Discussion Post Week 7

Considering that nearly half the local population of Okinawa was killed during the Battle of Okinawa, it is very easy to imagine the distrust the Isahama women farmers had for the government, Japanese or American. Seeing the same government that massacred your neighbors now try and assign a price to the land you have historically lived on must have felt extremely insulting at the very least. I think symbolically maybe the women felt that they had to take a stand or face the same humiliation that they faced when Okinawa was occupied by the Allies during the war. Namely, having their land taken advantage of and treated as a resource with no regard for the livelihoods of the people actually there.

From reading the article, I think the US officials managing Okinawa at the time may have understood the trauma of the women and their subsequent protest, as simply rejection of the US sovereignty or ‘anti-base’ as the article called it. I also think they may have feared it to be a form of emerging communism, although this one I am not too confident claiming. I think some new traumas the women might have felt were the egregiously low appraisal of their land and the fact the United States would occupy much of the arable land in Okinawa, leaving the locals with the leftover scarps.