[Tsuwabuki]

Despite the actions recently by American servicemen, most anger is directed at mainland Japan not just because of the history of the Ryukyu kingdom, but because of the "Death with Honor" strategy in the closing days of WWII. Mainland Japanese commanders propagated the myth that Americans were such beastly devils that when they landed, they would kill all the men, rape all the women, and then eat the children. This seems utterly ridiculous to us, but after years of this message being propagated to the Okinawa people, they believed it. Those that didn't commit suicide out of fear, armed themselves and fought the incoming Americans: this included elementary, middle school, and high school students. It is estimated that nearly 250,000 Okinawans died as the direct result of Japanese policies in the Battle of Okinawa, and by the end of the war, resulted in a third of Okinawa's population being wiped out, many of those civilians or children. To put this in perspective, if I recall my numbers correctly, that is nearly twice the amount of people who died when Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. Since Japanese commanders often used Okinawans as human shields up to the very end, once the Okinawan people saw that Americans were not devils, they were greeted as liberators, not as an occupying force.

It is unfortunate that the actions of individual service members, and political scheming by the ruling LDP and one of the recent governors of Okinawa, have severely eroded the goodwill of the Okinawan people towards the American people.