Opinion

The Commander and His Boys

By DOUGLAS LUMMIS

In my last column I described a scene on a late night bus in Okinawa. Four Marines were trying to pick up two Okinawan girls. When they failed, and the girls got off the bus without them, the Marines called after them, "Bitches!"

Since then, those boys' commanding officer has gotten himself in bad trouble for a similar case of name-calling. Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston, the C.O. of the Marines on Okinawa and also the C.O. of all U.S. forces here, sent an e-mail to his subordinates in which he called Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine and other government officials "all nuts and a bunch of wimps."

Somebody leaked the letter to the press, and Okinawan public opinion exploded.

There are several things to notice here. First, Hailston, who later apologized, tried at first to defend himself by saying the letter was "private." But this is to confuse "private" with "secret." The letter contained orders to his subordinates and so it was official, public business. The "private" defense doesn't work.

Second, the expression "wimp" is sexist. It means, generally, a person of weak will, but it comes from a British slang expression meaning "woman." That is, it presupposes that "woman" means "weak-willed" and that to say a man is "like a woman" is to insult him. (It's not impossible to call a woman a "wimp," but it sounds odd. The expression is almost always used against men.)

It's interesting to compare this word to the one used by the Marines on the bus. "Bitch" literally means "female dog," but as slang it means a mean-spirited woman. It is not sexist by definition, but it is usually used in a sexist way: a woman is called "bitch" when she opposes a man's will. Thus, in the bus the girls became "bitches" when they refused to be picked up.

This leads to the third point, the similarity between these two cases. The commander and his boys seem to share the assumption that Okinawa is supposed to be a place where the will of the U.S. military is not resisted. To the Marines on the bus, girls who refuse to be picked up cannot be ordinary girls, they must be "bitches."

And Hailston, remember, insulted the government officials because they did nothing to prevent the Prefectural Assembly from passing a resolution calling for a reduction in the U.S. Marine presence in Okinawa. It seems that he thinks that serving U.S. interests is part of their job, and when they don't do that they must be weak-willed: "wimps."

As is well-known, the main cause of the anger against the U.S. military in Okinawa is the many crimes by U.S. troops against Okinawan civilians, especially women. These crimes grow out of the U.S. military culture that 1) is sexist, and 2) traditionally sees Okinawa as a place where U.S. troops ought to be able to do whatever they want. Repeatedly the military commander here has promised to put an end to these crimes by means of education and discipline.

But who is going to educate and discipline the commander?

Shukan ST: March 9, 2001

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