![]() The sense of many Okinawans, then, is that they have faced waves of colonization not only from the Japanese, but also Americans. ![]() In many of these cases of wrongdoing by American servicemen, American suspects are tried internally within the military rather than handed over the Japanese justice system, provoking further ire. Apart from crimes committed by American infantry, there are also cases of forcible relocations of families for base development, and cases in which military exercises regularly disrupt the fabric of everyday life. Hit-and-run incidents by American servicemen have also occurred several times in recent years. Another source of tension is that American servicemen have been guilty of crimes committed against Okinawans, including a case of the kidnapping and rape of a 12-year-old in 1995 by American servicemen and rape of a 14-year-old in 2008. The use of the accident-prone Osprey helicopter is particularly controversial. This continues to be a matter of political tension, given that training accidents on American military bases have caused deaths in the past, particularly regarding helicopter crashes. Photo credit: US Coast GuardĪmerica continues to maintain large-scale bases on Okinawa despite the reversion to Japanese governance. US troops landing on the coastline of Okinawa in April 1945. This also served to split off Okinawa from Japan, with the use of American dollars as currency in Okinawa and cars driven on the right side rather than the left side of the road, as in America rather than Japan. Likewise, after World War II, Okinawa was not administered under the Japanese government, but directly controlled by the US military until 1972. The more central Japanese islands did not see such fighting. For example, Okinawa saw fighting between Allied forces and imperial Japan during World War II which wiped out 300,000-one-third of the Okinawa’s population. ![]() Subsequent history continued to maintain this sense of difference. But it has to also be noted that Okinawa was never fully incorporated into Japan even after its annexation because of this late annexation and the distance of Okinawa from the rest of Japan, allowing for the preservation of an independent sense of identity. The Ryukyu kingdom existed independent of Japan for centuries, though paying tribute to both China and Japan at certain points, and was incorporated into Japan in 1879-this not without legal protest from Qing dynasty China. If this is surprising, it should be remembered that Okinawa is in fact geographically closer to Taiwan than to the rest of Japan. Indeed, though little known outside of Japan, like Taiwan, Okinawa has its own independence movement on the basis of different heritage and language between Okinawa and other parts of Japan. Taiwan is already an example of this phenomenon, seeing as Taiwan was only part of China during the Qing dynasty and the Qing never completely controlled the island, but present-day China claims ownership over Taiwan on the basis of claims that Taiwan has belonged to China since time immemorial. Expanding territorial claims will be justified on the basis of history, with dynastic history serving as a resource for justifying for imperial expansion in the present. Against the argument that China will be happy if it is allowed to have the territories it currently claims in the present, many have raised that the citing of Chinese history from some time immemorial allows for the unchecked expansion of Chinese territorial claims in the future. If this is raised as an attempt to pry apart Okinawa from Japan, actually Japan and Korea were also historical tributary states of China. A Japanese territory, containing American bases with over 25,000 servicemen, potential Chinese claims over Okinawa would be a provocation not only against Japan but also America.Ĭhinese claims date back to the ancient history of Okinawa - then the Ryukyu kingdom - as a tributary state of China. ![]() WITH RECENT attention paid to suggested Chinese claims of sovereignty over Okinawa according to Chinese state-run media dating from 2013 and naval incursion into the seas surrounding Okinawa in 2015, we might examine the backdrop of these claims. ![]()
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