There are several reasons behind the betrayal felt by several Okinawans towards the Japanese government – sentiments which have been prominent since before the end of World War II and long after the return of Okinawa to Japan in 1972. The Ryukyu Islands have always held a questionable relationship with Japan, prompting studies as to the similarities and differences between the Japanese and the Okinawans as well as debates about how Okinawans ought to be regarded in relation to Japan. The Ryukyu Islands’ strategic position, however, is one of the largest reasons behind their subjugation by both Japan and the United States. I will point out that the phrasing of this essay question can be a cause for a biased answer, as it assumes that all Okinawans felt betrayed by the Japanese government and that every negative event which occurred in Okinawa after the Pacific War can be blamed on the Japanese. The issue, I will argue, is far more ambiguous, as it is difficult to pinpoint the exact feelings of historical subjects. The treatment of Okinawans during the Pacific War, the subsequent American occupation, and the overall lack of Okinawan autonomy, among other significant events, does lend to the understanding that Okinawans would feel largely betrayed by the government many of them have identified with in the past. However, even today, when a significant portion of Okinawa has been taken over by the American military and when the Japanese government has done very little to respond to violence and social unrest prompted by this, few Okinawans entertain notions of independence from Japan.
Hostility towards Japan among Okinawans became prominent even before the twentieth century. As part of Japan’s desire for an overseas empire, the annexation of the Ryukyu archipelago occurred in 1879, which abolished the monarchy and established the prefecture of Okinawa. Ryukyuans largely refused to accept Japanese sovereignty, which became an underlying cause for the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5. During the Meiji period, additionally, Japan launched a campaign to eliminate Ryukyuan culture, a campaign which continued throughout the Meiji period and resurfaced in the 1940s with the onset of the Asia-Pacific War. It is difficult to present Japanese actions towards the Okinawans during the Second World War as anything but violent and reckless. The Battle of Okinawa, which lasted nearly three months and included the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War, occurred at a time in the war when Japan was becoming desperate, resorting to measures that violate all notions of just war. For example, the Imperial Army drafted over two thousand junior-high and high-school students, ages eleven to fourteen, to form the Imperial Iron and Blood Corps, which they sent to the frontlines with little or no training. Unsurprisingly, few survived. Other atrocities were committed against the Okinawans during this period. For example, islanders caught speaking in their native language could be branded as spies and killed. The American army, however, was also brutal towards Okinawans during this period, and while many islanders greeted the Americans as liberators, their behavior during the subsequent occupation is as inexcusable as that of the Imperial Army’s during the war.
If Okinawa became a sacrificial pawn for the Imperial Army during the Pacific War, it became even more so during negotiations with the United States. In return for autonomy and collective security in the 1950s, Japan allowed the American military to retain control of Okinawa, which became an important strategic location for the fight against communism during the Cold War. While this looked good to Western capitalist countries threatened by Soviet expansion, this did little to benefit the residents of Okinawa. The war had largely destroyed Okinawa’s intricate system of irrigation ditches, and a large portion of the island’s arable land was paved over or requisitioned by the military for the building of military bases. Residents were subsequently pushed off their land to make way for these bases. As a result, Okinawans were forced to relocate to refugee camps, becoming almost entirely dependent on the US military for food and clothes.
Ambiguity regarding the racial categorization of Okinawans was another cause for tension, and not simply towards the Japanese. While the Imperial Army fought the Pacific War with an ideological understanding of their racial superiority, the Americans, too, did their share in perpetuating racial stereotypes that placed Okinawans into an inferior category. During the war, Professor George Murdock and his team at Yale University compiled a series of civil affairs handbooks for the American military. For the handbook on the Ryukyu Islands, Murdock’s group relied heavily on Japanese sources, thus reproducing many of the stereotypes held by Japanese writers. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, Murdock characterized the Okinawans as culturally, linguistically, and racially distinct from the Japanese. These ideas were further perpetuated in 1945 and beyond, as Americans stationed in Okinawa began to regard the Ryukyus as a separate cultural and political entity. This racial distinction seemed to facilitate both the American occupation and Japan’s apparent abandonment of their former prefecture. It seems strange and hypocritical that in the wake of the Nuremberg trials and the subsequent creation of the United Nations under a banner of universal human rights, the Japanese government would neglect the archipelago once under their domain and the American military would exploit it to such a devastating extent. Indeed, the military occupation and intensive construction projects caused serious economic problems. In addition, racial categorization and segregation, not just between Americans and Okinawans, but even within the American military itself, only helped in aggravating racial animosities, causing further violence.
The lack of movement allowed for Okinawans also caused tension between residents and ruling powers. In the immediate aftermath of the war, while Ryukyuans could legally move freely within the archipelago, travel to Japan proper was forbidden. This came as a blow to those who identified with the Japanese, or who had connections on the Japanese mainland and found themselves cut off. Part of the American Occupation strategy included the repatriation of Japanese nationals to Japan and the deportation of colonial subjects to their countries of origin. This caused considerable ambiguity regarding Okinawa, as the Japanese state and intellectuals categorized Okinawans as “Japanese,” but during Japanese rule, they had been treated as colonial subjects. Using racial rhetoric which separated Okinawans from the Japanese, the American military pushed for the deportation of several thousand Okinawans from mainland Japan. Due to lack of living space in Okinawa, however, this forced many to remain in deportation camps in Nagoya, Kagoshima, and elsewhere, surviving on what little food, clothing, and medical care was available at these locations. The mass deportations of former colonial subjects allowed Japan to move forward in a new rendering of itself as having self-evident borders around a homogenous people. On the other hand, this left Okinawa in a particularly vulnerable position, making it possible for the American military not simply to occupy the area until 1972, but to retain permanent influence even into the twenty-first century, greatly impacting the economy and politics of the islands and causing long-term negative effects on its population.
Quite simply, the Okinawans did not fare well under American occupation. For one, they were denied basic constitutional protections taken for granted in Japan. This is largely because the Pentagon feared that equal treatment would impede construction of the permanent military bases they sought on Okinawa. In this sense, democratic rights applied mainly to secure the cooperation of local workers on whom the building of bases depended. Such conditions in Okinawa allowed MacArthur to espouse pacifism and govern Japan proper indirectly and in a spirit of leniency. However, frequent outbursts of popular resentment occurred in Okinawa, and this unequal relation of force produced a labor movement more militant and tenacious than in Japan proper. In some ways, the military attempted to make it seem like they were adhering to ideas of self-determination, despite military control over all aspects of Okinawan life. Under the Navy, a basic form of local self-government was put in place, and in January 1948 a military decree allowed for the instillation of electoral law, which permitted popular balloting for local mayors and assembly members. However, under military control, genuine self-government was not permitted to emerge, and, in any case, this government served to speed the implementation of military decrees. This gave American occupation a tone of neo-colonialism.
To fight anti-American sentiment, U.S. authorities attempted to foster separatist sentiment, using Murdock’s arguments to do so. However, while Okinawans were fiercely proud of their distinctive cultural heritage, many also felt a cultural affinity for Japan, even despite the wartime horrors they suffered while under their control. The American presence and their full control of different aspect of Okinawan life helped reinforced those feelings. In 1948, Okinawans began demanding their return to Japan, but this was not an option the American military wanted to entertain, as retention of Okinawa would, it was argued, allow them to achieve military objectives at the least possible cost to the United States. Despite a State Department proposal to return the Ryukyus to Japan with the signing of a peace treaty, MacArthur argued that control over the Ryukyus was absolutely essential to the defense of the Western Pacific Frontier. Since Okinawa was not indigenous to Japan ethnologically, did not contribute to Japan’s economic welfare, and the Japanese did not expect to be permitted to retain it, MacArthur claimed that failure to secure control of the islands would prove militarily disastrous. With the onset of the Cold War, American strategists began to view the Ryukyus as absolutely essential to America’s first line of defense against Communism in the Far East. MacArthur, additionally, advocated for long term control, and it seemed that Emperor Hirohito was willing to accept this. Hirohito wanted to discourage Moscow from directly interfering in Japanese affairs, and it seemed that allowing the American occupation to proceed in Okinawa was the best possible solution. Despite discussions at various points throughout the 1940s regarding an early transfer of Okinawa back to Japan, in 1951 a secret bilateral negotiation effectively ceded control of the islands to the U.S., with Japan retaining ‘residual sovereignty’ for an additional 20 years beyond the end of the Occupation.
The question of foreign influence in and control of Okinawa has not ceased to be an issue even into the twenty-first century. While the Ryukyu islands fall under Japanese jurisdiction in accordance to their transfer in the 1970s, Okinawa remains a particularly important location for American military bases. Despite being over-extended and over-burdened, the United States seems determined to maintain American garrisons overseas despite a prominent and wide-reaching sentiment among islanders that the load should be lightened. The United States has, in the past, attempted to justify their possession of such a large number of bases in Okinawa by claiming that such measures are protective, but violence from military personnel has not diminished since the initial occupation of the 1940s. The gang rape of a teenage girl by two US Marines and a Navy corpsman in 1995, for example, strengthened the call among residents for relief. Despite promises to return the Futenma base site to Japan in 1996, few changes have been made to benefit residents or to diminish the dangers caused by the retention of these bases. Such conditions prompt sentiments of betrayal among Okinawans, and according to a Japan Times article from 2015, while the prospect of a self-determined and independent Okinawa seems to be currently unlikely, these sentiments of betrayal have prompted the emergence of separatist movements among academics.
In conclusion, the issue of Okinawa and their feelings towards the Japanese government has to be viewed in light of the events which occurred during and immediately after the Second World War. It is not a simple issue of pointing to Japanese culpability, as in the case of the Japanese government, it could be argued that they felt that the sacrifice of Okinawa to the American military was the best way to guarantee protection against outside threats. After all, Japan was not in a good position after the war – economically, militarily, or politically. Japan’s loss of the war had necessitated intense changes with wide-reaching consequences, particularly in the case of national security, as it was no longer legal for the Japanese government to sanction the building of a military. This did not bode well with the imminent expansion of the Soviet Union. Militarily weak and in a stage of political transition, the Japanese government may have felt that cooperation with the U.S. was the best guarantee they had for protection against the communist threat, hence the sacrifice of Okinawa. This in no way excuses the sufferings felt in the islands throughout the American Occupation and in the years since. However, because there exists a movement of people still willing, even now, to consider themselves Japanese and because of a general displeasure with the presence of American bases on Okinawa, it is necessary to question whether the general sentiment of betrayal is towards the Japanese government or towards American military presence, or both.