With Baseballs and Bayonets: Military Occupation and American Culture on Okinawa, 1945-1972

Abstract

Between 1945 and 1972 the United States occupied and governed Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu Islands that lie south of mainland Japan. Captured in the final months of the Second World War, Okinawa was placed under the control of a U.S. military administration. The large local population complicated the United States’ use of Okinawa for military purposes. Several justifications were employed through American propaganda and discourse with the aim of convincing the Okinawans that the U.S. military’s presence on their island was both beneficial and necessary. The occupation of Okinawa was an important event in Cold War history, but it has not been treated as such. For nearly three decades the Ryukyu Islands occupied a central position, both materially and within imagination, on the United States’ Cold War frontier. The United States’ use of soft power on Okinawa was not unique in the context of the Cold War or within the context of the American military bases that exist on foreign soil today. However, the scale and the insistency of American attempts to redefine Okinawans as “Ryukyuans”, Okinawa as a “showcase of democracy” and the U.S. military bases constructed there as a “necessary evil” makes the occupation Okinawa a notable instance in the exercise of U.S. global power. This thesis argues that the American administration’s efforts to recreate Okinawan identity and to instil American-style democracy directly influenced the protest movement that led to Okinawa’s reversion back to Japan in 1972. Over the twenty-seven year period of United States control the importance of American-Okinawan friendship and the celebration of American culture was consistently extolled. However, this rhetoric was contradicted by the social, cultural and material impact of the U.S. military on local communities as well as the American administration’s use of extraterritorial powers over Okinawa. In defiance of the United States and its use of soft power to control the island and its population, Okinawans reaffirmed their collective identity.