Memorial Day: Cornerstone of a Nuclear-Free Coexistence

It has been 69 years since the de facto end of the Battle of Okinawa. The Battle of Okinawa, which involved many residents, is described as “a collective hell.” However, we mustn’t forget that after the end of battle, a “living hell” has carried on.

While the U.S. military isolated residents in an internment camp, they seized plots of land and constructed military bases. Futenma Air Base is one of them. At that time, without enough food rationed to them, residents collapsed from malnutrition and women were assaulted by U.S. soldiers.

A double hell from the Japanese and U.S. militaries taught locals a harsh lesson: that the troops will not protect residents. However, the U.S. military is still present, and Japan-U.S. military exercises simulating Okinawa as a battleground have been carried out continuously.

A Lesson Gap

Here is a record of the morning of the U.S. military’s arrival on Okinawa Island on April 1:

“The stench of death was suffocating. A downed soldier shot through the helmet, a grandfather with his legs blown off, only a head and body, lying face up staring at the sky. The dead body of a woman, face down, carrying a headless baby and gripping a thistle leaf.”* This is from the unpublished manuscript of Senaga Kamejiro, the politician who protested the U.S. government and Japan-U.S. military alliance.

The Battle of Okinawa was a bloody war of attrition [meant] to keep the U.S. military in Okinawa for even one more day, until preparations for the decisive battle on the mainland were completed. It was the policy of the imperial headquarters to evacuate to the Mabuni and Kiyan regions of southern Okinawa Island, without surrendering at the 32nd Army’s headquarters in Shuri.

The 32nd Army was not deployed to protect the people of Okinawa. So without a standpoint of protecting the people, many of the residents fell victim to the U.S. forces’ overwhelming artillery bombing. Since the end of May, the Japanese military seized food from the southern war front, drove people out of underground bunkers, killed crying children in the bunkers and killed residents regarded as spies, one after another. To prevent leakage of classified information, the Japanese military did not permit residents to be under the protection of the U.S. forces. So a tragedy took place on the battlefield in which parents and children, relatives and fellow acquaintances killed each other by the orders, coercion or inducement of the Japanese military.

On the other hand, for the military, the lesson of the Battle of Okinawa is that in an island battle, the advantage goes to the attacking side rather than the defending side. Currently, under the guise of island defense, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) are trying to increase their military arsenal in the Nansei Islands, with elevated tensions over the Senkaku Islands as a pretext.

According to a JSDF publication, the JSDF’s remote island strategy is to temporarily occupy the islands if they come under enemy attack. Afterward, Japan-U.S. reinforcements would carry out an assault landing and recover the islands. I suppose this means not just uninhabited islands like the Senkakus, but also inhabited islands such as Ishigaki. But within this military strategy, there are no ideas for evacuating local citizens. There is a concern that there will be a return to the Battle of Okinawa that entangled residents.

The Washington System

Through the establishment of the 32nd Army, Okinawa became a target of the U.S. forces. Before then, a full-fledged military force had not been deployed to Okinawa. Why? The key to answering that is in the international order built during World War I.

World War I, which began 100 years ago, was humanity’s first experience with all-out war. After the war, the Washington Conference was held from 1921 to 1922 with the goal of disarmament. As a result, disarmament of islands in the Pacific Ocean was included in the Naval Arms Limitation Treaty that was signed. At that time, Japan and the United States had been in a struggle for supremacy in the same region. By the same treaty, the United States suspended increased military armament in the Philippines and Guam, and Japan froze armaments in Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands and Ogasawara Islands.

Through the new world order known as the Washington system, Okinawa became a nonmilitary base area. However, later on, Japan broke this treaty and established the 32nd Army in Okinawa. The origin of Okinawa’s island base is Japan’s unilateral breaking up of the framework of disarmament.

Trying to intervene in foreign wars in the name of self-defense — the right to collective self-defense — and permitting the use of force overseas is clearly in contradiction to the constitution. It is an insult to Okinawa’s war victims who died bitter deaths. I believe we should cultivate East Asia as a model region for a nuclear-free coexistence with the international community.