Resistant Islands

Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States

By (author) Gavan McCormack, Satoko Oka Norimatsu

Publication date:

08 March 2018

Length of book:

350 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781538115572

Now in a thoroughly updated edition, Resistant Islands offers the first comprehensive overview of Okinawan history from earliest times to the present, focusing especially on the recent period of colonization by Japan, its disastrous fate during World War II, and its current status as a glorified US military base. The base is a hot-button issue in Japan and has become more widely known in the wake of Japan’s 2011 natural disasters and the US military role in emergency relief. Okinawa rejects the base-dominated role allocated it by the US and Japanese governments under which priority attaches to its military functions, as a kind of stationary aircraft carrier. The result has been to throw US-Japan relations into crisis, bringing down one prime minister who tried to stop construction of yet another base on the island and threatening the incumbent if he is unable to deliver Okinawan approval of the new base. Okinawa thus has become a template for reassessing the troubled US-Japan relationship—indeed, the geopolitics of the US empire of bases in the Pacific.

Preface to the Second Edition
Notes on Names
Chronology
Chapter 1: Ryukyu/Okinawa: From Disposal to Resistance
Chapter 2: War, Memory, and Commemoration
Chapter 3: Japan’s American Embrace and the “Partnership” for Peace and Prosperity
Chapter 4: Okinawa: Separation and Reversion
Chapter 5: Henoko: The Unwanted Base
Chapter 6: The Hatoyama Revolt
Chapter 7: Post–Cold War: Elections and Democracy
Chapter 8: Environment: The “Nonassessment”
Chapter 9: “Deepening” the Alliance: The Kan Agenda
Chapter 10: “Deepening” the Alliance: Washington Agendas
Chapter 11: Senkaku/Diaoyu: Okinawa as Militarized Outpost or as Bridge of Nations?
Chapter 12: Turning History Around: History as Lived Experience
Chapter 13: Prospect
Chapter 14: The All-Okinawa Movement since 2013
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors

In recent years, the main source of friction in the US–Japanese defense relationship has been local opposition to the basing of U.S. marines on the Japanese island of Okinawa. . . . McCormack and Norimatsu lay bare the resentment’s deeper historical roots. . . . The larger frame for McCormack and Norimatsu’s analysis is their sharply worded indictment of the US–Japanese relationship, which they believe is constructed not so much to defend Japan as to serve a US forward deployment strategy aimed at Southeast Asia and China.