This chapter argues that Okinawa, while being one of the most critical pillars of Japan’s national security, has been heavily influenced by leftist forces and local media narratives that politically exploit victimhood and anti-base sentiment.
Drawing on Masayuki Takayama’s essay, it criticizes the historical parallels with Korea, the strategic importance of U.S. bases, postwar development policies in Okinawa, and the designs of outside forces seeking to weaken Japan.

2019-04-28
In the last war, the U.S. military occupied Okinawa with its full strength as a strategic base in the Pacific.
Armacost compared its importance to a “jewel.”
Japan defended it desperately.
It launched special attacks, and even sent out the battleship Yamato.

The fact that Okinawa is ruled by two newspapers that can without exaggeration be called the very embodiment of leftist infantilism, and the offspring of the Asahi Shimbun and the Akahata.
The fact that they seek not merely to divide Japan, but to undermine the very foundations of Japan’s national security and weaken Japan to the point of near defenselessness.
The fact that Okinawa is an ideal target for the schemes of China and the Korean Peninsula.
Okinawa is.
For both Japan and those forces, the single most important strategic point for both defense and attack.
That is why the U.S. military, that is to say GHQ, placed bases in Okinawa.
And in order to ease that burden, Japan has continued to pour into Okinawa, out of all forty-seven prefectures, extraordinary levels of local allocation tax grants.
As a result, with its lifelines and infrastructure fully developed, Okinawa has become.
A prefecture that can without exaggeration be called the most disaster-resilient in Japan.
To ignore all this and simply say, “Poor Okinawa…”
Such pseudo-moralism siding with the Onaga faction.
Can without exaggeration be called a grave criminal act against Japan.

The following is from the latest book by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
As for Okinawa, it is no exaggeration whatsoever to say that one cannot speak of anything concerning it without first reading this essay of his.

◎Why Okinawa Resembles South Korea.

The countries surrounding China, whenever they felt like it, crossed the Great Wall and ravaged China.
The Xiongnu threatened the Han, made them offer food in tribute, and in addition gained Wang Zhaojun, one of the Four Great Beauties.
The Xianbei seized the Central Plain and built the Tang dynasty.
Tibet attacked and sacked Chang’an, the capital of that Tang dynasty.
The Mongols came to conquer, and some time later the Manchus also invaded, both ruling the Chinese as slaves.
If you ask the Chinese, they will say that Japan too took their territory and even dominated them culturally.
That is because seventy-five percent of the words used in their constitution are “kanji” coined by Japan.
Although each of those surrounding “barbarian tribes of the four quarters and the eight directions” had the experience of ruling China, the Korean Confucian scholar Im Baekho lamented, “Only our Korea, though the closest, could not rule the Central Plain. What a pitiful country.”
There is a reason.
From the moment Korea appeared in history, it continued to be ruled by Japan and China.
Ordinary countries wage war and obtain slaves, but Korea had never won, so it enslaved its own people.
As a result, “a self-sufficient slave state, strange beyond measure, was created” (Kō Bun’yū).
Slaves accounted for forty percent of the population.
Women also lived in conditions much like slaves, and until Japanese imperial rule they were not even given names, living under the strange custom of exposing both breasts when they gave birth to a boy.
The reputation of this “forsaken country,” with neither resources nor talent, was not very good.
“The people are incompetent, vain, and hate effort” (Goncharov).
Thus the mountains and fields were left to waste.
That made the country still poorer.
Though “lacking the ability to reform itself” (Isabella Bird), it is proud to the point of arrogance, and its jealousy is said to be the strongest in the world.
When Japan, which it had arbitrarily assumed to be beneath it, encouraged it toward independence, Korea clung to China and created the cause of the Sino-Japanese War.
When Japan defeated the Qing and made Korea independent, Korea next invited in Russia.
Together with jealousy, this nation’s innate hanger-on mentality continued to promote instability in the region.
That in turn forced Japan into war with Russia as well.
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Alfred Mahan regarding Japan across the Pacific, saying that he felt it to be “a grave threat.”
When he saw that Japan had won a great victory over Russia in the Battle of Tsushima, one week later he announced that he would take charge of the peace settlement between Japan and Russia.
So that “threatening Japan” would not grow any stronger, he imposed the Treaty of Portsmouth, which granted not a single sen in reparations nor the cession of even an inch of territory from Russia.
He also came up with the idea of “foisting Korea upon Japan” (C. Shaw, External Pressure That Destroyed Korean Independence).
If Japan were made to shoulder such a troublesome country, it would be thrown into confusion and exhaustion.
And in fact, that is exactly what happened.
Even though Japan poured in twenty percent of its national budget to modernize it, rather than showing gratitude, Korea instead spoke of “a thousand years of resentment” and continues even now to grate on the nerves of the Japanese people.

Okinawa resembles Korea.
The former Ryukyu Kingdom, like North Korea, imposed a communist-style dictatorship, oppressed the people, and devastated the farmland.
Unable to bear it any longer, the Shimazu domain intervened, abolished the misgovernment, and the people rejoiced.
After the Meiji Restoration, when Lord Nabeshima was appointed governor, the Ryukyu king, fearing the loss of his position, appealed to the Qing for help and also petitioned Britain directly.
He had done, thirty years earlier, the same thing that the Yi Dynasty of Korea later did in directly appealing to the Hague Peace Conference.
In the last war, the U.S. military occupied Okinawa with its full strength as a strategic base in the Pacific.
Armacost compared its importance to a “jewel.”
Japan defended it desperately.
It launched special attacks, and even sent out the battleship Yamato.
Yet Okinawa complains bitterly that it was “used as a sacrificial stone.”
Its victim consciousness is worse than Korea’s so-called “seven deprivations.”
Paul Caraway, the third U.S. High Commissioner of the Ryukyu Islands, supported finance and improved the medical environment, saying that he would make Okinawa “a high-income region envied even by mainland Japan.”
Yet the banks selected only relatives and local bosses as recipients of loans.
All the good medicines were illicitly diverted to mainland Japan.
America’s goodwill produced nothing but privilege and corruption.
It closely resembles Korea, incompetent, vain, and unwilling to make effort.
And yet, with all that, it loudly calls for expanded autonomy.
Caraway, losing patience, said, “Okinawan autonomy is a myth.”
While preoccupied with Okinawa, America suddenly realized that Japan had recovered enough to host the Olympics.
Seeing the return of “threatening Japan,” the United States remembered Theodore Roosevelt.
That’s right.
Let us foist the troublesome burden onto Japan.
Japan will be bewildered, and, just as when Korea was foisted upon it, it will be exhausted.
Onaga, resembling Park Geun-hye, is responding well to America’s expectations.
(Issue dated August 13–20, 2015)