Okinawa Is a Japanese Island Caught Between the U.S. and China

Asia Pacific|Okinawa, a Small Island Caught Between Big Powers

Keiko Itokazu can still remember the day in 1965 when the parachute didn’t open. It was attached to a jeep trailer that was dropped from an airplane, along with U.S. paratroopers training near her home in Okinawa. The plummeting object missed her but hit a nearby house, killing a fifth-grade schoolgirl.

Until then, Ms. Itokazu, who was then a high school junior, had never thought much about the huge military presence on the semitropical island, which at that time was under U.S. control. The Americans had been there her whole life, when the United States seized Okinawa from Japan after the end of World War II.

But she knew the dead girl, who was a customer at her family’s small general store. Ever since, she has fiercely opposed the American bases, which remained even after the United States returned Okinawa to Japanese governance in 1972. Now 77, Ms. Itokazu recently joined protests at the front gate of a new U.S. Marine airfield being built on Okinawa’s northern end.

Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Okinawans have long felt caught between the United States and Japan, which sent troops to claim the Okinawan island chain in the 1870s. Prior to that, Okinawa was known as the Kingdom of the Ryukyus, an independent country that paid tribute to both Imperial China and Satsuma, a domain in medieval Japan.

Ever since the Japanese takeover, the islanders have complained of being second-class citizens. This includes during the war, when Japan used Okinawa as a battlefield to stop the Americans from reaching its main islands.