Human rights in Okinawa
Mears, Helen
Top military men.., believe that Okinawa has decided advantages over Japan and the Philippines as a site for American air bases. They point out that in Japan and the Philippines the US must...
...No steps were taken to guarantee their livelihood...
...only time can tell whether in the long run the American base will be able to survive pressure from demands by all Japanese political parties for the island to be returned to Japan, its technical owner, and from hundreds of thousands of Okinawan farmers...
...Ordinance No...
...By this standard the wage-scale for Americans ranged from $6.31 an hour to $1.06...
...Since the prevailing situation was considered intolerable, the proposal would render it unendurable...
...Its economic ties with Japan have been broken...
...But they are essential parts of the defense perimeter of the Pacific and they must and will be held...
...In Okinawa, mass meetings were held in fifty-five towns and the entire Ryukyuan government, including the elected legislature, threatened to resign...
...The gap between exports and imports was made up by American spending in the islands, which means that a major part of Okinawan economic life is highly artificial, remote from the needs of the Okinawan people...
...Each unit has first class heating and kitchen equipment, including a refrigerator...
...for Filipinos from $1.64 to $0.40...
...US NEws AND WORLD REPORT, June 1951) The US formally recognized today full Philippines sovereignty over US military bases in this island republic...
...their lands and were driven out of their dwelling houses were simply thrown out onto the roadside...
...They encircled the inhabitants, who had squatted down on the cultivated land, and after reading the US forces' order before them, committed acts of violence upon the inhabitants by beating with rifles and kicking them with their feet, forcing them to move out of the agricultural land .. This account of conditions under US military government more closely resembles the sort of policies we expect of totalitarian governments than those acclaimed by Mr...
...It is taken for granted here that some of the giant caves house an atomic weapons stockpile...
...In both countries there is organized—and—vocal opposition to the leasing of bases to the US...
...And to long as the struggle appears as a power contest, the inspirational addresses of our peripatetic statesmen are likely to arouse contempt rather than approval...
...According to this Ordinance, land ruled as necessary by the US Government may be expropriated irrespective of the wishes of its owner...
...Planes to carry the big bomb are only hours away...
...They point out that in Japan and the Philippines the US must deal with independent governments which may not always be so favorably inclined to the idea of playing host to US military forces...
...This speech was considered so important that it was given two front-page stories...
...Moore succeeded in persuading the local government officials not to resign and announced that rentals now being paid by the US, amounting to $1 million a year, would be tripled from July 1. (N.Y...
...This situation caused dissatisfaction in both Okinawa and Japan...
...The sequestration of lands has been carried out through the "Land Expropriation Ordinance" (US Civil Gov...
...Nixon...
...the Americans can forcibly expropriate his land in thirty days...
...They have degenerated into base-construction workers, transient laborers and slavewage laborers working for the US Forces in Okinawa...
...When this news reached Okinawa and Japan it caused an uproar...
...Ignoring this, however, the US military at once "repatriated" some 200,000 Okinawans who had emigrated to other Japanese possessions in the Pacific...
...Bulldozers are busy, everywhere, scraping and leveling land and extending the air-conditioned underground caverns that house the island's vitals...
...In order to build Okinawa into an "atom-bomb proof base only...
...Taken together these two stories explain why the US has such difficulty persuading the "neutralist" governments that its intentions toward Asia are democratic and humane...
...Few if any Americans here would dispute these conclusions...
...In the light of this seizure of their lands, which deprived the inhabitants of their means of livelihood, the owners have repeatedly petitioned the Government or resisted the expropriation with force at times...
...The Okinawan story—better known in Asia than in the US—is deeply disturbing, particularly if contrasted with the oratory of our peripatetic statesmen...
...James E. Moore, Deputy Governor of the Ryukyu Islands, told a delegation that: This is not a time to listen to men who for political reasons, subversive reasons, or reasons of personal gain, whip up agitation on the part of the people, par ticularly when the people haven't had an opportunity to understand the full implications of the report...
...The situation was summed up by Robert Trumbull (New York Times, April 14, 1956), who reported: "Two factors are immediately plain in Okinawa...
...The other is that 800,000 inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands...
...But while this vast construction program pushes ahead Japan's political parties and Okinawan farmers are pressing their own demands on the islands' limited acres...
...The schools and excellent post-exchange and recreation facilities have made Okinawa an enviable assignment for career servicemen...
...That the US Government claims to "believe in God, honor, religion and morality" does not make more acceptable to the Okinawans the expropriation of their farm-land at a rental low even by Asian standards, and wages from $0.08 to $0.21 an hour...
...According to figures disclosed by the US Forces in April, 1954, the area they control in Okinawa reached 42,424.5 acres or 14 per cent of the total area and 41.2 per cent of the total cultivated area Those inhabitants who have lost...
...Although Okinawans hold administrative offices, they have only token authority...
...The major difference between Japanese and American reports is that, in general, American commentators accept as a matter of course the idea that the US military "are forced to" put US strategic aims ahead of the welfare of the Okinawan people . For example, Ralph Braibanti, writing in The American Political Science Review for December 1954, explains that "However sympathetic one may be to Ryukyuan problems, a simple unpopular truth must be faced: our primary mission in the islands is strategic...
...This formula reasserts the right of the US to control the island for an indefinite period...
...Further distress is aroused by the fact that a considerable part of the land taken from Okinawan farmers is used to build superior homes and recreational facilities for increasing numbers of American personnel...
...III As of today, the prewar economy of Okinawa is virtually destroyed...
...Okinawa is an island group, part of the Ryukyu island chain which stretches in an arc southwest from Japan...
...Before the war Okinawa was a province of Japan with representatives in the Tokyo Diet...
...In such cases, however, military units of US Forces were ordered out to suppress them...
...Yet in April of this year, when the Secretary of the Okinawa "People's Party" (which the US military call a Communistfront) was released from prison—where the US military had put him for "concealing a criminal and giving false evidence"—a mass-meeting of some 6,000 Okinawans gathered to cheer him as he demanded the return of Okinawa to Japan...
...Nonetheless, later investigations, by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations and by a commission of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions have confirmed its overall validity if not all its explicit detail...
...In modern times," declared Mr...
...During the war US military forces took the islands, and at the end of the war the US Navy governed them as an adjunct of the occupation of Japan...
...What brought the situation to a boil for the Okinawans was the report of a US Congressional sub-committee that had been considering plans for the expansion of the Okinawa base, which would require the acquisition of land up to 85,843 acres, about double the current holdings...
...Beautiful words...
...It provided further that: "Pending the making of such a proposal and affirmative action thereon the US will have the right to exercise all and any powers of administration, legislation, and jurisdiction over the territory and inhabitants of these islands, including their territorial waters...
...At the time this report was issued in Japan, spokesmen for the Army's Far East Command called the charges "misleading," "incorrect" and "not supported by the facts...
...This, however, was only the beginning...
...The chief executive, a native, is appointed by the General in command without the consent of the legislature, and he in turn appoints all the administrative officials in Okinawa...
...But it is a fortress with a headache for the present and a possible Achilles heel for the future...
...The Japanese Socialist Party and organizations of Okinawans began to plan mass meetings, and the Socialists announced that they would ask the Asian-African bloc in the UN to present the problem to the Security Council...
...Hints of how the US official mind is grappling with the problem appear now and then in brief press items such as a note from Geneva (August 26, 1955), which reported that "The US is participating in an international project for resettling Okinawans in Bolivia...
...11 Eleven years after the end of the war, the US still holds and governs Okinawa as a military dictatorship...
...are unanimous in wanting to see the area returned to Japan...
...VICE-PRESIDENT NIxoN, Manila, July 3, 1956) On July 4 the New York Times reported a speech by VicePresident Nixon in Manila...
...A New York Times report from Fort Bruckner, Okinawa, published under the heading "Okinawa's Charm and Comforts Make Troops Vie for Duty There," noted of this "pleasant, semi-tropical island" that: Today, many officers said, housing on Okinawa is the best the US Army affords anywhere in the world...
...About 800 GIs armed with bayonets, tear gas, machine guns, etc., were rushed to the spot...
...Consistently measures have been taken to obstruct these mass actions with MPs threatening with pistols...
...Since this report was widely circulated in Asia, it is worth considering a few excerpts: The paramount grievance of the Okinawan inhabitants is that their cultivated lands and forests are compulsorily expropriated and their dwelling houses forcibly demolished for the construction of American military bases...
...So far the US has been paying about $1 million a year rent to the Okinawans for the 42,424 expropriated acres—which works out at less than $24 an acre a year...
...and the consensus is that the indefinite period will not be short...
...For such a policy suggests that the US government believes in its own "God-given right" to transport people into, and out of, their homeland as its shifting strategic design may determine...
...In Okinawa Lt...
...At the root of the difficulty is the ancient oriental shortage of land: Okinawa is not big enough to meet the demands on its space...
...The proposal that the US should double its holdings and pay for the land outright was a shock to the Okinawans who saw this as implying that the occupation was to be permanent, and that Okinawan rights to their land were increasingly subordinate to the claims of ever-lengthening air-strips and ever-expanding military installations...
...The strategic advantages of Okinawa soon became apparent to the US military leaders who were ruling Japan...
...AP, June 21) Gen...
...NEw YORK TIMES, July 4, 1956) Some may consider us naive when we speak of God-given rights, of the dignity of man and the equal sovereignty of all peoples...
...If these are simple views, then we are proud to be a simple people...
...It is notable that not only does it not occur to the US Government to provide such comforts for its Okinawan labor, but because Okinawans have never had these advantages it is considered "reasonable" to pay them from eight to twenty-one cents an hour...
...There are [the report adds ingenuouslyj too many persons on Okinawa for any of them to prosper...
...The island has been treated as an outpost of the Pentagon and its economic life has been geared to the demands of the US military occupation...
...Secretary of the Army Wilbur Bruckner (New York Times, December 81, 1955) was quoted as saying that Okinawa was the US "nerve center of the Pacific now" and that the US could retain control for "many many years...
...Incessant demands for more land have led to hunger strikes, island-wide demonstrations, and finally demands for reunion with Japan and the departure of American forces...
...Moreover, the Congressional sub-committee, bothered by the cost of the proposed expansion, had recommended that, instead of paying rent for the land, the military should buy it outright for a flat sum amounting to about twenty years expected revenue as the US figured it...
...Nixon told the Filipinos that the US Government had ."no sympathy" for those "who treat alike nations that believe in God, and honor, religion and morality, and nations that boast of atheism and the rule of force and terror alone," he was insulting their intelligence...
...Every observer agrees that when US forces took control of Okinawa there were no Communists in the islands...
...They want the land back for farming...
...Even the formation of a labor union in Okinawa must be submitted to the US Forces for examination and approval...
...The New York Times correspondent added plaintively that "Most Okinawans are so eager to be Japanese again instead of US wards that they do not realize that their nationalist aspirations are being used by the Reds...
...The US has sent in around 40,000 people...
...In the same issue the Times gave 32 lines to a report from Tokyo that the Japanese Government hoped to confer with the US Government, in order to get better treatment for the citizens of the US-governed Japanese island of Okinawa...
...The war-time declarations of the Big Three, announcing their intention to dismember the Japanese Empire did not mention Okinawa, and it was probably assumed that the islands were an integral part of Japan...
...The 280mm atomic cannon are here...
...the item from Tokyo called attention to the reality...
...and to take over their farms in order to construct "suburban-style cottages" for American military forces...
...It said the US would turn over the full title to all bases but did not say when...
...Nixon, "the really cruel colonialism has been the colonialism of the Communist worlds...
...It was this provision, written into the Japanese Peace Treaty, along with the requirement that the Japanese Government must sign a Mutual Defense Treaty guaranteeing the US continued occupation of military bases in Japan —that caused India (as well as the USRR) to refuse to sign the Peace Treaty at San Francisco, on the grounds that such requirements abrogated Japanese sovereignty...
...At the beginning of this article is a quotation from Mr...
...The military government has been described by the American Civil Liberties Union (September 27, 1955) in these terms: "While the US General in command exercises all the ultimate powers of government, the native legislature is freely elected...
...Exports last year amounted to $7 million while imports amounted to $66 million, and most of these imports were for the benefit of Americans in the islands, or to solve problems (such as food shortages) created by US programs...
...This unilateral US policy of detaching Okinawa from Japan in order to create a military base is the sort of fact that is likely to bother the "neutralist" governments when they ponder Mr...
...The report further charged that although the US compensated the dispossessed people, "the value decided by the US Forces is only one-ninth of the value demanded by the landowners at the prevailing price...
...It charged that the dispossessed farmers had no choice but to starve or to work for the US military at "slavelabor" rates...
...for Japanese technicians from $0.37 to $0.21...
...James E. Moore "youthful Deputy Governor" as saying that the emigration and resettlement projects now under way "can at best merely alleviate the situation...
...For instance, in December 1953, bulldozers came out into the suburbs of Naha, quite suddenly to start levelling ground in preparation of construction of the attached facilities of the Oroku Air Units Approximately 1,000 inhabitants...
...Times, June 20, 1956) In determining whether the US proposals were "reasonable" and the complaints "subversive," the Okinawans and Japanese would probably contrast the trivial payments, land rent and wages with the impressive sums spent for military installations...
...As long as Okinawa remains a major US military base, human needs will be subordinated to military necessity...
...Its people are ethnically, culturally and linguistically close to the Japanese...
...The US, of course, never did suggest a UN trusteeship, and although the legal position was equivocal, continued to govern the territory as an absolute possession...
...And the US military have taken 42,424.5 acres of land for US use, expropriating an estimated 76,000 landowners...
...And their confusion is likely to increase when the plight of the Okinawan people is taken into account...
...109) since April 1953...
...Nixon's assurance that "The US wants nothing which belongs to any other people in the world...
...Many of thesse latter say they are near starvation and all are upset by the military's inroads into the island's precious farmland...
...Nixon's assurance of US concern for "Godgiven rights," "human dignity" and "equal sovereignty of all peoples...
...Responding to such pressures the State Department gradually evolved a new formula which restored Japan's "residual sovereignty" while reaffirming US control...
...Apparently, however, not much came of this proposal since a news item from Oki nawa, eight months later, quoted Lt...
...And as long as US opposition to Communism takes the form of preparations for military struggle rather than programs for human betterment, the current struggle will resemble the centuriesold contest for the domination of Asia...
...General MacArthur pointed out that by taking over the Japanese islands in the Pacific the US had turned the Pacific Ocean into an "American lake" and military opinion stressed the need for a "Gibraltar" close to the coast of China from which the Far East could be dominated...
...It reported further that the US authorities, in setting wage scales, based them on the assumed standard of living of the workers' country of origin...
...The State Department apparently shared this view of the strategic importance of Okinawa but was aware of the need for a formula which would "legalize" retention of the island as an American base after the occupation of Japan...
...This formula was written into the Japanese Peace Treaty which provided that Japan "will concur in any proposal of the US to the UN" to place certain islands including the Ryukyus under its trusteeship system "with the US as the sole administering authority...
...Top military men.., believe that Okinawa has decided advantages over Japan and the Philippines as a site for American air bases...
...In any event, it seems clear that a policy of forced emigration is likely to challenge rather than confirm Mr...
...If the landowner does not consent...
...At the end of the war the islands were already crowded...
...12, 1950: "We will at an appropriate time offer to hold [the Ryukyus] under trusteeship of the UN...
...An AP dispatch from Okinawa (December 24, 1955), makes explicit the basic conflict between the claims of military construction and human welfare: The US has built its first atom-bomb-proof base on this island, only 500 miles from Red China...
...Nixon...
...But on Okinawa it is not the Communists who have created misery and discontent, it is US policy which is creating Communists...
...From the point of view of the US Government, the Okinawan situation became serious when on June 21 of this year the Japanese Foreign Minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, officially presented the Okinawan protests and claims...
...Obviously a minor item in what has been called a "$588,600,000 investment in security...
...This formula was made explicit in Japan on June 27, 1956 when US Ambassador Allison announced in Tokyo that Okinawa would be returned to Japan "when tensions relax in the Far East...
...The average family man is assigned a suburban-style cottage of concrete construction and tiled roof...
...The unsavory situation in Okinawa, although little recognized by Americans, has been well publicized in Japan, India and Southeast Asia, by way of a report called "Human Rights Problems in Okinawa" based on an investigation made by the Japanese Civil Liberties Union, and published in January 1955...
...The Okinawan demands, as passed to the US by the Japanese Minister, ask that the US land seizures be stopped, that an annual rental be instituted at nine times th9 current rate for lands already taken, and that a time limit be placed on US land tenure...
...Its laws, however, are subject to the commander's veto...
...and for Ryukyuan from $0.21 to $0.08, Further: As a result of this financial stress, spontaneous strikes occurred in 1953 and 1954, with the workers demanding adjustment of wages and other improvements in working conditions...
...including school children, blocked the passage of the bulldozers...
...The formula, as worked out, was stated with admirable directness by Secretary of State Dean Acheson on Jan...
...But as my grandmother used to say, "Handsome is as handsome does...
...When Mr...
...Accordingly military necessity must often trample over Ryukyuan interests...
...500 miles from Red China" (AP, December 24, 1955), the US military government has carried out a program of land expropriation which has destroyed the homes and livelihood of tens of thousands of small landowners...
...It reported that the US authorities employed 100,000 Okinawans "out of whom 64 per cent or 68,000 work for the construction of military bases," and that 80 per cent of these are "men and women who were evicted from the farm villages...
...Nixon presented the idealistic words...
...Great powers usually tend to behave in this autocratic way but they seldom succeed in persuading the people concerned that they are spiritually motivated...
...One is that the US plans to keep the island as a key military base for a long time...
...We know that you will share these views for you too believe that the greatness of nations is judged by eternal standards of right and wrong, and not by the accident of military and economic power...
Vol. 3 • September 1956 • No. 4
