- Current
Nikkei View
- About
- Roots
- Nikkei
Links
- IMDiversity Job Bank
- More
about Gil:
Gil's Home Page
Resume
Fave Web Sites
1957 TimeLine
"Toy Book" Excerpt
Writing Samples
SUPPORT THE NIKKEI VIEW!
Amazon.com now offers a way for you to sponsor the Nikkei View column! Just click below for more information!
Search Amazon.com using keywords such as "Japan," "Japanese
American," "Tokyo," and others for books or videos.
I'm now an Amazon.com
Affiliate. I urge everyone to support their local independent businesses
first, but if you search Amazon.com from here, I earn a percentage of
your purchases. It's one way you can help underwrite the Nikkei View.
Thanks!
JOIN THE DISCUSSION!
"Ties Talk" is an e-mail discussion group through which people of all ages and backgrounds from all over the U.S. and the world can comment on the Japanese American and Asian Pacific American experience. You can get a sample of the types of discussion that go on in the Ties-Talk Archives.
To
subscribe to "Ties Talk" and join our community, send an e-mail
to majordomo@lists.apanet.org
with the following line in your message:
subscribe ties-talk
Once
you send in your subscription request, an automated e-mail message should
be returned from "majordomo" to your e-mail address asking you
to confirm your membership to the list. Once you send in the confirmation,
you'll be added to the list. The "Ties Talk" e-mail discussion
list is operated by the Japanese American
Network, or JA*Net.
Hope to see you in e-mails!
Connect to the Denver area's Asian community with AsiaXpress!
Radio the way it should be: DavidsWebcast
ARCHIVES
LATEST
COLUMN
2001 COLUMNS *
2000 COLUMNS
1999 COLUMNS * 1998 COLUMNS
July 25, 2000
IS THE US MILITARY OK IN OKINAWA?
I grew up in Japan, but half of my daily life was within the confines of US military life. My father worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers based in Tokyo. Our family lived off-base, but I grew up attending American schools on nearby military bases, and much of my parents' social life was entwined with people in the drab green, tan and blue uniforms of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
| Okinawa's 2,267.88 square kilometers hosts the highest concentration of US bases and facilities in the world -- about 10.5 percent of the island's total area. |
Most of the bases
and places I knew back then are gone now. I don't think military housing
areas such as Grant Heights, where we lived when I was born and my father
was still enlisted in the Army, or Green Park, where I later went to school,
exist anymore. Tachikawa Air Base, of which I have many memories, was
decommissioned long ago.
Still, I get powerful feelings of "deja-vu" every time I see rows of institutional housing set up in lines like barracks at a military base. Those feelings are positive ones that evoke childhood for me, however. They're not the feelings of fear and suspicion that bases evoke in the people of Okinawa.
During the recent Summit of 8 meeting of world leaders in Okinawa, the media focused attention on local protesters opposing the presence of US military on the tiny island.
The protests may have occurred anyway -- the US bases have been a bone of contention for decades, since the island was the scene of one of the most bitterly fought campaigns towards the end of World War II, with furious man-to-man fighting and thousands of Japanese civilians choosing to commit suicide rather than being captured by the American troops. They were afraid at the time that when the US won the war, American soldiers would rape the women of Japan and pillage the country. These things didn't happen, at least not the way the Okinawans expected. For decades, a veneer of friendly neighborliness has softened the fact that the Americans never left after the war.
But the timing of the G-8 summit was an opportunity to highlight the issue while the world media was paying attention, and while the emotions of Okinawans and many Japanese were heightened. Just the week before, a 14-year-old girl was reportedly sexually molested by a Marine from a nearby base who broke into the girl's home in the middle of the night while the family slept. The Marine, who denied any wrongdoing but reportedly couldn't remember anything he'd done because he had been drinking, was arrested. The residents of Okinawa were outraged -- again -- at having to accept unacceptable behavior by their unwelcome neighbors.
Okinawa's 2,267.88 square kilometers hosts the highest concentration of US bases and facilities in the world -- about 10.5 percent of the island's total area. The US military presence moved in right after WWII as a deterrent against both Japan's resurgence as a military power, as well as a deterrent to the rise of Communism in Asia during the post-war years (it didn't work, as China, North Korea and later Vietnam proved). About 75 percent of the American military facilities in Japan are located in Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture, which is considered the "keystone of the Pacific." Kadena Air Base the largest US military facility in Asia.
Okinawa was home to 24,847 US soldiers as of late last year. And those GIs aren't always well-behaved. According to Okinawa prefectural government statistics, the total number of arrests of U.S. military personnel, civilian workers and dependents in Okinawa last year was 48 in 1999, up from 38 the previous year. The percentage may seem small, but given the image of strength and control the military convey, and the emotional history of the Okinawans in the last stages of WWII, these crimes are an easy flashpoint.
Five years ago, while
I was in Japan for a trip, the big news in Japan (but little reported
in the US) was a kidnap and rape of a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa by three
GIs. On Sept. 23 1995, I happened to be the first person posting a message
on a Japanese Web site's English-language discussion board about the incident.
You can read all the messages (not all were sympathetic); the
message board is still online.
There have been many crimes committed by US personnel in Okinawa over the years; The Weekly Post, and English-language newspaper in Japan, has an investigative article on the Internet covering the recent assault and chronicling the other crimes.
I can't speak for the US Pentagon and its reasons for the continuing presence of so many troops on Okinawa. But as a citizen of the world, I do wonder if they're all necessary in such concentration. It's true that even with the Cold War gone, other threats to world peace might erupt anywhere, and at any time. But is Okinawa or even other locations in Japan an appropriate staging area for US military might?
Ultimately, what's troubling to me, and to many Japanese, I suspect -- is that the military presence can be regarded as a form of imperialism -- of a sort that uncomfortably recalls Japan's own imperialist ambitions of the first half of the 20th century. Maybe it's time, in the new millennium, to stop using weaponry and force and evolve humankind to a higher level, not just on Okinawa, but everywhere.
Maybe the media coverage will help the people of Okinawa by bringing the rest of world's attention to their side. Maybe President Clinton was personally moved by seeing how much military strength is concentrated on the tiny island. Maybe -- just maybe -- the wheels have been set in motion so that finally, we won't ever have hear again about a rape or sexual assault, a murder or other crime committed by American soldiers in Okinawa, who are supposed to be there on a mission of peace.