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"It was called the land of the "happy immortals" centuries ago
when the people traded far a field and occupied a delicate position between
other powers, first paying tribute to China, later coming under the suzerainty of
Japan, and finally seeing archives and historical monuments obliterated during WWII
in the battle of Okinawa."
"Through all those centuries of accepting conditions they were powerless to
alter, Ryukyuans (Okinawans) have learned
to face an unhappy, even a desperate situation with a smile, and with an
adroitness that has gone a long way to disarm their invaders." "And as
the invaders have come and gone, Ryukyuans have never forgotten their ancient
folk songs and dances, their own customs, foods and religion."
Unless we know of
Okinawa
and its beleaguered people, we know precious little of World War
II. They were war’s classic victims, caught between the rock and
the hard place, between the Japanese and the
Americans. It was a disastrous collision of three disparate
cultures - American, Japanese and Okinawan.
There is a chronicle of natural disasters, especially crop-ruining and
house-flattening typhoons, along with regular decimation by drought, plague and
famine in
Okinawa
's recorded past. "the whole
fragile, minuscule structure survived throughout the centuries at bare
subsistence level," a Western historian summarized.
Soetsu Yanagi, the " father" of Japanese folk art, visited
Okinawa
in 1939 and extolled
Okinawa
's simplicity. "Naturalness and freedom from the corruption of the
machine... this tiny chain of islands adrift in the ocean has had a
singular and independent cultural history of a thousand years," ..........
"Okinawans possess a richness of artistic inheritance in arts and
crafts such as to put cultural values above the economic." Yangi concluded.
Shortly after their annexation in 1879, The Okinawans were forced to speak
Japanese by the Japanese government. However, Okinawa, the rebellious child, has retained its distinct language, culture, and
philosophy.
Further:
"Presently, Japanese is the
official language, the language taught in the schools, heard on the radio and on
television and in movie houses, printed in newspapers, and used by official
government agencies, but Ryukyuans still feel more at home in the familiar
dialect of their own language. Consequently, most Okinawans are now bilingual,
and some who have had extensive dealings with the occupying American forces have
become trilingual. As a result of contemporary methods of mass
communications, it is unfortunately to be expected that within the next few generations the local tongue; "Hogan", will have given way
altogether to standard Japanese.
On
Dec. 7th 1941
... with the attack on
Pearl Harbor
.... "
Japan
was to embark upon her dream, or her nightmare, of armed conquest, an adventure
in which Okinawans were destined to play their unavoidable and tragic
role." Having fought
China
and won, then having fought
Russia
and won, Japan could foresee no limit to her future imperial boundaries, at least upon
the Asian mainland and in the islands of the Pacific. The Battle of
Okinawa was A GREAT HUMAN TRAGEDY.
"On
October 10, 1944
, American carrier-based planes made more than a thousand strikes over the city
of Naha
and the airfields and docks. The city was ninety percent destroyed....... The
onslaught began in earnest the following March. "
"Long term preparations were
initiated, and soon the military establishment had edged it's way into control
of civilian life, Ryukyuans, who had frequently felt themselves treated as
second-class subjects, of the emperor, were now commanded to prepare to give
their lives for the greater glory of his empire."
"We will never permit a single enemy to step on the Emperor's soil.
The enemy has landed on the Philippines
and some South Pacific islands but we will make
Okinawa
the last decisive battleground and destroy him. Defending
Okinawa
means defending the land of the Emperor... Know that you will accept your fate
in order to obey the Emperor's will." A Japanese colonel to Okinawan
conscripts .
"During the first months of the
war, the news was invigorating: Japanese troops were victorious where ever they
went, and Ryukyuans shared in the general elation. They felt no
premonition of impending disaster but, as the war wore on, as American troops
began retaking island after island. As the energy moved ever closer
toward
Japan
herself, there came a growing feeling of unease and apprehension, a feeling
that was not abated when Okinawans saw high Japanese officials on the island
send their families back home. "
"Every available Ryukyuan was conscripted: age limits were extended at both
ends of the scale; those who were held unfit for military duty were drafted into
a work force. Food grew scarce. Old women worked hard at building
bomb shelters that all too soon were seen to be wholly useless."
"In the midst of final military preparations, the bewildered ordinary
citizens were left to make ready for the crisis as best they could.
Families hurried to the countryside to conceal books and clothes and other goods
in the family tombs or in pits dug in the ravines beyond the suburban
settlements." George Kerr
"The fate of the astounding number of Okinawan civilians caught in
the maelstrom of the war demonstrates this tragically....." George Feifer
A decisive struggle on which, for a time, the Japanese staked EVERYTHING... the
last major campaign of WWII and the largest land-sea-air engagement in
history. "There have been larger land battles, more protracted air
campaigns, BUT Okinawa
was the largest combined operation; a 'no quarter' struggle fought on, under
and over the sea and land." ...Hanson W. Baldwin military historian
"The natural fortress of Okinawa
was the home islands' [Japan-Kyushu] only protection from invasion, and its
defense was the key to whether Japan
would survive as an independent nation...." George Feifer
"The Ryukyus were not
Kyushu
or Shikoku
or Honshu:
Okinawa
retained importance (for the Japanese) only as a
potential field of battle, a distant boarder area in which the oncoming enemy
could be checked, pinned down, and ultimately destroyed." George Kerr
"The Japanese knew it was the last engagement before the invasion of the
Japanese homeland [mainland] ...Just 350 miles from mainland Japan and 500 from China, the " piece of offshore rope," as the name meant, was well
positioned to cut off
Japan
from her occupied territories on the Asian continent while serving as an
"unsinkable aircraft carrier" for attacks on the home of islands....
and therefore a fine staging area for the American invasion, planned for late
1945."
"Okinawa, Japan's last important stand in the war, became virtually synonymous with
kamikaze....... and because those tenets of Japanese culture with its emphasis
on honor and its horror of losing face, their extraordinary intensity,
insularity and zealous capacity to endure pain in order to serve their nation
helps to explain how the Okinawan campaign was allowed to become A GREAT HUMAN
TRAGEDY....a culturally damaging and devastating disaster."
A turning point in modern history; it was the first operation on Japanese soil
and the last battle before the start of the Atomic Age. Measured by sheer
suffering as well as by devastation of national life, the battle of
Okinawa
was a greater tragedy... and had the war progressed to the Japanese mainland,
the next battleground after Okinawa, the damage would have been incomparable.
The Okinawan campaign ended on
June 21, 1945
after 82 days of battle. "The immense cost of capturing the island,
in human and material terms, did undoubtedly have a considerable influence on
the decision to use atomic weapons." Ian Gow.
The reason being that : "If the defense of the Japanese home islands,
with their immensely greater area and enormously greater population, was
going to take on the same character
of the defense of
Okinawa, where and when and at what cost was it going to end?" James Jones
On the first day of April more than
thirteen hundred vessels landed on the beaches of
Okinawa
, and before nightfall over sixty thousand troops had landed virtually
unopposed." "The opposition came later- the battle for
Okinawa
had begun, and before it ended June 21 the conquered island lay in ruins."
In three appalling months during which the Japanese lost the fight but refused
to surrender , the death toll amounted to 23,000 Americans, 91,000 Japanese, and
200,000 OKINAWAN civilians, more than the losses of
Hiroshima
and
Nagasaki
combined! Conventional explosives
on the island caused far greater damage to Okinawan tradition, culture, and
well-being than the atomic bombs did to the Japanese culture.
As for the "casualties":
"Those who survived were for a time hardly aware of having done so. They
had no houses to live in, no food to eat, no doctors to cleanse their wounds or
treat their battle induced illnesses. Never had they seen so much lice,
lice that infested their matted hair and the seams of their unwashed rags of
clothing; with horror they watched maggots crawling in and out of their
putrefying wounds." "...for Okinawans trying to survive, the
blood soaked mud was their own fields and animal pens; it was home.
Subsequently: On
September 7, 1945
Japanese forces in the Ryukyus surrendered at Kadena air base (location later
renamed
Stilwell
Park
). On
March 6, 1946
Fleet Adm.
Chester
W. Nimitz, chief of naval operations, proposed that Army assume administrative
responsibility for
Ryukyu Islands
. On
July 1, 1946
, the U.S. Army assumed administrative responsibility for
Okinawa
.
On
September 7, 1950
Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson signed
memo establishing
U.S.
goals for a Japanese peace treaty. The two agree that the final document should
"secure to the
United States
exclusive strategic control of the
Ryukyu Islands
."
Finally on
May 15th 1972
,
Okinawa
once again became a Japanese prefecture.
TODAY
Okinawan ( Ryukyuan) people: ....
exceptionally peaceful islanders... the
bitterness has disappeared despite the grave damage to many bodies and minds,
the majority remain largely as they were before the battle, easy going and
amiable. They endured far more than the Japanese and the Americans, yet
remain as gentle and hospitable as before the battle."
NOTE: I have borrowed liberally from previous publications:
TENNOZAN by George Feifer
Battle
of
Okinawa
by George Kerr
Okinawa
by Clayton L. Hogg
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