Japanese attitudes towards the Okinawa problem : 1945-1965
Abstract
Okinawa, which was captured by American forces
in the last stages of the Second World War, was after
the Japanese surrender placed under the control of the
United States. Drastic changes which occurred in the
Par Past in the following years, especially the advent
of a hostile regime on the Chinese continent and the
outbreak of the Korean war, made the United States develop
Okinawa into her most important military base to cope
with this new situation. Thus under the Japanese Peace
Treaty (1952) it was decided that Okinawa together with
other islands in the Ryukyu Archipelago should remain
under American control. At he Peace Conference, however, the United States
explicitly recognized Japan's 'residual sovereignty'.
Since then the United States has increasingly made it
clear that she will eventually return Okinawa to Japan
when the military situation permits. She has, hov/ever,
steadfastly rejected all suggestions that she should return
the island at an earlier date or that she should in the
meantime give Japan a share in any aspect of its administration
for fear of losing the freedom of her military forces to
act in and from there. Not surprisingly, with the passage
of time, the ambiguity of the present and future status
of Okinawa has become more and more irritating both to
the Japanese people and to Okinawa's 900,000 inhabitants
who are asserting themselves as Japanese. While Japan has already succeeded in settling most
of the problems resulting from her defeat in the war,
Okinawa alone still remains unsolved. This helps
to explain the growing; impatience i« recent years
among the Japanese over the existing status of Okinawa
which appears, in the eyes of many Japanese, little
short of an American colony. There seems no doubt
about the existence in Japan of a fundamental consensus
which calls for the earliest possible return of Okinawa
to Japanese control. It is a great paradox, however,
that a political issue for which national consensus is
easily attained — the return of Okinawa to Japan —
is inextricably entangled with another over which the
nation's opinion is sharply divided — the defense
relations with the United States. A logical consequence
of this situation is that a clear-cut solution to the
Okinawa problem could not be achieved without entailing
a drastic change in the structure of the U.S.-Japan
alliance. This poses a difficult question to the Japanese
Government. For the Okinawa problem the Japanese public
calls for a decisive change while for the defence policy
it would react very reluctantly to any proposal for a
radical departure from the existing arrangements. The
Japanese Government also meets a very strong reluctance
on the part of the United States to make substantial
concessions regarding the political status of Okinawa.
Although the United States recently agreed to extend
local autonomy for the Okinawan inhabitants and to promote
their social and economic welfare in a closer co-operation
with the Japanese Government, it is not very likely that
the United States will surrender her rights of control
over Okinawa in favour of any kind of joint determination with Japanese authorities in the near future. Unless,
however, leaders of the both countries are successful
in removing this source of friction within the not too
distant future, the relations between the United States
and Japan may be seriously affected by Japanese resentment
arising out of the Okinawa issue. In this thesis I have tried to shed light on the
development of Japanese attitudes towards the Okinawa
problem by, in its first part, describing the historical
circumstances in which the problem has evolved over the
past two decades and by, in the second part, analysing
in detail various forces at work in Japan in the formation
of Japanese opinion about the problem.