Essay

A place like that

By Douglas Lummis

A couple of years ago we took a young Japanese woman, who was visiting Okinawa from Tokyo, for a drive. When we passed an area where homes were crowded up against the fence of a U.S. military base, she said, "I could never live in a place like that.

"That's an interesting remark. Its first message was: What a sensitive and peace-loving person am I; I couldn't bear to live next to a military base. Beneath that was a half-conscious contempt for the people who do live there. It also meant that, despite Yokota Airbase and all the other military facilities in and around Tokyo, she believed that she was not living in "a place like that." This woman was an active defender of Article 9, the peace clause of the Japanese Constitution.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a man who had participated in a demonstration protesting a U.S.-Japan joint military exercise in Hokkaido. As he and the others were shouting their opinions at the U.S. Marines, he heard a voice from behind him shouting in English, "Go back to Okinawa!"

And more than once I have heard opponents of the Liberal Democratic Party's proposed new Constitution, which would give the Japanese government full military powers, say, "If it passes, Japan will become like Okinawa!" Again, this is interesting. It means that, despite the fact that the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was signed by the government of Japan and allows U.S. bases in Japan, Japan is still not "like Okinawa."

People everywhere use all sorts of tricks to conceal from themselves the situation they are in. In Japan, there are many people, including avid supporters of the country's Peace Constitution, who persuade themselves that under that Constitution Japan is a peaceful country. To maintain that illusion, they think as little as possible about the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and the U.S. bases that it brings to Japan. And one way to do that is to think of the base problem as "the Okinawa problem." Peaceful Japan vs. poor, base-littered Okinawa — as if Okinawa were not a prefecture of Japan.

It's true that 75 percent of all the U.S. bases in Japan are in Okinawa, which is a terrible injustice, and, as Okinawans will tell you, a form of discrimination. But the other 25 percent — Sasebo, Iwakuni, Yokosuka, Yokota, etc. — occupy large spaces, are a considerable military force, and are equally an infringement on national sovereignty and dignity.

But interestingly, students are not sent on school excursions to go and look at them.

Every year 5,000,000 (yes, I mean 5,000,000) tourists come from Yamato Japan to Okinawa. Many take "peace tours," visiting World War II memorials and looking over the fences into the U.S. bases, while "peace guides" try earnestly to convey to them the Okinawan experience. But the number of Yamato supporters of the Okinawan anti-base movement does not increase at the rate of 5,000,000 per year. So what do these tourists learn? I think the answer was neatly expressed by the woman I first mentioned: "I couldn't live in a place like that!" Thus is perpetuated the myth that they don't.

Shukan ST: Dec. 8, 2006

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