The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 16 | Number 1 | Apr 20, 2015

Vietnam: Okinawa's Forgotten War ヴェトナム、あるいは沖縄の

忘れられた戦争

Jon Mitchell

As the world remembers this 40th anniversary,

all too often forgotten is the role of the
Pentagon’s most important launch-pad for this
failed war: Okinawa.

The Vietnam War wrought massive changes on

the lives of the island’s 900,000 residents.
Many of Okinawa’s current problems date back
to this era and, if the history of the Vietnam
War there continues to be ignored, the island’s
wounds - in many ways as raw as those in
southeast Asia and the U.S. - will continue to
fester long into the future.

***

Between 1945 and 1972, Okinawa was under

American governance or, as former U.S.
ambassador to Tokyo, Edwin O. Reischauer,
stated in 1969, the island was “a colony of one
million Japanese.”2 Few U.S. officials - then or
since - have referred so bluntly to the island’s
geopolitical status, however his assessment
was entirely accurate. On Okinawa, the U.S.
authorities kept tight control on the media,
Evacuation of CIA personnel, Saigon, 29 they denied passports to those deemed critical
April 1975. of Washington and Okinawans had no power to
North Vietnamese tank entering elect the person who governed them - the U.S.
Presidential Palace, Saigon, 30 April 1975. High Commissioner.3

On 30 April 1975, North Vietnamese troops and With the island protected by neither the
their supporters entered Saigon. constitutions of the U.S. or Japan, the Pentagon
exploited this limbo by transforming Okinawa
Their arrival ended three decades of conflict - into its Keystone of the Pacific. Throughout the
including 10 years of direct U.S. intervention - 1950s and ’60s, it stockpiled an unprecedented
which left as many as 3 million dead and arsenal of chemical weapons and atomic
countless others suffering from the legacy of warheads there - and it built more than 80
PTSD, unexploded ordnance and Agent installations, which convinced many residents
Orange.1 that Okinawa didn’t just have bases, the entire

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island was a base.4 million flights making it one of the busiest

airports on the planet; starting in 1968, B-52’s
The Pentagon had used Okinawa to stage the also took off from the base to bomb Southeast
1950-53 Korean War but it was during the Asia. In Okinawa’s capital, Naha Port processed
Vietnam War that its military build-up truly 75% of all supplies for the conflict - including
bore fruit. The first combat troops to be fuel, food and ammunition. Moreover, the port
dispatched to South Vietnam - including handled surplus and damaged materiel from
members of the 3rd Marine Division - came the war zone. A section of nearby Makiminato
from Okinawa and, over the following years, Service Area, for example, earned the
hundreds of thousands more Americans nickname “The Bone Yard”, due to its piles of
transited through Okinawa. Tragically, many of jeeps and trucks - many covered in blood and
those killed in action also passed back through bullet holes - which had arrived for repair from
the island, which hosted some of the military’s 5
Vietnam. So vital was the island for the
mortuary services. Pentagon that, in 1965, the Commander of U.S.
Pacific Forces declared, “Without Okinawa, we
couldn’t continue fighting the Vietnam war.”6

The Pentagon’s war machine required a

massive workforce; during the Vietnam War,
approximately 50,000 Okinawans were
employed by the U.S. military.7

Kadena Air Base, early 1960s.

US soldiers en route to Vietnam arriving
from Hawaii at Kadena, February 1962.

Kadena Air Base served as the Pentagon’s key

transport hub. During the war, it racked up one

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Kichi de hataraku (Working on the bases).

In 2013, The Okinawa Times published a book

titled Kichi de hataraku (Working on the bases)
in which it compiled interviews with 83 of these
former workers. What comes across most
poignantly in many of these accounts is how
deeply embedded Okinawans were in the war
effort. At ammunition depots, they packed
explosives and processed faulty munitions; at
Makiminato, they helped to print Vietnamese
propaganda flyers for the U.S. Army’s 7th
Psychological Operations Group. In the
Northern Training Area (NTA), Okinawans
were hired for a dollar a day to act the enemy Koza, Okinawa, 1970.
in war games played out in mock Vietnamese
villages. Okinawans were also sent to South
Vietnam to drive buses within U.S. bases; No one better captures Okinawans’ complex
others worked - and were killed - aboard emotions to the Vietnam War than
American ships transporting supplies in the photographer Ishikawa Bunyo. Born in Naha in
waters of Vietnam.8 1938, Ishikawa photographed the war between
1965 and 1968 - and today his images of the
Due to Okinawa’s gray-zone status, base
workers tasked with hazardous tasks were not
conflict are some of the most famous in Japan.10
safeguarded by American or Japanese labour
regulations. These employees handled toxic
Sheltering from a fire-fight, an American
chemicals without special training, protective adviser talks into a radio through his bloodied
equipment or warnings of the dangers. As a mouth. Young GI’s surround an enemy prisoner
result, hundreds fell ill from exposure to - looking as scared and confused as their
substances including insecticides, hexavalent captive. A soldier with an M-60 machine gun
chromium and asbestos.9 lies in a field of grass reading a book - a rare
moment of tranquility in the chaos of combat.
During the Vietnam War, Okinawa’s economic Ishikawa’s affinity with his subjects comes
situation was bleak so many residents
across in many of his images of young
appreciated base jobs, which were relatively
Americans.
stable and well-paid. Yet for many Okinawans,
such labour was accompanied by a sense of
“Because these U.S. soldiers had been
complicity in the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Southeast Asians. This distress
stationed on Okinawa, I felt a connection with
was magnified by memories of the spring 1945 them. In Vietnam, we used to talk about
Battle of Okinawa in which almost one third of Okinawa’s neighbourhoods and the bars where
the island’s civilian population had been we drank. We had a lot in common,” explains
slaughtered. Ishikawa. 11

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“Seeing U.S. troops heading to the war gave

me very complicated feelings. On one hand, I
didn’t want them to go and kill Vietnamese
people but at the same time, I wanted them to
come back safely to Okinawa,” Ishikawa says.
However, when some of these soldiers did
return to Okinawa, they brought the violence of
the war back with them.

One of Ishikawa’s most powerful images is

called Otto ga korosareta (My husband was
killed), which shows the widow of a taxi driver
murdered by a GI in October 1971.

Between 1965 and 1975, at least 17 Okinawans

were killed by Americans - and many more
were robbed, raped or assaulted. Most at risk
were those whose work brought them into daily
contact with U.S. service members - including
maids, taxi drivers and bar workers.12

As well as such violence, Okinawans bore the

Ishikawa Bunyo brunt of military accidents - including hit-and-
run auto accidnets and aircraft crashes. For
instance, in June 1965, a trailer dropped by
So strong was Ishikawa’s feelings for the GI’s parachute from a plane over Yomitan crushed
that, after the war, he traveled to the Vietnam an 11-year old girl to death and in November
War Memorial in Washington to search for the 1967, a 4-year old girl was run over and killed
names of those he’d photographed among the by a military crane.
granite lists of the dead.
During the Vietnam War, many Okinawans
During the war, many Okinawans shared threw their support behind the reversion
Ishikawa’s compassion towards U.S. troops. movement which sought to return their island
Despite residents’ anger with the Pentagon for to Japanese rule of law. Especially, they hoped
burdening their island with so many bases, that Japan’s peace constitution would reduce
many people befriended - and married - service the number of U.S. bases on Okinawa and
members. In particular, there was solidarity for curtail their usage for the conflict in Southeast
those who had been involuntarily-conscripted Asia.
and African-Americans who, many Okinawans
felt, suffered discrimination from the U.S.
authorities which mirrored their own.

Equally powerful as Ishikawa’s images of

combat in Vietnam are those which he took on
Okinawa during the war. He photographed the
shot-up trucks returned via Naha Port, war
games in the NTA and fresh recruits preparing
to go to Vietnam.

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However, after being infiltrated, they began

hiding the Americans in Japanese people’s
homes.”

In 1971, Lummis traveled to Okinawa where he

helped to interpret during meetings between
members of the Okinawan base worker unions
and GI black power groups. “The war
crystallized many people’s feelings against the
United States,” explains Lummis.

Although the majority of mainland Japanese

opposed the war, unlike on Okinawa, the
conflict did not directly affect their lives. As
Protest against US base, before Kadena Air political scientist Royama Michio explained in
Base, March 1971. his famous analogy, “Vietnam was a big fire,
but it was a fire on the other side of the
river.”15
On mainland Japan - as on Okinawa - the
majority of people were against the war.
Surveys revealed overwhelming opposition to
the conflict and, in the late 1960s, millions of
mainlanders participated in demonstrations to
express their anger at the war. Beheiren (Japan
Peace for Vietnam Committee), the umbrella
movement of loosely-affiliated anti-war groups,
included such well-known luminaries as artist
Okamoto Taro and novelist Oe Kenzaburo, who
today remains active in the anti-nuclear
13
movement.

Douglas Lummis, a former U.S. marine, became

involved in the anti-war movement in Tokyo in
the late 1960s. According to Lummis, what won
Beheiren most attention was the help it
afforded U.S. deserters. 14

“Beheiren used to hand out flyers near the U.S.

bases around Tokyo and Kanagawa
encouraging GIs to desert. The first four
deserters that Beheiren handled… were at first
hidden in a love hotel - one of the few places
the police couldn’t search.”

According to Lummis, Beheiren put the

deserters on the “underground railroad” - first
traveling by ferry to Hokkaido and then across
to the USSR and eventually to Sweden. Richard Nixon and Sato Eisaku, 1972.

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In contrast, the Japanese government tacitly part of Kadena Air Base.19

backed the war - in 1965 PM Sato Eisaku
declared his “moral support” for the conflict - These ongoing problems might explain why the
and Japanese corporations, who provided base- Pentagon’s website to commemorate the 50th
building materials and supplies for U.S. troops, anniversary of the Vietnam War -
pocketed around $1 billion a year from the vietnamwar50th.com - contains zero references
fighting.16 to Okinawa. Likewise a request for comment
from USMC on Okinawa resulted in a stock
Against this backdrop, as the Vietnam War response which made no mention of the island.
20
raged from the ‘60s into the ‘70s, the Japanese
government entered into negotiations with the
U.S. for the return of Okinawa. At the time, Such reluctance to recognise the role of
Tokyo pledged to island residents that Okinawa in the Vietnam war is best understood
reversion would take place under hondo nami - by a visit to two of the installations central to
i.e. the number of U.S. bases on Okinawa would Pentagon war efforts: the Northern Training
17 Area (NTA), where Okinawans were paid a
be reduced to a similar level as the mainland.
dollar a day for war games, and Camp Schwab,
Okinawa finally reverted to Japanese control on former storage site for nuclear warheads and,
May 15 1972. But Okinawans soon realized the according to many seriously-ill U.S. veterans,
promise had been broken. Agent Orange.21

“Although reversion looked like a favour by the Despite overwhelming public opposition, today
U.S., actually it was a great deal for the there are plans to expand both bases.
Pentagon - it could keep using the bases
without needing to pay for them,” says Sato Alongside the NTA, for the past eight years,
Manabu, professor of political science at local residents have been demonstrating
Okinawa International University. “From then against the construction of Pentagon helipads
on, Japanese taxpayers footed the bill while the which, they argue, threaten the safety of their
U.S. could continue to use them for the war community. Meanwhile near Camp Schwab,
with impunity.” Okinawans have been engaged in an 18-year
struggle against a new U.S. base. This base
Today, many Okinawans still feel they are plan was conceived by Washington in the
suffering the consequences of that Vietnam mid-1960s, but later it was shelved due to the
War era betrayal. The island still hosts more cost; now it has been resurrected as a mega-
than half of U.S. forces in Japan but their base replete with twin 1800m runways and a
economic contribution to the island has deep-sea port - all built atop one of Japan’s
plummeted from more than 20% during the war sole-surviving coral reefs.22
to less than 5%, according to official
prefectural estimates. While curfews and
cultural awareness training have dramatically
reduced the number of military crimes
committed against residents (for example 2014
saw a record low of reported crimes), 18 last
year Okinawans were given a frightening
reminder of the Vietnam War when barrels
containing suspected military defoliants were
uncovered from land which had previously been

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“Today many young people don’t know there

even was a war in Vietnam - and those that do
remember haven’t grasped that the U.S. lost
that war - and almost every war since. The
Japanese government insists that Japan should
stick with the U.S. for its defense - but we need
to rethink what power really is.”

“Ishikawa Bunyo Photography Exhibit ‘The

Vietnam War and Okinawa’s Bases,’”
Okinawa Times (in Japanese).
Camp Schwab
***

Unlike the previous bases used in the Vietnam This is a revised and expanded article which
War, these new projects are being constructed originally appeared in The Japan Times on
by Tokyo with Japanese tax money; further March 7 under the title, “Battle scars: Okinawa
proof, according to many Okinawans, that the and the Vietnam War”
hondo nami promise of reversion was indeed (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/07/
betrayed. national/history/forgotten-history-okinawa-
vietnam-war/).
Today many of those opposing the new bases
can recall firsthand how Okinawa was used Welsh journalist, Jon Mitchell
during the Vietnam War - and they vow not to (http://www.jonmitchellinjapan.com/), is the
let their island be exploited in such a way author of Tsuiseki: Okinawa no Karehazai
again. (http://www.amazon.co.jp/追跡・沖縄の枯れ葉
剤-ジョン・ミッチェ
One of these is Shimabukuro Fumiko - one of ル/dp/4874985564)(Chasing Agent Orange on
the participants in the current sit-in outside Okinawa) (Koubunken 2014) and a visiting
Camp Schwab. During the 1960s, Shimabukuro researcher at the International Peace Research
worked as a maid on the installation - but the Institute of Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo.
Pentagon’s aggression in Southeast Asia filled Mitchell is an Asia-Pacific Journal contributing
her with such a sense of complicity that she editor.
quit.
Related Articles
Photographer Ishikawa is an equally adamant
opponent of the planned installation. Jon Mitchell, “Military Contamination on
Okinawa: PCBs and Agent Orange at Kadena
“If the new base is built, it will be used for Air Base”
future wars. Nothing has really changed since (https://apjjf.org/-Jon-Mitchell/4097/article.html
the Vietnam War - Okinawa is still being used )
by the U.S. military,” says Ishikawa.
Jon Mitchell, “Okinawa - The Pentagon’s Toxic
Former Marine Lummis, now a resident of Junk Heap of the Pacific”
Okinawa, believes it is vital now more than ever (https://apjjf.org/-Jon-Mitchell/4039/article.html
to remember the lessons of the war. )

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 APJ | JF 13 | 16 | 1

Gavan McCormack, “‘All Japan’ versus ‘All 10. Sadly, there are no English versions of
Okinawa’ - Abe Shinzo’s Military-Firstism” Ishikawa’s work. However, some of his most
(https://apjjf.org/-Gavan-McCormack/4299/artic iconic images appear in Ishikawa Bunyo,
le.html) Okinawa: Waga Furusato (Tokyo: Look
Publishing, 1998) and Ishikawa Bunyo,
Linda Hoaglund, “Protest Art in 1950s Japan: Okinawa: Betonamu Houdou 35 Nen (Tokyo:
The Forgotten Reportage Painters” Look Publishing, 1998)
(https://apjjf.org/-Linda-Hoaglund/4203/article.
html) 11. From interview with author conducted on
28 January 2015.
Recommended citation: Jon Mitchell, "Vietnam:
Okinawa's Forgotten War", The Asia-Pacific 12. For a comprehensive, English list of U.S.-
Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 15, No. 1, April 20, 2015. military crimes and accidents (1948 ~ 19995),
see here:
Notes http://www.uchinanchu.org/history/list_of_crim
es.html
1. One of the best primers on the U.S.
involvement in Vietnam is Nick Turse, Kill The list was originally compiled by The
Anything that Moves, (New York : Metropolitan Okinawa Times.
Books 2013)
13. Havens, 54-7.
2. Quoted in Thomas R. H. Havens, Fire Across
the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan 14. From interview with author conducted on
1965-1975 (Princeton: Princeton University 30 January 2015.
Press, 1987), 193.
15. Quoted in Havens, 52.
3. Some of the best discussions (in English) of
Okinawa’s 1945~1972 period appear in Gavan 16. Ibid., 96
McCormack and Satoko Norimatsu, Resistant
17. Miyume Tanji, Myth, Protest and Struggle
Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the
in Okinawa (Oxon: Routledge, 2006), 109.
United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers Inc. 2012)
18. Stars and Stripes, “Number of SOFA
Personnel Accused of Crimes on Okinawa
4. See, for example, Jon Mitchell, Tsuiseki:
Drops” March 3, 2015 Available here
Okinawa no Karehazai (Tokyo: Koubunken,
(http://okinawa.stripes.com/news/number-sofa-
2014)
personnel-accused-crimes-okinawa-drops).
5. Ibid., 60
19. See Jon Mitchell, "Okinawa Dumpsite Offers
6. Quoted in Havens, 85. Proof of Agent Orange: Experts Say," The Asia-
Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 38, No. 1,
7. Okinawa Times, Kichi de Hataraku: September 23, 2013. Available here
Gunsagyouin no Sengo (Naha, Okinawa: (http://www.japanfocus.org/site/view/3998).
Okinawa Times Co, 2013)
20. February 3 email from Michael Ard,
8. Ibid., Chapter 2. Director, MCIPAC Public Affairs Office. Ard did
not respond to a further request for comment
9. Ibid., 262-3. on February 23.

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21. See for example the 2012 documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tRkP2b3d

about Agent Orange on Okinawa, “Defoliated sM).
Island” (Ryukyu Asahi Housou) available here
22. See McCormack and Norimatsu 91~113