conditions he describes did not end. In fact, they continued and persist to the present day in an often exacerbated form. For the past fifty-six years, and with no end in sight, the American military has dominated the territory and 1.3 million people of the islands in total disregard of the values and wishes of the Okinawans themselves." - back cover.

Excavating the power of memory offers a succinct examination of how memory is constructed, embedded and disseminated in contemporary Japanese society. The unique range and perspective of this collection will provide an understanding not found elsewhere. It starts with a lucid introduction of how memory plays a political and wider social role in Japan. Four case studies follow. The first takes up the divergence in memory at the national and subnational levels by analysing the memory of the battle of Okinawa and US military accidents in Okinawa prefecture, illuminating how memory in the prefecture embeds Okinawans as victims of mainland Japan and of the United States. The second explores whether Japan's membership of the International Criminal Court represents a shift in the Japanese government's negative remembrance of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, demonstrating how both courts are largely portrayed as being disconnected in political debates. The third offers an analysis of the surviving letters of the Kamikaze pilots in order to interrogate and compare their presumed identity in the dominant collective memory and their own self-identities. The fourth untangles how the 'memory of winds' in Japanese fishing communities remains an expression of social thought that presides over the 'transmission of meaning' about fishermen's geographical surroundings. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Japan Forum.

In the mid1990s, Okinawa became the focal point of a major crisis in U.S.Japanese relations. During this diplomatic incident many Americans were surprised to learn that the United States had military bases on this island. In fact, the United States had ruled Okinawa and its surrounding islands as a colony in everything but name from 1945 to 1972. The island had been the strategic keystone of the American postwar base system of double containment in the Pacific and the only spot in that chain that American officials insisted on governing under the legal cover of "residual sovereignty." Why had the United States insisted on administering an entire province of a country that it otherwise called an ally? And why did the Americans return Okinawa when they did? In this thoroughly researched, carefully argued work, Nicholas Evan Sarantakes argues that policy makers in Washington worried that the Japanese might return to their aggressive and expansionistic prewar foreign policies after the occupation of Japan ended. Even after it was abundantly clear that Japan posed no threat to its neighbors, the United States insisted on retaining the island, fearing that Japan might adopt a policy of neutrality during the Cold War. Sarantakes uses recently declassified documents to examine America's larger strategic purposes during this period. The story he tells includes soldiers fighting in combat, mobs rioting, diplomats navigating the dangerous waters of power, and clever politicians on both sides of the indigocolored Pacific taking highrisk gambles. In telling this tale, he brings our attention to an episode in American foreign relations that has been taken for granted for half a century.

"The struggle for Okinawa was the last battle of World War II and the bloodiest campaign in the Pacific against Imperial Japan. Long before the battle ended, U.S. Army civil affairs officers began the task of providing essential services for the island's war-torn population. This volume is an authoritative account of the Army's military government efforts on Okinawa from the first stages of planning until the transition toward a civil administration began in December 1950. It is a fascinating history of how a small group of idealistic men with a limited, temporary mission saw their numbers and their role expand into a long-term commitment as American strategic considerations changed. The story ranges from the strategic planning of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council in Washington to the civil affairs planning of the Tenth Army and beyond to the military government teams in the field. Although this is a success story, there are certainly lessons to be learned from the complex and often difficult interplay of the tactical occupation forces, the civil affairs officers, and the Okinawan population. With this volume, the Center of Military History continues its history of American military government during World War II. That effort began with the annotated documentary volume Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors in the U.S. Army in World War II series, and continued with Earl Ziemke's The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944-1946 in the Army Historical Series. This volume differs in format from both earlier books: it is a concise case history of a unique military government experience, augmented by selected documents that provide for more detailed study of current civil affairs concerns. For the uniformed student of military government, as for the general reader, this book should offer an interesting and instructive account of an often overlooked period of American-Okinawan history. WILLIAM A. STOFFT Brigadier General, U.S. Army Chief of Military History"

Following its defeat in World War II, Japan was placed under the control of SCAP GHQ headed by General Douglas MacArthur. Initially, the Occupation promoted policies of demilitarization and democratization. A new Japanese constitution which pursued pacifism was established. However, as the Cold War intensified, policies switched in the direction of economic recovery, and it was contended that Japan should take the anti-Communist pro-America path. In 1951, at the height of the Korean War, the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty were concluded as a fixed set. Winner of the 2015 Yomiuri Yoshino Sakuzo Prize for academic writing on politics, economics, and history, this book provides a wide view of the seven years of the Occupation of Japan which led to the 'postwar system' that has continued into the twenty-first century. -- Back cover.

This article examines how and why the US reconstructed Okinawa in Japan, with a focus on the theme of 'self' and 'others' in educational interaction. I argue that during the occupation of Okinawa, the US tried to detach Okinawa from Japan socio-culturally, using the historically based racial tensions between them by promoting the local 'Ryukyuan' identity. The US goal was to enhance its military and ideological presence in Okinawa, projecting its long-term role as a keystone in Cold War Asia. The US policy of transforming Okinawan identity is viewed in three ways: the transmission of political and socio-cultural values through foreign education reform and transfer of American models; the ideological rationales that legitimised the reform; and the political and historical context in which the reforms were enacted. The US educational intervention in Okinawa illuminates the scheme of global governance that the new 'empire' mapped out in the post-WWII geopolitical context.

"The American military started building its massive base complex in Okinawa at the end of World War II. During the decade that followed, U.S. forces seized vast areas of privately owned land with "bayonets and bulldozers," evicting and impoverishing thousands of farmers. U.S. military occupation rule, imposed during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, lasted until 1972, twenty years longer than the Allied occupation of mainland Japan. […] Yet, even as the disproportionate burden of bases continues to impose dangers and disruptions, approximately 400 Okinawan women every year have married American servicemen and returned with them to live in the United States. Former Okinawa Times reporter Etsuko Takushi Crissey traveled throughout their adopted country, conducting wide-ranging interviews and a questionnaire survey of women who married and immigrated between the early 1950s and the mid-1990s."

"Half a century after the clash of Japanese and American forces devastated Okinawa in the spring of 1945, wide areas of Japan's southernmost prefecture remain an armed bastion. Although U.S. military rule in Okinawa ended in 1972, airfields, artillery ranges, ammunition depots, infantry training grounds, and other military installations still occupy large areas of the prefecture. People in Okinawa continue to protest the shortages of land, daily disruptions, and not infrequent dangers associated with this vast military presence. At a time of heightened controversy among Japanese and American scholars looking back on the occupation of Japan, this book (corrected and updated 1996) grew out of a conviction that works of literature often provide the best means for understanding how people live in unusual circumstances. The novellas translated here--Oshiro Tatsuhiro's "Cocktail Party" ("Kakuteru pati") and Higashi Mineo's "Child of Okinawa" ("Okinawa no shonen")--each won the coveted Akutagawa Prize for fiction for their authors. Although the novellas differ sharply in tone and form, both are first-person narratives of individual protagonists whose lives are profoundly affected by the U.S. occupation and military presence. The novellas are presented here in translation together with an introduction providing historical background and a concluding essay that compares and evaluates them."

This edited volume presents the latest multidisciplinary research that delves into developments related to contemporary Okinawa (a.k.a Ryukyu Islands), and also engages with contemporary debates on American hegemony and Empire in a larger geographical context. Okinawa, long viewed as a marginalized territory in larger historical processes, has been characterized solely by the U.S. military presence in the islands, despite having embraced a multiplicity of social and cultural transformations since the end of the Pacific War. In this timely academic revision of Okinawa, occurring at the time of numerous debates over the building of yet another military base in the island, this volume's contributors tell a story that situates Okinawa in the context of other militarized territories and thus, goes beyond the limits of Okinawa prefecture. Indeed, the book examines the ways in which studies on Okinawa have evolved, moving away from the direct problems brought by the establishment of foreign military bases. Previous studies have explicated how Okinawa has fallen prey to power politics of more dominant nations. In expanding on these themes, this volume examines the unique social and cultural dynamics of Okinawa and its people that had never been intended by the political authorities.