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June 18, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
23:53
Okinawa： America's Japanese Colony
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So I had a conversation with Adam Baldwin the other day, and he asked me to name an American colony.
Now, I wasn't really expecting the question, and put on the spot I said Japan.
And that seems kind of silly at first blush.
But it's not as silly as you think.
No, it would have made more sense to have said Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico, maybe even Hawaii.
But you know what it's like during the heat of the moment.
And I did then go on to correct myself.
No, Japan is a protectorate of the United States.
But that doesn't mean that what I'd said was actually quite as silly as it sounded.
It's more a case of people don't really know what's been going on in certain parts of Japan.
Certain parts of Japan that were given to the United States as a pound of flesh after World War II and have been suffering the consequences ever since.
The small island you can see marked on this map is called Okinawa and it forms the main body of the Okinawa Prefecture and despite its very small size contains 1.3 million people.
Okinawa has the misfortune to be very strategically located.
As you can see it's almost equidistant between Taiwan, the Philippines just off the map, China, South Korea, North Korea and Japan.
This makes it a very desirable place which is why the Americans have got so many military bases there and such a large number of troops.
I'm going to give you a quick concise history of how the Americans came to be in Okinawa and yes I am going to use Wikipedia and yes I do know that that's a cardinal sin but it's just to give you the backdrop as to what's happening.
The Battle of Okinawa happened shortly before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the surrender of the Japanese in World War II.
After the surrender the United States Armed Forces assumed administrative authority in Japan.
The Army and Navy were decommissioned and the US Armed Forces took control of their military bases until the new government could be formed and positioned to re-establish authority.
The Allied forces planned to demilitarise Japan and a new government adopted the Constitution of Japan with a no-armed force clause in 1947.
This was Article 9.
Which outlawed war as a means to settle international disputes involving the state.
In the text the state formally renounces the sovereign right of belligerency and aims at international peace based on justice and order.
This was the moment that Japan became a protectorate of the United States.
Although this didn't become legally binding until 1951 with the Treaty of San Francisco and the Japan-America Security Alliance.
As a result of all this, the Japanese state normally received its sovereignty back, of course, minus the ability to maintain a large standing army or wage war.
And as part of this agreement, the Japanese government quote-unquote requested that US military bases remained in Japan and agreed to provide funds and various interests in the specified Status of Forces Agreement.
I'm sure there was no duress involved, of course.
The US and Japan now operate under the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, which does have some benefits to Japan itself as a whole.
The US's obligations to defend Japan as a protectorate mean that Japan can spend the money it would otherwise spend on its military on domestic affairs, which is undoubtedly one of the causal reasons that the Japanese economy became so powerful.
Now this is all wonderful if you're not in a part of Japan that is hosting large numbers of US troops.
So let's turn our attention to the pound of flesh.
Of the 47,000 service members based in Japan, along with roughly the same number of civilian personnel and family members, the tiny island of Okinawa hosts almost half of them.
Okinawa, which makes up only 0.6% of the nation's landmass, contributes 74.7% of the land for military bases.
So you can see just how concentrated the US forces on Okinawa are.
In fact, given the large number of servicemen living there with their families, Okinawa sounds remarkably like a Roman colonia.
One-third of the area used by US forces is privately owned, most of it having been confiscated by the US military soon after the war.
The US occupied Okinawa until its reversion in 1972, despite Japan's recovery of independence with the 1951 San Francisco Treaty.
This extension of ownership was undoubtedly due to the strategic position of Okinawa, which the US military has dubbed the Keystone of the Pacific due to its proximity to the Taiwan Strait, mainland China and the Korean Peninsula.
Japan is incidentally paying for the privilege of this, to the tune of over $4 billion a year, which is almost 75% of the total costs for the US to station its forces in Japan.
This includes not only the salaries of 25,000 non-military workers, but also the electricity, gas, water and sewage, as well as the cooking and heating fuels at US military housing facilities.
Needless to say, this is a very nice deal for the US government.
They get to have a very large military colony on a very geopolitically important island, and their conquered foes get to pay for almost all of it.
So let's talk about the US military's effect on the island of Okinawa.
So in 1945, the Battle of Okinawa killed approximately one-third of the population of the island.
More than 200,000 soldiers and civilians died.
And numerous credible testimony accounts allege that a large number of rapes were committed by US forces during the battle.
I won't go into too much grisly detail, but links are in the description if you'd like to read about it for yourself.
But academics estimate that up to 10,000 Okinawan women may have been raped during or after the battle.
The result of this is that many of the Okinawan women who were raped gave birth to biracial children, but many of them were immediately killed or left behind out of shame, disgust or fearful trauma.
More often, however, the rape victims underwent crude abortions with the help of village midwives.
However, by 1946, there had been fewer than 10 reported cases of rape in Okinawa.
And George Pfeiffer, author of Tenozan, The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb, explains that he thinks it was partly because of shame and disgrace, partly because Americans were victors and occupiers.
In all, there were probably thousands of incidents, but the victims' silence kept rape another dirty secret of the campaign.
Now, I don't say this because I'm trying to make the American military look bad.
Any military in wartime is capable of these kind of atrocities.
They are ubiquitous.
The problem is that for the people of Okinawa, who were colonized by over 20,000 military personnel and their families.
And this problem has never really gone away.
After the invasion, the US military seized land and property, and then proceeded to frankly screw over thousands of Okinawans.
They then proceeded to build over 100 military bases on a series of islands roughly the size of Los Angeles, but that isn't really the major problem.
The major problem is that they forced the Japanese government to accept the status of forces agreements that gave the US jurisdiction over all American personnel on Japanese soil.
When an American serviceman commits a crime in Japan, he or she is typically dealt with not by the Japanese legal system, but by the US authorities, who usually transferred the offender out of Japan.
As you can imagine, this made the US military presence on Okinawa a protected class, subject to effectively different laws and rules than the general public.
The results are, well, largely what you would expect.
For example, in one six-month period in 1949, US troops killed 29 Okinawans and raped 18 more.
I'm not going to go into any further grisly details, but this carried on year after year without end.
Since Japan regained control of Okinawa back in 1972, there have been thousands of crimes against the naked Okinawans, and these are just the ones that have been recorded.
These are just the ones that we know about.
Of course, this kind of brutality can't go on forever.
In 1995, there was a watershed case, in which two Marines and a sailor kidnapped a 12-year-old girl before brutally beating her, binding her with duct tape, and gang raping her, and they made no effort to cover their tracks.
It was the outcry over this crime that led to a change in the sofa that allowed the Japanese authorities to convict and imprison Americans who rape and murder.
This is why you'll now find headlines like this.
Two US servicemen imprisoned for rape in Japan for a rape they committed last year while on duty at a US military base in Okinawa.
And it's not to say that the US authorities aren't aware of the problem and aren't trying to do something about it.
They are.
After this particular incident, when the allegations were made, there was a curfew imposed on all US servicemen in Japan, not just on the island of Okinawa.
But the thing is, this is all coming a bit too little too late.
The damage has long been done.
I mean, almost half of all female students at one high school reported having, quote, scary experiences with US troops on the way to and from school.
And instead of giving a damn when, for example, a Marine was arrested in 2001 for lifting a young girl's skirt so he could take a photo, the Marine Corps Lieutenant General Earl Halston called the local officials nuts and a bunch of wimps for their outrage to the incident.
The abuse of the Okinawan people is probably the primary concern of the majority of the citizens, but a secondary one is the environmental damage the US bases are doing to the island as well.
Soil, water and coral reefs have all been devastated by toxic chemicals like mercury, PCBs and aviation fuel.
Radioactive depleted uranium shells were fired, releasing carcinogenic particles into the air.
And the irony of this is that the Japanese don't think they need the Americans' help, they think that the Americans are the threat.
The United States has consistently been voted the biggest threat to world peace in international Gallup polls, and the Japanese vote that way as well.
I found an article on this from the Okinawan perspective, and I think it's worth going over a few of the points contained within.
This article was written in 2001 by a native of Okinawa.
The author begins by saying one of the provisions stipulated was that Japan must guarantee the US some stable use of military bases as it did under the occupation.
Without accepting that requirement, Japan could never have won its independence.
So this was a proviso implemented under duress.
They say Japan's independence was also achieved at the cost of Okinawa, which was kept under harsh military administration until the reversion of its administrative rights to Japan in 1972, but even after the reversion, the US bases in Okinawa remained intact.
From Okinawa's perspective, Japan's independence appears only an illusion.
Japan is still a semi-independent or client nation, unable to challenge Uncle Sam's demands.
Hence, Prime Minister Hatamoyama Yukio's wishlist in his inaugural speech showcasing, among other things, the desire to make Japan a partner equal to the US.
While the battle of Okinawa was still going on in the south, the invading US army encroached upon large swathes of land in the central part of the island, where villages, farmlands, schoolyards, and cemeteries existed cheat by jar with each other.
The people who surrendered or survived the battle were herded into concentration camps, mostly in the north.
When they were allowed to return home a few years after the war ended, many people from central Okinawa found their hometowns and villages turned into vast military bases.
Reluctantly, they began to live alongside barbed wire fences, some earning a meagre livelihood by working for the bases.
This is how Ginoan City, which now surrounds the Futonima Air Station, came into being.
In response to the strong demand of the residents of Ginawan for its closure because of the various hazards it poses, Japan and the US struck a deal in 1996 to close the base and return the land when a suitable relocation site was found elsewhere on the island.
This was a plan that was devised in the 1960s but never saw fruition.
The Futenma issue started as part of the 1995 Special Actions Committee in Okinawa initiative to reduce burdens on Okinawa, but 15 years later the burdens remain as heavy, nor will they be lightened if Futenma's operations move to another location within Okinawa.
Moving the base around Okinawa or more broadly in Japan will signal that Tokyo has yet again consented to a permanent military presence or a life of the alliance presence for US forces in Japan.
A transparent cover term for the unlimited occupation of Japan.
This must be prevented by all means.
This is the essential issue concerning Futenma.
As you can see this Okinawan perspective views the US occupation as a colonial force.
They think that this is going to be a permanent situation.
And the request to have the bases moved off of Okinawa were denied due to tactical rather than strategic reasons.
As if Okinawa is still a war zone.
The author then goes on to point out that the 17,000 Marines stationed on Okinawa would be of very little use if any of the great powers around them decided to invade.
Our author ultimately states that the Marines aren't here to defend Japan.
The Okinawan press reports that Camp Hansen and Camp Schwab are both empty shells these days because the occupants were redeployed to Iraq and now to Afghanistan to fight insurgents there.
Obviously the US Marines or the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, to be more specific, are stationed in Okinawa not to defend Japan as Ballyhood, but simply hone their assault skills in preparation for combat elsewhere.
It's a cozy and easy place to train with Tokyo providing prodigious financial aid which Washington demands in the name of host nation support.
I liken it to turf dues exacted by an organized crime syndicate which offers protection from rival gangs.
That the Marines are based in Okinawa not to defend Japan but mainly to strengthen US interests in the Asia Pacific and beyond is widely recognised as the following quotation from globalsecurity.org suggests.
The regiment, 3rd Battalion 6th Marines, continues to support the defence of the nation by maintaining forces in readiness in support of contingency operations and unit deployments to the Mediterranean, Pacific Rim and around the globe.
Washington remained adamant in insisting that Futenma's operations be moved to Hinoko.
In return Washington would relocate to Guam 8,000 Marine personnel, consisting mostly of command elements.
The remaining Marines in Okinawa would then be task force elements such as ground, aviation, logistics and other service support members.
Japan agreed under pressure to fund the 6 billion of the estimated 10 billion for the facilities and infrastructure development costs, another example of extortion.
Upon the completion of the relocation of Futenma's function to Hinoko and the transfer of the Marine Command units to Guam, the US would return six land areas south of Kadena Air Base, including the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.
In trying to sell this package, Washington claims that it reduces Okinawa's burdens tremendously.
Note, however, that these lands will only be returned if their replacements are found somewhere within Okinawa.
Naturally, none of this is being done with the best interests of Okinawa in mind, because the US military considers Guam strategically most important in the Asia-Pacific region, and plans to transform already existing bases there into a colossal military complex by expansion and development.
The US military's strategic thinking is apparently motivated by the rise of China, particularly by China's deployment of new types of long-range missiles.
That the US intends to perpetuate its military presence in Japan is evidenced from its insistence that not only Futenma's operations be transferred to a new high-tech base at Hanoko, but also that other facilities such as the Naha Military Port, whose return was promised years before Futenma, must be relocated within Okinawa.
The 2006 roadmap betrays Washington's real intention by accidentally stating a bilateral framework to conduct a study on a permanent field carrier landing practice facility will be established, with the goal of selecting a permanent site by July 2009 or the earliest possible date thereafter.
And in the concluding remarks, the author says, US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma should be closed down and the land returned to its legitimate owners unconditionally and without delay in accordance with the overwhelming wish of the Okinawan people.
The US has no inherent right to demand a quid pro quo exchange for its return.
Military training can be conducted on the vastness of US soil with impunity and to their satisfaction.
As strategically useful as Okinawa was, its geopolitical importance is waning as the situation changes.
In his book Blowback, Chalmers Johnson says, Beyond the Middle East in Okinawa, where we have 38 US military bases in the midst of 1.3 million civilians, we should start by bringing home the 3rd Marine Division and demobilizing it.
It's understrength, it has no armour, and it is not up to the standards of the domestically based 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions.
It has no deterrent value, but it is, without question, an unwanted burden we force the people of this unlucky island to bear.
There is no particular incentive to bring these troops home.
To remain in control of Okinawa is an important strategic point rather than hand it over to an enemy or to anyone else.
And there is no particular incentive to move because the Japanese are virtually paying for the entire base.
Not only does Okinawa not really hold the strategic value that it did, but the people of Okinawa have had enough.
After the brutality of the initial American conquest and then 70 years of occupation, upon which the depredations of the occupying force has done severe damage to the community, which can be most easily seen in the fact that Okinawa has the highest poverty rate in Japan, at twice the national average of 14.4, at 29.3%.
A third of the population of the island, about 400,000 people, live in abject poverty.
But not only that, despite the high poverty rate, its welfare recipient rate was under 10% of those eligible.
The prefecture's consistently high poverty rate and low welfare recipient rate makes Okinawa one of the poorest areas in Japan, if not the poorest.
The population of Okinawa have been sold out by their government.
The US demanded a pound of flesh.
It needed somewhere strategic to build its bases and occupy with tens of thousands of soldiers.
Okinawa became mainland Japan's sacrificial lamb.
By allowing the US military to build most of its base in Okinawa, Japan enjoys the advantages of US military presence without the disadvantages which occur hundreds of miles south, far from the Japanese mainland.
After 70 years, the Okinawans are sick and tired of the US military presence, and they're doing something about it.
Our visit to Japan comes less than a month after thousands of people rallied on the Japanese island of Okinawa to protest plans to build a new US military base.
Demonstrators surrounded a government building and staged a sit-in inside.
The protests came after local officials agreed to a deal in mid-December that'll relocate one of the existing US bases from a densely populated urban area to a more remote location.
But a decades-long movement of Okinawa residents has opposed the base altogether and pushed for ousting U.S. forces off the island, citing environmental concerns and sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers on local residents.
One protester explained how the presence of the Okinawa base caused a major tragedy in his family.
I've never been able to accept any soldiers to be stationed here.
One of the reasons goes back to 1954 or 1955.
When I was in 8th or 9th grade, I had a five-year-old relative named Yumiko Nagayama.
An American soldier kidnapped her in a jeep in broad daylight.
He took her to a field in Kadena and stripped her naked, then raped her, murdered her, and discarded her body.
As you introduced, there has been a plan to relocate Futenma air station of a Marine Corps to a more remote area of Henoko in Nago City, and people haven't protested for longer than 15 years by now.
The latest development for us to have surprised is that the governor of Okinawa approved the reclamation of the area, the planned area of Henoko in the sea area to build the new facility, like you said, state-of-the-art Marine Corps facilities in this beautiful sea of Okinawa.
Was that a change of position on the governor's part?
Yes and no.
This is his second term.
In his first term, he was clear that the relocation was necessary.
In his second term, this is the end of his second term of four-year term.
The second term, he said the relocation, the new base needs to be built outside Okinawa because people protested so hard for so long and he realized that it's almost impossible.
And that was the will expressed by the people of Okinawa for several years by now.
The Okinawans are taking direct action.
Not only are they engaging in mass protests and have been for decades, the Okinawans have elected a new governor called Takesi Onaga, whose primary campaign goal was the removal of the Futenma air base altogether, and he won in a landslide.
The previous governor, Nakayama, had initially supported the relocation of Futenma, but for some reason he had just changed his mind.
Needless to say, he wasn't re-elected.
The previous governor had approved the move of the Futenma base, which Onaga immediately blocked after his election victory.
He did this by rescinding the drilling permits so the construction workers will be unable to carry out surveys needed before land can be reclaimed for the base's runway.
And this puts him in direct conflict with Japan's government, who remember are completely fine with the Americans doing all this on Okinawa.
A government spokesman says any attempt to delay the project would be very disappointing, adding, we are going to continue with the construction work without delay.
In April of this year, this led to a deadlock over the controversial relocation of the base, with Onaga and the Prime Minister of Japan meeting to discuss the issue.
Onaga told reporters he had asked the prime minister to tell President Obama that the governor of Okinawa and his people are clearly against plans to build the new facility on the semi-tropical islands coast in exchange for the shuttering of the Futenma air base.
And to show their support for the governor's policies, 35,000 or so Okinawans turned out to protest the base.
The people of Okinawa have had enough of the US military occupation.
It's been nothing but detrimental to them in almost every aspect of their lives.
So is Japan a colony of the United States?
No.
They're not a colony of the United States because they have sacrificed Okinawa to be a colony of the United States.
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