Okinawa
When United States servicemen bound for Asia are assigned to Okinawa, there are usually no complaints. If at close acquaintance it isn’t quite the South Seas paradise one imagined, and if now the Teahouse-of-the-August-Moon atmosphere has worn thin, still almost any other Asian assignment is more desirable than Vietnam.
Naha, the capital, has traffic jams, exhaust fumes, and television commercials in color for deodorant, detergent, and dermatological deficiencies. The landscape is scarred by housing developments and, of course, the massive installations of the United States military. Though there is a colorful Japanese cultural tradition, there are no swaying girls on the beaches. And though the climate is subtropical, rainfall is heavy and Okinawa does lie in the path of typhoons.
Rumble
This summer the island’s leisurely mood has been disrupted by the rumble and roar of anti-American demonstrations. Outside Kadena, the big American B-52 base, and the other 116 American military installations on the sixty-five-mile-long island, thousands of Okinawans have rallied, demanding that the “Yankees Go Home” and take away with them all their aircraft and other military equipment.
Snake-dancing students, complete with helmets, visors, and neckerchiefs masking their faces, after the fashion of Japan’s Zengakuren students, have brandished their fists at the bases and sometimes gone beyond, trying to tug down Kadena’s entry gates. In one badly handled and much-publicized incident, American MP’s forced back the crowds at bayonet point and pricked one of the island’s leading politicians.
Anti-American feeling was heightened by the discovery this summer that the United States had been secretly storing lethal nerve gas on Okinawa. Though the Pentagon moved swiftly to ship the gas out of Okinawa, furor over the American action continued. Not long after the incident, a frenzied Japanese protesting the American presence on Okinawa attacked Secretary of State William P. Rogers at Tokyo’s Haneda airport.
If all this is unhappy enough for the one million people who live on Okinawa, it is somber business indeed for Japan and the United States. Okinawa’s late is the single most serious issue between the two Countries. It is an issue which will develop in intensity, until climaxed by the visit to Washington in November of Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato.
Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyus, a chain of 73 islands straggling some 400 miles from the southernmost point of Japan to Formosa. Like many island peoples, the Ryukyuans are a mixture of several races. But they have been long under the influence of Japan, an influence formalized since 1871, when the Japanese incorporated the islands as part of their own state.
The Ryukyus became a prefecture of Japan, the poorest in the Japanese empire. In 1945, Okinawa was the bloody site of the last major battle in the Pacific. American Marines stormed the island. After more than two months of heavy fighting, the remaining Japanese defenders surrendered, their commanders committing ritual suicide. More than 12,000 American soldiers died in the assault on Okinawa. Many thousand more Okinawan civilians were killed in the fighting. Naha was virtually flattened.
At war’s end, the United States took over the administration of Okinawa and the other islands in the Ryukyu chain. The peace treaty with Japan enshrined American rights to “all and any powers of administration, legislation and jurisdiction” over the territory. For almost twenty-five years, Okinawa has been a virtual colony of the United States. Though there is a local government of the Ryukyu Islands, with a Ryukyuan chief executive, it is superseded by the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu islands, headed by an American high commissioner, always an Army general.
At the peace negotiations in 1945, John Foster Dulles declared that Japan retained “residual sovereignty” over the Ryukyus. This is a concept which has been reaffirmed by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Each agreed that administrative authority would ultimately revert to Japan. At the last meeting, in 1967, between Japanese and American leaders, President Johnson indicated that an agreement should be reached “within a few years on a date satisfactory for the reversion of these islands [to Japan].”
This year Premier Sato means to collect on that promise at his meeting with President Nixon. For domestic political reasons, Sato badly needs to take home a triumph on the Okinawa question. Elections are coming, and the dominant issue raised by the left-wing opposition will be Japan’s security treaty with the United States, which comes up for reconsideration next year. The opposition wants it scrapped. Premier Sato wants it continued. Okinawa, with its B-52’s roaring out to bomb Vietnam, and its stockpile of American nuclear weapons, has become an emotional symbol of the whole controversy, and of the American military presence in Japan. Therefore Sato wants to get the Okinawa issue settled, and satisfactorily, before election time. A delayed decision, or one politically exploitable by the opposition, could cause his government serious trouble.
The present Japanese government is friendly toward the United States, and Washington has an obvious interest in its survival. Those who see the matter in this light argue that the United States’s relationship with the most prosperous and economically advanced nation in Asia should be paramount in American policy toward the area. Whatever the advantages of Okinawa, goes the argument, they can hardly weigh against this immensely more important factor. It is a widely held view that the November meeting between Premier Sato and President Nixon will result in an announcement that Okinawa will revert to Japan, probably by 1972.
“Fire brigade”
There are complications, not the least of which is that the United States is involved in a war in Vietnam, and the bases on Okinawa play an important role in that war. By any standard, the spread of these American bases and installations on Okinawa is staggering. At cost, they ran around $900 million to construct. To replace them today would cost between two and three billion dollars.
The Army uses Okinawa as a huge logistical supply base for Asia, but 70 percent of its work is involved with Vietnam. Shells, weapons, trucks, food, furniture, and all the impedimenta of war are stored on Okinawa in warehouses and dumps which extend for miles. When needed, they are shipped out to the battlefront. Vehicle parks are littered with hundreds of trucks and jeeps brought back from Vietnam for repair. On this logistical work alone, the Army keeps 11,000 men busy, moving 300,000 tons of equipment a month.
The Marines use Okinawa as a base and a training ground. When the first 8000 Marines were pulled out of Vietnam at President Nixon’s order, it was to Okinawa they were shipped. In normal times, the Pentagon keeps two thirds of a Marine division, and a third of an airborne division, stationed on Okinawa as a “fire brigade” for brush-fire wars in Asia.
For the Navy, Okinawa is a useful supply and repair base, and a port of call for nuclear submarines. But it is perhaps to the Air Force that Okinawa is presently most valuable. All kinds of aircraft operate from the Naha and Kadena air bases, from jet fighters to cargo-carrying C-130’s and C-141’s, KC-135 tankers, and high-flying, high-performance reconnaissance aircraft which the military decline to discuss.
From Kadena’s twelve-thousandfoot-long runways, the eight-engined 13-52’s of the Strategic Air Command have been roaring out daily to targets in Vietnam, and possibly Laos. Officially, military spokesmen decline to discuss their missions. But the great black shark-fin tails of the aircraft are clearly visible from the base perimeter, and between eighteen and twenty of them have been operating out of Kadena since early last year. The Kadena base is so busy that 1,600.000 gallons of fuel are pumped into its aircraft every day.
Military spokesmen refuse to “confirm or deny” that nuclear bombs for the B-52’s, and nuclear missiles, are on Okinawa. Unofficially there is little dispute that nuclear bombs are stored deep in Okinawa’s arsenal, and that nuclear-tipped missiles are targeted on Communist China and North Korea. The present high commissioner, Lieutenant General James B. Lampert, is himself not without nuclear experience. With a master’s degree in engineering from MIT, he was executive officer in the Manhattan Project, and helped set up the Army’s Special Weapons Project to coordinate the military application of atomic energy. He has also headed the joint Army-Atomic Energy Commission nuclear power program, and carried out a number of other nuclear power projects for military use.
A glance at the map explains the military enthusiasm for Okinawa. It is some 800 miles from Hong Kong, Manila, and Tokyo. It is 400 miles from Formosa and not much more from South Korea. Perhaps most significant of all, Okinawa is just 440 miles—less than an hour’s flying time—from Shanghai, Communist China’s biggest city. According to the military, Okinawa’s Kadena air base is only one of three in Asia from which the B-52’s can operate satisfactorily. The others are U-Tapao in Thailand, and Guam. The long-term availability of bases in Thailand is uncertain, and operating from Guam puts the B-52’s 1400 miles further away from their actual and potential targets.
Because the United States runs Okinawa, it can do more or less what it wants from the island. A former high commissioner, Lieutenant General F. T. Unger, has said: “Nowhere else in Asia does the United States have complete freedom to station, deploy, and support balanced forces equipped with the full range of modern military resources. Only on Okinawa can we station any type of weapon or units. These freedoms give our forces on Okinawa a flexibility unmatched anywhere else in Asia.” Thus Okinawa also plays host to Special Forces units (the Green Berets), psychological warfare detachments, special operations groups of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a lot of hush-hush radio, communications, and intelligence specialists.
The official figure for U.S. service personnel on the island is 45,000. With all this military activity goes the familiar, camp-following sprawl around the bases. More than 60,000 Okinawans work directly for the American military. Thousands more get their livelihood from the Americans, working in tailor shops, curio stores, bars, and nightclubs like the “Cuddle Club,” the “Topper,” the “B-Mi-Gest,” and scores more. For miles, Okinawa’s “Hiway One” is cluttered with establishments catering exclusively to the military: car wash stands, hi-fi shops, rental businesses, steam bath and massage parlors, auto and insurance salesmen’s offices, and an astonishing variety of pawnshops urging GI’s to pawn everything, including their cars.
Military spending is a substantial factor in the Okinawan economy, running to some $260 million a year. According to Keisho Sunagawa, Director of Trade and Industry in the Ryukyuan government, this is 35 percent of the national income and 60 percent of the Ryukyus’ foreign exchange. Without this infusion, the Ryukyus would have some serious economic problems. Last year, for instance, Ryukyuans cheerfully imported $373 million worth of goods, against exports of only $87 million, mainly sugar and pineapples.
While it might seem folly to cut off the income from the bases, publicly the Ryukyuan government is urging just that. In elections last November the voters installed as chief executive Mr. Chobyo Yara, boss of the militant Okinawa Teachers’ Association. With strong leftwing backing, Yara ran on a platform calling for immediate reversion of the Ryukyus to Japan, and immediate withdrawal of American bases. If the Americans acceded to these demands, the 60,000 Okinawans who presently work on the bases would be out of jobs. But when the Air Force earlier this year announced it was phasing out a mere 141 Okinawan employees, many base workers went on strike. Nevertheless, they also take part in rallies demanding withdrawal of the bases.
If this seems even more Orientally ambiguous than usual, it is. For the record, officials in Yara’s administration talk bravely of generating new income to supplant that from the bases. Trade and Industry Director Sunagawa wants to encourage industry, tourism, and livestock breeding. He even has an ambitious plan to set up an educational institution patterned after the East-West Centre in Honolulu. He says Gulf and Esso are planning refineries and that Hilton will run a hotel once a local contractor finds the capital to build it. But all this demands capital and is far from realization. One independent survey by experts recently concluded that even if the bases remain, Okinawa must make drastic efforts to increase exports and attract new revenue.
Homeland level
American, Japanese, and Ryukyuan officials are trying to iron out some of the assorted administrative problems that will accompany the territory’s reversion to Japanese rule. American currency at present in use must be replaced by Japanese. There must be integration with Japan of government budgeting systems, oldage pensions, and social security.
The educational system in the Ryukyus must be coordinated with that of Japan. Examination and licensing of doctors, dentists, nurses, and other professional workers must be brought up to Japanese standards. In some outlying areas of the Ryukyus, the qualifications of such workers do not always meet Japanese requirements. But there seems no questioning the desire of the Ryukyuans to return to Japanese rule.
On the American side there is no great argument about reversion. Though it is unlikely to be “immediate,”Premier Sato can expect to get a reasonably early date for reversion when he talks with President Nixon in Washington. The problem revolves around that word “unconditional.” For the Americans the issue is not whether to retain Okinawa, but whether to keep the bases, and on what terms. If the bases are to stay, the Ryukyuan government and the Japanese political left say there must be no deal or special conditions for them. The bases must operate at what they call “homeland level,” or in other words be reduced to the status of American bases in Japan itself. This would preclude stationing nuclear weapons on Okinawa. It would limit movement of equipment and personnel in and out of the bases. It would make their use for combat operations conditional upon pre-agreement by Japan. And of course, the critics also want the B-52’s moved out, and a halt to visits by American nuclear submarines.
At the topmost levels, the American military establishment appears ready to make some compromises and accept some limitation on military operations out of Okinawa. It is understood the United States is ready to remove nuclear weapons from Okinawa. Tactical nuclear weapons could be deployed to Formosa and South Korea. Both countries would probably welcome them. Both have been taking a tough line on Okinawa, arguing that their security would be diminished by an American withdrawal, and that they want a voice in the settlement. The nuclear stockpile could be moved back to Guam, or new base sites under evaluation in Micronesia. Beyond this, the United States has an expanding array of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines. Even the B-52’s are not considered permanently based on Okinawa. They have in fact only been flying missions against Vietnam from Okinawa since early last year. For the Air Force it is a convenient arrangement, because otherwise most of the B-52’s would have to operate from Guam, adding 3000 miles to the round-trip Vietnam flight.
Nuclear weapons and B-52’s aside, there remains the question of a Japanese veto over the use to which the bases might be put, the amount of men and type of equipment moved through them, and the operations conducted from them. Some military men argue that Okinawa’s present strength is the diversity of weapons available. This, they say, gives the United States a variety of options to use varying degrees of force depending on the situation. If Okinawa were reduced to a repair base and training ground, they argue, it would have no significance and the United States should pull its military out.
For President Nixon, the timing of the crunch over Okinawa is hardly ideal. On the one hand, he is pressed to make a deal which will support Premier Sato’s government at home. But on the other hand, the Vietnam War is far from over, and he is under military pressure for continued use of the bases on Okinawa. That military pressure will continue after the war.