Keiko Itocasus still remembers the day in 1965, when the parachute did not open. He was connected to the Jeep Trailer, which was dropped from the plane, along with the training of lining near her house in Okinawa. Plummeting missed her, but hit a nearby house and killed a fifth grade schoolgirl.
Until then, Mrs. Itocaza, who was then a junior in high school, never thought much of the huge military presence on the Semitropic island, which was under American control at that time. The Americans have been there all her life when the United States confiscated Okinawa from Japan after the end of World War II.
But she knew a dead girl who was a customer in a small family shop. Since then, it has stood sharply against the American base, which remained after the United States in 1972 returned Okinawa to Japanese administration. end.
Okinawans have long felt caught among the United States and Japan, which sent soldiers to require the chain of Okinawan island at the age of 20. Previously, Okinawa was known as the Kingdom of Ryukyus, an independent country that paid tribute to the imperial China and Satsus, a domain in medieval Japan.
Since Japanese takeover, the islanders complained that they were second -class citizens. This includes during the war, when Japan used Okinawa as a battlefield to prevent the Americans from achieving its main islands.
However, the relationship has recently changed, partly powered by the re -incidence of third power, which affects the fate of Okinawa: China. Younger islanders are now receiving news from the same sources of social media as other young Japanese, where there is extensive criticism of the growing assertiveness of Beijing.
They are also more inclined to see bases as a source of jobs on the island, where the hourly wages are the lowest in Japan. One of them is Maria Badilla, a Japanese woman who was not born on the island as many contemporary inhabitants of Okinawa. Originally from Kyoto three years ago she moved to Okinawa, which was drawn by her sun’s beaches.
Mrs. Badilla (26), first, held jobs with low quantities, including a hotel and a restaurant, and after finding better paid work in a home agency at an American base. She met Pedro Badilla, 23, Arizona’s naval sergeant, whom she married last year, while working in the restaurant.
She said that people around her see the bases as a protective presence and provide both economic opportunities and the level of security in a world that can feel far from safety.
For many members of the older generations, it was Japan to play the protector – to free Okinawa from the US Army clutches. Kazuo Senaga, 64, grew up and saw his grandfather, a leading local journalist and politician, called for Okinawa’s return to Japan in the hope of leaving the US Army.
Instead, after 1972, Tokyo closed some US bases on the mainland and allowed the Americans to stay in Okinawa. After his grandfather’s death in 2001, Mr. Senaga replaced him as the leader of the movement against the base.
He refuses to look at Beijing as a threat and says Ryukyus had historically friendly ties with China as a business partner and tributary. He says Japan betrayed his institute after 1945, which waives the right to conduct war and relies on the US Army to protect. Okinawa with a population of 1.5 million organizes 70 percent of US bases, although only 0.6 percent of the Japanese mainland. They are 80,000 Americans on the islandOf which 30,000 are uniformed military staff.
He was born in 1940 and Suzuyo Takazato remembers the war and as the imperial Japanese army used Okinawan civilians as human shields against the American onslaught. After the war, she remembered that Okinawans were again focused, this time American soldiers who were returning from the battlefield in Korea and Vietnam, who used the island for rest and recreation. Powered by poverty, many women in Okinawan served them as prostitutes.
The Christian Mrs. Takazato founded a support center for women who have become rape victims or tried to escape sexual trade. She said that if Okinawa was occupied by foreign milkers, it would be a place of war and sexual crimes. Her island, says, remains imprisoned under the “building of violence”.
“Okinawa was sacrificed to defend Japan,” Mrs. Takazato said.
