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The Emperor's Army and Japan's Discrimination against Okinawa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Satoko Oka Norimatsu
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On April 25, Okinawa's governor Onaga Takeshi held a press conference in response to the start of the construction of retaining walls by the Japanese government in Oura Bay, off the coast of Henoko, on the Northeastern shore of Okinawa Island. Many recognized this as the official launch of construction of the new Marine base. Onaga's angry remark that the state was “throwing ‘sute-ishi’ (riprap) into the ocean without sufficient explanation to Okinawa” invoked a painful association with the Battle of Okinawa, the last land battle in the Pacific theatre of WWII. Between late March and early July 1945, the Japan-U.S. battle took 120,000 lives of the more than 460,000 residents of the island prefecture. Okinawan people subsequently used the term “sute-ishi,” or sacrificial stone, to describe the nature of the battle, meaning that Japan sought to prolong the war at the sacrifice of Okinawans to buy time for the Imperial Headquarters to prepare for the U.S. land invasion of the Japanese mainland. Now, seventy-two years later, “sute-ishi” is used again to describe the assault against the sea, whose bounty provided food for the local residents to survive the deadly battle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 11 , June 2017 , e5
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2017

References

Notes

1 Govenor Onaga's press conference on April 25, 2017, at Okinawa Prefectural Hall. The full text of Onaga's statement is on Page 6 of Okinawa Times, April 26, 2017.

2 “Estimate of the Total Number of the Dead in the Battle of Okinawa,” Sogo Annai, Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum (Naha: Naha Kosoku Insatsu Kabushiki Gaisha, 2001), 90; Masahide Ota, This Was the Battle of Okinawa (Naha: Naha shuppan sha 1981), 2.

3 The Japanese government's estimate of the war dead inside Japan is 700,000, of which 500,000 were civilians and 200,000 military. See here.

4 “教育勅語、教材化に道筋 第 2 次安倍政権で評価相次ぐ,” Asahi Shimbun, April 1, 2017.

5 Satoko Oka Norimatsu, “「日本の軍隊」による性暴力のタブー化こそ問題,” Shukan Kinyobi, March 31, 2017, 31.

6 Regarding this “flaming” over Ishimine Kaori's remarks and right-wing attacks on her, see articles by Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Saito Miki, Takara Sachika, Ishihara Masaie, and others in Ryukyu Shimpo, Okinawa Times, and Shukan Kinyobi reprinted on the blog of Peace Philosophy Centre, from March 21 to April 5, 2017.

7 “Emperor of Japan's Opinion Concerning the Future of the Ryukyu Islands,” W. J. Sebald's memo to General MacArthur dated 20 September 1947, declassified on 29 March 1979.

8 Tamaki Ai, “第二の加害者は本土,” Okinawa Times, June 20, 2017, 3.

9 For example, 83.2 percent of respondents across Japan answered that they believe the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty is important to the peace and security of Japan, in the NHK poll to mark the 45th anniversary of Okinawa's reversion to Japan. See here.

10 “復帰 4 5年 県民世論調査,” Ryukyu Shimpo, May 9, 2017, 2.

11 “基地負担 強い不満 「沖縄差別」 5 4% 増加,” Okinawa Times, May 12, 2017, 2.