The Best Course Available: A Personal Account of the Secret U.S.-Japan Okinawa Reversion Negotiations

Editor’s Introduction

History, according to the conventional wisdom, rarely if ever repeats itself. However, in the case of Okinawa and its significance in the wider U.S.–Japan post-1945 relationship, perhaps the most striking feature has been the recurrence of common themes and familiar points of tension in a complex interplay between national governments and among politicians, bureaucrats, and public opinions within both Japan and the United States. In September 1995 the rape of a twelve-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl by three U.S. Marines suddenly and shockingly provoked a crisis in relations between Washington and Tokyo. Virtually instantaneously, the event cast into relief a long-standing and festering issue that has periodically strained political and security ties in a partnership famously characterized by U.S. politicians (most notably former senator and ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield) as America’s “most important bilateral relationship bar none.” Since the early years of the Cold War, Japan had been a vital outpost in America’s strategic forward deployment in the western Pacific. The rise to power of the Chinese communists in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 had quickly impressed on U.S. policymakers, civilian and uniformed officials alike, the critical importance of mainEditor ’s Introduction taining a credible military presence on the edge of the Asian continent. Japan, given its geographical position, its past record of economic growth and prosperity, and its valuable human capital, was the natural location for the stationing of considerable numbers of American military personnel, drawn from all four branches of the U.S. armed services— army, air force, navy, and marines. Within Japan, Okinawa acquired a particular significance to U.S. military planners, largely again because of geography. Relatively close to the Asian mainland but also situated near strategically important U.S. allies such as Taiwan and the vital shipping routes of southeast Asia, Okinawa was identified early on as the keystone in the arch of America’s Pacific basing strategy. As early as 1948, George Kennan, the head of America’s Policy Planning Staff, had identified the island as vital to America’s long-term security interests in the region—a point of view that remained essentially unchallenged throughout the Cold War. The offshore island crises over Taiwan in the 1950s and most notably America’s deepening involvement in the Vietnam conflict in the 1960s ensured that Okinawa would remain critically important throughout the postwar period. After 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of the Cold War, it might have been thought that the island territories that had been under U.S. control since the end of World War II (see below) would diminish in importance for U.S. military planners. Yet new strategic priorities, together with traditional threats to regional stability, continued to justify a large-scale U.S. military presence in Okinawa. North Korea remained an unpredictable and dangerous “rogue state,” China continued to build up its military capabilities in a fashion judged by some as potentially threatening, and high-profile territorial as well as energy and resource-related disputes in the region all necessitated a continuing U.S. military presence in East Asia in conjunction with America’s main and indispensable local partner, Japan. There are currently some forty-seven thousand U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan, twentyeight thousand of whom are concentrated in Okinawa. The presence of such a large number of foreign troops in a densely populated country and the attendant need for the physical infrastructure and resources linked to the American bases have inevitably generated tensions with local communities. In Okinawa, the issue is as much one of fairness (as well as disagreement between central and local government) as it is a debate over conflicting post–Cold War strategic priorities. For many Okinawans, the particularly heavy burden shouldered by the territories in hosting U.S. forces reflects a general pattern of neglect if not conscious 2 Editor’s Introduction discrimination imposed on Okinawa by the central government in Tokyo. Throughout their history of association and incorporation in the Japanese nation, dating from the mid-nineteenth century, Okinawans have had an ambivalent relationship with the rest of Japan. After 1945, cultural and linguistic differences and the bitter memory of arguably disproportionate suffering experienced by Okinawans in the closing days of the Pacific War, when the territory and its civilian population bore the brunt of U.S. marine attacks...