This article critiques NHK’s portrayal of Okinawa, arguing that aerial footage of Ginowan City—filled with solid reinforced-concrete buildings—contradicts the “Okinawa is pitiful” narrative pushed by Japan’s mainstream media. The essay contends that Okinawa prospered for decades from U.S. base-related economic benefits, unlike the devastated mainland after WWII. It further warns that biased reporting by NHK and certain academics aligns with Chinese and Korean strategic aims to divide Japan. The author condemns viewers who accept such narratives uncritically, calling them “information weaklings,” and urges awareness of media manipulation.

Ginowan City’s actual condition is that of a town lined with magnificent and solid reinforced-concrete buildings—better than rural areas on the mainland.
2022/05/30

This is a chapter originally published on March 6, 2019, titled:
“Those who watch the programs they make without the slightest doubt, thinking ‘Okinawa is pitiful,’ ‘the government is to blame,’ while being utterly ignorant and unaware that they themselves are nothing more than information-weak people.”
I am reissuing it with corrections to paragraphs and punctuation.

In general, wrongdoers always reveal their true colors—they hide their heads but expose their tails.
Those who watched NHK’s “watch9” two nights ago—the biased reporting and information manipulation about Okinawa—must remember that NHK repeatedly showed aerial footage of Ginowan City.
Those very images betrayed the truth of Okinawa that even the biased reporting of “watch9” could not conceal.

When the great tsunami of the Tohoku Earthquake struck my hometown of Yuriage, the only buildings that remained without collapse or being washed away were the reinforced-concrete structures.
The aerial images of Ginowan City that NHK repeatedly broadcast showed a townscape where magnificent, sturdy reinforced-concrete buildings stood in neat rows—far more solid than rural areas on the Japanese mainland.

That Okinawa is a key point in Japan’s national defense strategy is something even the ferocious Battle of Okinawa need not remind us of; the U.S. military, which never forgets military strategy for even a moment, understood this perfectly.
Therefore, GHQ built U.S. bases in Okinawa immediately after occupying Japan.
At the same time, while 127 mainland Japanese cities were reduced to scorched earth by indiscriminate bombing and incendiaries—and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs, plunging Japan overnight into the ranks of the world’s poorest nations—
Okinawa prospered from base-related special procurement.
And the people of Okinawa welcomed the U.S. bases and pursued coexistence and mutual prosperity.

Nevertheless, those truly foolish and malicious individuals—agents of China and the Korean Peninsula—who have infiltrated NHK and now dominate its news division, repeatedly had some man who calls himself a professor at Okinawa International University (it is laughable to call such a person a professor; Japan is paying him with tax money!) insist over and over that the views expressed were “induced by the U.S. military,” that “he speaks guided by the U.S. military.”

Japan’s national broadcaster was using the people’s airwaves to conduct a campaign of Okinawa-division.
Ultimately, the aim of their reporting was to push the narrative toward “Okinawan independence,” in full accordance with the intentions of China and Korea.

When I used to subscribe to Newsweek Japanese edition, it once ran a special on Okinawa.
In it, Okinawan residents said:
“When we see rural areas of the mainland on television, we realize we live far better. We feel sorry that massive subsidies are poured into Okinawa at the expense of infrastructure development in the mainland countryside.”

These villains infesting NHK—the true traitors.
The people who watch their programs without the slightest doubt, thinking “Okinawa is pitiful,” “the government is bad”—people utterly unstudied, unaware that they themselves are mere information weaklings.
The women who watch only television and believe they are virtuous citizens and champions of justice.
Those who subscribe to Asahi, Mainichi, Tokyo, Chunichi, and watch only NHK’s “watch9.”
Shame on you!