Starting in the early 1950s, the Japanese flag hi no maru was a cherished symbol in Okinawa of the movement for an end to the postwar U.S. military occupation and reversion to Japanese sovereignty. ...The flag represented an appeal for liberation from U.S. military rule that dragged on for twenty years (1945-1972) after mainland Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952; and, for elimination, or at least reduction, of the overwhelming size and number of American bases on the island. However, the 1969 Okinawa Reversion Agreement between the U.S. and Japanese governments broke both of the Japanese government's promises that, after reversion, Okinawa would have no nuclear weapons, and that U.S. bases would be reduced to mainland levels. The grossly disproportionate U.S. military remains to this day, and a "secret agreement" permits the United States to bring back nuclear weapons. Today many in Okinawa associate hi no maru with this discriminatory policy which imposes 74 percent of the total U.S. military presence in Japan on this small island prefecture comprising 0.2 percent of the nation's land area. For historians, the flag also represents atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese soldiers during the Pacific War and the Japanese government's continuing reluctance to acknowledge them.
This paper examines political, social, and ideological forces that contributed to what author Norma Field has termed 'compulsory suicides' and other acts of self-sacrifice by civilians during the ...Battle of Okinawa. It also discusses how those forces affected later responses to these excruciatingly traumatic events. During the battle in the spring of 1945, Imperial Japanese Army officers told civilians that, if they were captured, the invading Americans would torture them for information, rape the women, then massacre everyone. As US forces closed in, Japanese soldiers distributed hand grenades and rounded up local residents at 'assembly points,' ordering these civilians to kill themselves rather than become prisoners-of-war. Published in 2001, the program guide for the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum explains, 'These deaths must be viewed in the context of years of militaristic education which exhorted people to serve the nation by "dying for the emperor". Okinawans cite the role of emperor-centred indoctrination for unquestioning self-sacrifice not only in compulsory group suicides, but also in many other deaths among the more than 120,000 local residents who lost their lives in the only Japanese prefecture subjected to ground fighting in the Pacific War. Adapted from the source document.
Reviews of Books Kristiansen, Kristian; Anthony, David W.; Holcombe, Charles ...
International history review,
12/2008, Letnik:
30, Številka:
4
Journal Article
PDF
