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Japanese Solidarity with U.S.-Occupied Okinawa in the 1950s: Reflections on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Reversion of Okinawa to Japan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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The year 2022 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Okinawa's reversion to Japan. This article examines the Japan Civil Liberties Union's 1955 solidarity activism on occupied Okinawa, which generated Japanese civil society's first awakening to the “Okinawa problem.” The Asahi Shinbun's front-page article on the organization's publication “Human Rights Problems in Okinawa” and its follow-up coverage triggered public debate influencing Japan/U.S. official policies on Okinawa. Drawing on archival evidence, the article illuminates the contested nature of Japanese activism caught between Cold War Asia and decolonizing Asia. It argues that the 1955 activist movement shaped the subsequent trajectory of Japanese engagement with the “Okinawa problem.”
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1 Nakajima Shingo, “Hatoyama Ichirō: ‘Yoshida no subete hantai’ o motomete,” in Sengo nihon no shushō no gaikō shisō, ed. Masuda Hiroshi (Kyoto: Minerva shobō, 2016), 79-108; Shinoda Tomohito, Seiken kōtai to sengo nihon gaikō (Tokyo: Shikura shobō, 2018), 13-23
2 Watanabe Akio, Sengo nihon no seiji to gaikō: Okinawa o meguru seiji katē (Tokyo: Fukumura shuppan, 1970), 44-45.
3 Oguma Eiji, “Nihonjin” no kyōkai: Okinawa, Ainu, Taiwan, Chōsenshihai kara fukki undo made (Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 1998), 514-515. See also Koseki Shōichi, Toyoshita Narahiko, Okinawa: Kenpō naki sengo (Tokyo: Misuzu shobō, 2018), 16-20, 110-115.
4 Arasaki Moriteru, “Sengo Okinawa shinbun hōdō hensenshi,” Shinbun kenkyū no. 215 (June 1969): 23-24.
5 Sakurazawa Makoto, “Sengo shoki ni okeru hondo gawa no Okinawa kan nitsuite: Sōgō zasshi, fujin zasshi, Keizai zasshi o jirei to shite,” Rekishi kenkyū no. 54 (March 2017): 33-56.
6 Oguma, “Nihonjin” no kyōkai, 522-525.
7 Oguma Eiji, “Postwar Japanese Intellectuals' Changing Perspectives on ‘Asia’ and Modernity,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 5, Issue. 2, February 2, 2007.
8 Arasaki Moriteru, Sengo Okinawa shi (Tokyo: Nihon hyōron sha, 1976), 139-142.
9 For my analysis of the Yumiko-chan Incident, see Fumi Inoue, “Chapter 3: ‘Extraterritoriality’ in Occupied Okinawa” in “The Politics of Extraterritoriality in Post-Occupation Japan and U.S.-Occupied Okinawa, 1952-1972,” Ph.D. dissertation (Boston College, 2021), 172-242. See also my forthcoming article: Fumi Inoue, “Rethinking the Power of the Voiceless: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the and the Birth of Popular Human Rights Activism in Occupied Okinawa,” in The Voiced and Voiceless in Asia, ed. Halina Zawiszová, Martin Lavička (Olomouc: Palacký University Olomouc, 2022). See also Richard A. Serrano and Jon Mitchell, “Okinawa: Race, Military Justice and the Yumiko-chan Incident,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 19, Issue 12, No. 2, November 15, 2021.
10 Inoue, “Chapter 3: ‘Extraterritoriality’ in Occupied Okinawa,” 172-242; Inoue, “Rethinking the Power of the Voiceless: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Birth of Popular Human Rights Activism in Occupied Okinawa.”
11 Watanabe, Sengo nihon no seiji to gaikō, 49, 234-235.
12 Kōno Yasuko, Okinawa henkan o meguru seiji to gaikō: Nichibei kankeishi no bunmyaku (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppan, 1994), 122-127; John Swenson-Wright, Unequal Allies? United States Security and Alliance Policy Toward Japan, 1945 – 1960 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 121-133; Watanabe, Sengo nihon no seiji to gaikō, 43-56.
13 Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).
14 Watanabe, Sengo nihon no seiji to gaikō, 166-190.
15 Ono Yuriko, “Okinawa gunyōchi mondai' ni taisuru hondo gawa no hankyō no kōsatsu: Nihon shakai to ‘Okinawa mondai’ no deai, deai sokonai,” Okinawa bunka kenkyū no. 36 (March 2019): 317-358; Ono Yuriko, “Okinawa henkan kokumin undo kyōgikai ni miru 1950 nendai nakaba no Okinawa henkan undo,” Jinmin no rekishigaku no. 202 (December 2014): 26-36.
16 Frank Gibney, “Okinawa: Forgotten Island,” Time Magazine, November 28, 1949, 26.
17 Watanabe, Sengo nihon no seiji to gaikō, 183-190.
18 Sakurazawa Makoto, Okinawa gendaishi (Tokyo: Chūōkōron sha, 2015), 22-23.
19 Telegram 1556 from W. J. Sebald, Chief, Diplomatic Section to Secretary of State, February 12, 1951, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Office of U.S. Political Advisor, Classified General Records, 1945-1952, Box 60, Folder: 320.1 Peace Treaty, January-March, 1951, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland [hereafter cited as NARA].
20 For a succinct overview of the San Francisco System, see John W. Dower, “The San Francisco System: Past, Present, Future in U.S.-Japan-China Relations サンフランシスコ体制米日中関係の過去、現在、そして未来,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 12, Issue 8, No. 2, February 24, 2014.
21 Treaty of Peace with Japan, signed at the city of San Francisco, the United States of America on September 8, 1951, ratified on November 18, 1951, and entered into force on April, 28, 1952. Treaty of Peace with Japan, signed at the city of San Francisco, the United States of America on September 8, 1951, ratified on November 18, 1951, and entered into force on April, 28, 1952.
22 Kōno, Okinawa henkan o meguru seiji to gaikō, 29-62; Koseki, Toyoshita, Okinawa: Kenpō naki sengo, 42-60.
23 Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the National Security State 1945-1954 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 17
24 The United Nations General Assembly, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on 10 December, 1948.
25 Mary Ann. Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001), 21–34, 205; Moyn, Last Utopia, 76, 125; Oliver Barsalou, “The Cold War and the Rise of An American Conception of Human Rights, 1945-1948,” in Revisiting the Origins of Human Rights, edited by Pamela Slotte and Mila Halme-Toumisaari (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 362–380; Brad Simpson, “Bringing the Non–State Back In: Human Rights and Terrorism since 1945,” in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941, edited by Frank Costigliola and Michael Hogan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 2014, 261–263.
26 Miyagi Taizō, Bandon kaigi to nihon no ajia fukki (Tokyo: Sōshi sha, 2001), 14-32.
27 Inoue, “Chapter 2 The Birth of the American Military Legal Regime of Exception in Post-Occupation, Japan,” in “The Politics of Extraterritoriality in Post-Occupation Japan and U.S.-Occupied Okinawa, 1952-1972,” 81-171.
28 For in-depth analyses of the Sunagawa struggle, see: Jennifer M. Miller, Cold War Democracy: The United States and Japan (Harvard University Press, 2019), Dustin Wright, “From Tokyo to Wounded Knee: Two Afterlives of the Sunagawa Struggle,” The Sixties 10, no. 2 (July 2017): 133–49.
29 The first wave of large-scale Japanese engagement with the “Okinawa problem” came in 1956 when the U.S. Congress approved the military's land policy and the so-called “Price Report” ignited Okinawans' island-wide protest movement. For instance, see: Watanabe, Sengo nihon no seiji to gaikō, 191-219.
30 “The Four Principles” refer to opposition to the military's one-time payment, proper compensation for seizure, compensation for damages. See Sakurazawa, Okinawa gendaishi, 50-51.
31 Otis W. Bell, “Play Fair with Okinawans!,” The Christian Century, January 20, 1954.
32 Roger Baldwin, Chairman, to Shinkichi Unno, Japanese Civil Liberties Union, February 23, 1954, American Civil Liberties Union Records MC #001, 1917, Subject Files, International Civil Liberties, 1946-1977, Box 1173, Folder: 32 Japan Correspondence, 1954-1956, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University.
33 Sakurazawa, “Sengo shoki ni okeru hondo gawa no Okinawa kan nitsuite, 33-56; Watanabe, Sengo nihon no seiji to gaikō, 220-244.
34 Ono, “Okinawa henkan kokumin kyōgikai ni miru 1950 nendai nakaba no Okinawa henkan undō, 28-30.
35 Nakano Yoshio, “Hifun no shima Okinawa no kiroku,” Sokoku naki Okinawa (Tokyo: Jitsugetsu sha, 1954), pages not allocated.
36 Unno Shinkichi, Morikawa Kinjyu, Nijūnen no ayumi: Jiyūjinken kyōkai (Tokyo: Jiyūjinken kyōkai, 1967), 10-13.
37 Alfred C. Oppler, “The Reform of Japan's Legal and Judicial System Under Allied Occupation,” Washington Law Review Vol. 24, No. 3 (August 1949): 1, 8.
38 Hagino Yoshio, Okinawa ni okeru jinken no yokuatsu to hatten (Tokyo: Seibundō, 1973), 45-48.
39 Ushitomi Toshitaka, “Amami oboe gaki,” Hōritsujihō Vol. 26, No. 286 (March 1954): 303-308.
40 Hagino, Okinawa ni okeru jinken no yokuatsu to hatten, 45-48.
41 Ikemiyagushiku (Ikemiyagi) Shūi, Okinawa Jānalisto no kiroku—Okinawa no America (Simul Shuppan: Tokyo, 1971), 176-179.
42 The latest work on this case (Jinmintō jiken), see: Morikawa Yasutaka, Okinawa Jinmintō jiken—Beikoku minseifu gunji hōtei ni tatsu Senaga Kamejirō (Tokyo: Impact shuppan, 2021).
43 United Nations, United Nations Charter, Chapter XI: Declaration Regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories, signed on 26 June 1945, and came into force on 24 October 1945.
44 Iwashita Tadao, “Sono toki watashi wa,” in Okinawa no shōgen: Gekidō no 25 nen shi–ge, ed. Okinawa Times sha (Naha: Okinawa Times sha, 1973), 156-159.
45 Asahi Shinbun, January 13, 1955.
46 Asahi Shinbun, January 15, 1955.
47 Asahi Shinbun, January 14, 1955.
48 Asahi Shinbun, January 15, 1955.
49 Asahi Shinbun, January 17, 1955.
50 Message from Department of the Army Staff Communications Office, CINCFE Tokyo, Japan (J5) to DEPTAR Washington DC for CAMG, CINFO DEPTAR Washington DC, January 16, 1955, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Records of the Office of the Chief of Civil Affairs, Security Classified Correspondence of the Public Affairs Division, 1950-1964, Box 1, File: Allegations of Japanese Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Volume 1, July 1954-May 1955, NARA.
51 Message from Department of the Army Staff Communications Office, CINCFE Tokyo, Japan (J5) to DEPTAR Washington DC for CAMG, CINFO DEPTAR Washington DC, January 16, 1955, NARA.
52 Iwashita Tadao, “Sono toki watashi wa,” 157.
53 Okinawa Times, January 26, 1955.
54 Miyagi, Bandon kaigi to nihon no ajia fukki, 68-77.
55 Ishikawa Masumi, Yamaguchi Jirō, Sengo seijishi, Third edition (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2015), 70-71.
56 Ikemiyagushiku, Okinawa Jānalisto no kiroku, 176-179.
57 Ryukyu Shimpo, February 5, 1955.
58 Telegram 1695 from Allison (Tokyo Embassy) to Secretary of State, January 14, 1955, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Records of the Office of the Chief of Civil Affairs, Security Classified Correspondence of the Public Affairs Division, 1950-1964, Box 1, Folder: Allegations of Japanese Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Volume 1, July 1954-May 1955, NARA.
59 Telegram 1462 from Dulles to Calcutta, New Delhi, Tokyo, Naha, “Joint State-USIA message,” January 21, 1955, RG 84 Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1952-1963, Code Number: 084-02828A-00024-009-093, Okinawa Prefectural Archives [hereafter cited as OPA]; Message from SECY OF STATE WASH DC SGD DULLES to USCONGEN CALCUTTA INDIA, January 21, 1955, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Records of the Office of the Chief of Civil Affairs, Security Classified Correspondence of the Public Affairs Division, 1950-1964, Box 1, Folder: Allegations of Japanese Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Volume 1, July 1954-May 1955, NARA.
60 Message from DEPGOVUSCAR (Deputy Governor of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islnads) to USCONGEN, CALCUTTA, INDIA, FOR USIS, January 25, 1955, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Records of the Office of the Chief of Civil Affairs, Security Classified Correspondence of the Public Affairs Division, 1950-1964, Box 1, Folder: Allegations of Japanese Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Volume 1, July 1954-May 1955, NARA.
61 Kōno, Okinawa henkan o meguru seiji to gaikō, 101-114
62 Operations Coordinating Board, “Memorandum of Meeting: Working Group on NSC 125/2 and NSC 125/6,” January 24, 1955, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1952-1963, Folder 323: Ryukyus, Code Number: 084-02828A-00024-009-080, OPA.
63 Inoue, “Chapter 3: ‘Extraterritoriality in Occupied Okinawa,‘” 172-242; Inoue, “Rethinking the Power of the Voiceless: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Birth of Popular Human Rights Activism in Occupied Okinawa.”
64 Miyagi, Bandon kaigi to nihon no ajia fukki, 74-77.
65 Ushitomi Toshitaka, “Indo to chūgoku no tabi,” Hōritsujihō 27, no.299 (March 1955): 57; Asahi Shinbun, evening edition, January 26, 1955.
66 Ushitomi, “Indo to chūgoku no tabi,” 59.
67 Ushitomi Toshitaka, “Okinawa no jinken mondai,” Chūōkōron no. 800, May 1955, 194.
68 Asahi Shinbun, evening edition, January 26, 1955.
69 Ushitomi, “Okinawa no jinken mondai,” 194.
70 Telegram 1614 to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, February 15, 1955, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1952-1963, Folder 323: Ryukyus, Code Number: 084-02828A-00024-009-065, OPA; Telegram 17 from Realms, February 16, 1955, RG 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Japan, Tokyo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1952-1963, Folder 323: Ryukyus, Code Number: 084-02828A-00024-009-064, OPA.
71 Okinawa Times, January 30, 1955.
72 “Zadankai: Okinawa o meguru hōritsumondai,” Hōritsujihō 27, no. 3 (March 1955): 54, 56-57.
73 “Zadankai: Okinawa o meguru hōritsumondai,” 54-59.
74 DA 978464 from CAMG for J-5 to CINCFE TOKYO JAPAN, February 2, 19, 1955, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Records of the Office of the Chief of Civil Affairs, Security Classified Correspondence of the Public Affairs Division, 1950-1964, Box 1, Folder: Allegations of Japanese Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Volume 1, July 1954-May 1955, NARA.
75 “Allegations of Japan Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Chorological Record,” undated, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Records of the Office of the Chief of Civil Affairs, Security Classified Correspondence of the Public Affairs Division, 1950-1964, Box 1, Folder: Allegations of Japanese Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Volume 1, July 1954-May 1955, NARA.
76 “Allegations of Japan Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Chorological Record,” undated, NARA.
77 Letter from Ernest Angell (Chairman, Board of Directors) and Roger Nash Baldwin, International Civil Liberties Committee, American Civil Liberties Union, to Major General William F. Marquat, March 24, 1955, RG 319 Records of the Army Staff, Records of the Office of the Chief of Civil Affairs, Security Classified Correspondence of the Public Affairs Division, 1950-1964, Box 1, Folder: Allegations of Japanese Civil Liberties Union Against U.S. Administration of Okinawa, Volume 1, July 1954-May 1955, NARA.
78 Inoue, “Chapter 3: ‘Extraterritoriality’ in Occupied Okinawa,” 172-242; Inoue, “Rethinking the Power of the Voiceless: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Birth of Popular Human Rights Activism in Occupied Okinawa.”
79 Okinawa Times, January 27, 1955.
80 Okinawa Times, April 19, 1955.
81 Inoue, “Chapter 3: ‘Extraterritoriality’ in Occupied Okinawa,” 172-242; Inoue, “Rethinking the Power of the Voiceless: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Birth of Popular Human Rights Activism in Occupied Okinawa.”
82 Michiba Chikanobu, Senryō to heiwa: ‘Sengo’ toiu keiken (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2005), 380.
83 Ushitomi, “Okinawa no jinken mondai,” 194.
84 Jinken shinbun, March 1, 1962.
85 Watanabe Osamu, “Anpo tōsō no sengo hoshu seiji eno kokuin,” Rekishi hyōron no. 723 (July 2010): 4-23. For recent English scholarship on the Anpo, see: Nick Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2018).
86 For a more detailed analysis of Okinawans' reactions to Baldwin's activism and visit to Okinawa, see Inoue, “Chapter 5 From the Anpo to the Koza Rebellion: An Overture to Okinawa's Entry into the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement,” in “The Politics of Extraterritoriality in Post-Occupation Japan and U.S.-Occupied Okinawa, 1952-1972,” Ph.D. dissertation (Boston College, 2021), 300-355.
87 Sakurazawa, Okinawa gendaishi, 86-88.
88 For empirical analyses of and further discussions on 1960s-1970s transnational activism forged by Okinawans, Japanese, and Americans in Okinawa, see Ōno Mitsuaki, Okinawa tōsō no jidai 1960/70: Bundan o norikoeru sisō to jissen (Kyoto: Jinbun shoin, 2014); Yuichiro Onishi, Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa (New York and London: New York University Press, 2008); Wesley Iwao Ueunten, “Rising Up from a Sea of Discontent: The 1970 Koza Uprising in U.S.-Occupied Okinawa,” in Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific, ed. Setsu Shigematsu, Keith L. Camacho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 91-124.
89 See Inoue, “Chapter 5 From the Anpo to the Koza Rebellion: An Overture to Okinawa's Entry into the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement,” in “The Politics of Extraterritoriality in Post-Occupation Japan and U.S.-Occupied Okinawa, 1952-1972,” Ph.D. dissertation (Boston College, 2021), 300-355.
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