Keiko Itokazu can nonetheless bear in mind the day in 1965 when the parachute didn’t open. It was hooked up to a jeep trailer that was dropped from an airplane, together with U.S. paratroopers coaching close to her house in Okinawa. The plummeting object missed her however hit a close-by home, killing a fifth-grade schoolgirl.
Till then, Ms. Itokazu, who was then a highschool junior, had by no means thought a lot concerning the big army presence on the semitropical island, which at the moment was below U.S. management. The People had been there her entire life, when the USA seized Okinawa from Japan after the top of World Warfare II.
However she knew the lifeless lady, who was a buyer at her household’s small basic retailer. Ever since, she has fiercely opposed the American bases, which remained even after the USA returned Okinawa to Japanese governance in 1972. Now 77, Ms. Itokazu lately joined protests on the entrance gate of a brand new U.S. Marine airfield being constructed on Okinawa’s northern finish.
Okinawans have lengthy felt caught between the USA and Japan, which despatched troops to assert the Okinawan island chain within the 1870s. Previous to that, Okinawa was often known as the Kingdom of the Ryukyus, an unbiased nation that paid tribute to each Imperial China and Satsuma, a website in medieval Japan.
Ever for the reason that Japanese takeover, the islanders have complained of being second-class residents. This consists of in the course of the struggle, when Japan used Okinawa as a battlefield to cease the People from reaching its fundamental islands.
However the relationship has modified extra lately, pushed partially by the re-emergence of a 3rd energy exerting an affect on Okinawa’s future: China. Youthful islanders now get their information from the identical social media sources as different younger Japanese, the place there may be widespread criticism of Beijing’s rising assertiveness.
They’re additionally extra inclined to see the bases as a supply of jobs on an island the place hourly wages are the bottom in Japan. One is Maria Badilla, a Japanese girl who, like lots of Okinawa’s present residents, was not born on the island. Initially from Kyoto, she moved to Okinawa three years in the past, drawn by its sunny seashores.
At first, Ms. Badilla, 26, held low-salaried service jobs, together with at a lodge and a restaurant, earlier than discovering better-paying work at a housing company on a U.S. base. Whereas working on the restaurant, she met Pedro Badilla, 23, a Marine sergeant from Arizona, whom she married final 12 months.
She mentioned folks round her see the bases as a protecting presence, offering each financial alternative and a measure of security in a world that may really feel removed from safe.
For a lot of members of older generations, it was Japan that was imagined to play protector — liberating Okinawa from the clutches of the U.S. army. Kazuo Senaga, 64, grew up seeing his grandfather, a outstanding native journalist and politician, name for Okinawa’s return to Japan in hopes that this may result in the exit of the U.S. army.
As a substitute, after 1972, Tokyo closed some U.S. bases on the mainland and allowed the People to stay on Okinawa. After his grandfather’s dying in 2001, Mr. Senaga changed him as a frontrunner of the anti-base motion.
He rejects the view of Beijing as a menace, saying the Ryukyus traditionally had pleasant ties with China as a buying and selling companion and tributary state. He says Japan has betrayed its post-1945 Structure, which renounces the best to wage struggle, by counting on the U.S. army for defense. Okinawa, with a inhabitants of 1.5 million, hosts 70 p.c of the American bases regardless of accounting for under 0.6 p.c of Japan’s landmass. There are 80,000 Americans on the island, of whom 30,000 are uniformed army personnel.
Born in 1940, Suzuyo Takazato remembers the struggle and the way the Imperial Japanese military used Okinawan civilians as human shields towards the American onslaught. After the struggle, she recalled, Okinawans have been focused once more, this time by U.S. troopers coming back from battlegrounds in Korea and Vietnam who used the island for relaxation and recreation. Pushed by poverty, many Okinawan ladies served them as prostitutes.
A Christian, Ms. Takazato began a assist middle for girls who have been victims of rape or making an attempt to flee the intercourse commerce. She mentioned that as long as Okinawa was occupied by overseas militaries, it could be the location of struggle and intercourse crimes. Her island, she says, stays trapped below “an edifice of violence.”
“Okinawa was sacrificed to defend Japan,” mentioned Ms. Takazato.
