Japanese attitudes towards the Okinawa problem : 1945-1965
Creators: name: Watanabe, Akio
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 1966
Subjects: subject: Japan History 1945-1989
subject: Japan Politics and government 1945-
subject: Japan Foreign relations United States
subject: United States Foreign relations Japan
subject: Okinawa-shi (Japan) History

description: Okinawa, which was captured by American forces in the last stages of the Second World War, was after the Japanese surrender placed under the control of the United States. Drastic changes which occurred in the Par Past in the following years, especially the advent of a hostile regime on the Chinese continent and the outbreak of the Korean war, made the United States develop Okinawa into her most important military base to cope with this new situation. Thus under the Japanese Peace Treaty (1952) it was decided that Okinawa together with other islands in the Ryukyu Archipelago should remain under American control. At he Peace Conference, however, the United States explicitly recognized Japan's 'residual sovereignty'. Since then the United States has increasingly made it clear that she will eventually return Okinawa to Japan when the military situation permits. She has, hov/ever, steadfastly rejected all suggestions that she should return the island at an earlier date or that she should in the meantime give Japan a share in any aspect of its administration for fear of losing the freedom of her military forces to act in and from there. Not surprisingly, with the passage of time, the ambiguity of the present and future status of Okinawa has become more and more irritating both to the Japanese people and to Okinawa's 900,000 inhabitants who are asserting themselves as Japanese. While Japan has already succeeded in settling most of the problems resulting from her defeat in the war, Okinawa alone still remains unsolved. This helps to explain the growing; impatience i« recent years among the Japanese over the existing status of Okinawa which appears, in the eyes of many Japanese, little short of an American colony. There seems no doubt about the existence in Japan of a fundamental consensus which calls for the earliest possible return of Okinawa to Japanese control. It is a great paradox, however, that a political issue for which national consensus is easily attained — the return of Okinawa to Japan — is inextricably entangled with another over which the nation's opinion is sharply divided — the defense relations with the United States. A logical consequence of this situation is that a clear-cut solution to the Okinawa problem could not be achieved without entailing a drastic change in the structure of the U.S.-Japan alliance. This poses a difficult question to the Japanese Government. For the Okinawa problem the Japanese public calls for a decisive change while for the defence policy it would react very reluctantly to any proposal for a radical departure from the existing arrangements. The Japanese Government also meets a very strong reluctance on the part of the United States to make substantial concessions regarding the political status of Okinawa. Although the United States recently agreed to extend local autonomy for the Okinawan inhabitants and to promote their social and economic welfare in a closer co-operation with the Japanese Government, it is not very likely that the United States will surrender her rights of control over Okinawa in favour of any kind of joint determination with Japanese authorities in the near future. Unless, however, leaders of the both countries are successful in removing this source of friction within the not too distant future, the relations between the United States and Japan may be seriously affected by Japanese resentment arising out of the Okinawa issue. In this thesis I have tried to shed light on the development of Japanese attitudes towards the Okinawa problem by, in its first part, describing the historical circumstances in which the problem has evolved over the past two decades and by, in the second part, analysing in detail various forces at work in Japan in the formation of Japanese opinion about the problem.