Week 14: Ota

I apologize for posting after 8pm; we didn't arrive from DC until about an hour ago, so I'm only now getting a chance to post.

Before I get to my Ota response, I wanted to post a link to an Al-Jazeera article about the rape on Okinawa by the US Marine recently: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9B671CEC-33BD-442D-8884-120E4557259C.htm

Sorry for not posting this last night, I completely forgot to put in my response when I got back to my house, because I'd posted the first part in the library before finishing the reading.

More than anything else what I found intriguing was the conflict between the traditional peacefulness of the Okinawans and the complete destruction of that way fo life by the Japanese, followed by the war and consequential Peace Constitution that seems to have left out Okinawa. Despite the promise to stop using violence as a means of dealing with international conflict, it seems that the Japanese, with the assistance of the US military presence, have make Okinawa a focal point for continued militarism and violence as manifested through Japanese discrimination, US military operations and their side effects, and through actual acts of violence perpetrated by the US troops against Okinawans.

Ota writes about the Japanese aggression towards the islanders, as well as their lack of representation in the Diet, and it makes me wonder to what extent Hawaiian's feel taken advatage of by their inclusion in the USA. Being even further from the continental US and culturally very different from the mainland, I know there remains at least a small contingency of Hawaiians who oppose Hawaiian statehood, but I don't know how widespread this ideology is. It leads me to wonder about the initial colonization of Hawaii and it's induction into the USA, and the history surrounding US-Hawaiian relations, or, for that matter, US relations with any of its Island territories in the Atlantic and Pacific.

It saddens me that Okinawans have so little political power to call for action to be taken towards reducing US military presence on their island, and I worry that it is a situation with little hope of change in the near future, but I hope to be proven wrong on Wednesday as we get further into the situation and any possible developments. US military presence seems so permeating there, as if change would be not only difficult but almost impossible to put into place. I hate to actual believe such cynical thoughts, but I do not know enough about the situation and I suppose I have too little faith in the US military machine to have hope for their withdrawl anywhere these days.

Moving away from the reading, I wanted to share the notes I took away from my conversation with my Grandfather on his experiences on and around Okinawa in the Pacific in 1945:

He was a quartermaster on an LST ship that made amphibious landings and carried the smaller amphibian vehicles. Some of his duties included monitoring and controlling radio communications, including attemoted interception of Japanese relys, as well as keeping distances and supervising ship operations.

He began by sharing that, as distance keeper, it was his job to guarantee that their LST was at least 150 yds behind the one in front. One day, as with most days, they could see the Japanese kamikazes coming in towards the various US ships and bases, etc. but this time one hit the LST in front of his and they watched from 150 yds as the LST and its passengers blew up as the plane hit.

He also recounted their "fake" landing on Okinawa on April 1, 1945, which was based on their knowledge that the Japanese had figured out when the Americans typically made amphibious landings.

Once they were in the midst of the conflict on Okinawa, he recalled a time when they were taking their ships down a river or a channel where the Japanese were floating mines towards the US ships to blow them up in the water. Sometimes, he said, kamikaze missions would be deployed in this way, so Japanese swimmers would attach explosives to themselves to blow up when they reached the ships. In light of this, the Navy were charged with gunning down any person or mine in the water. On day, they heard that the quartermaster from the ship in front of them had gone overboard, and to hold fire, but the call came to late and the quartermaster was killed by friendly fire. My grandfather recalled being relieved for the second time that he was the quartermaster on the second ship in each close call.

At one point there was a cease fire that was called due to a typhoon, and all the ships had to head out to sea, and he remembers being below deck and having their ship end up almost perpendicular to the water with the entire motor out of the water because the LSTs have the motor in back where it lies deeper in the water. Below decks, they could all see the waves lifting them up and water covering the hole that usually were above sea level, and having to wait it out and hope for the best.

On the island he told me that the Japanese had laid out a massive system of caves, tunnels, and deep wells of sorts. The wells were made inside deep dugouts where US troops would throw grenades, and the grenades would fall down the wells and blow up underground instead of hitting the Japanese troops in the dugout. Japanese soldiers would also wait in the tunnels and caves and could see out and bide their time and fight the ambibious landings from there, so as to lengthen the battle over time and avoid face to face beach combat. That way the main island of Japan could be refortified while they held out on Okinawa. As I said before, the Japanese had caught on to the timing of US amphibious landings, which my Grandfather said were generally around 8am, and the kamikazes would come down at that time to try to hit before they could embark. To combat this strategy, the US ships had what my Gradfather called "smoke pots" and they would send out all their lfieboats to circle around the ships with smoke pots that let out smoke to create an imitation clound cover so kamikazes couldn't see where the ship target were from the sky.

One of the most interesting things he told me was that on one of the small neighboring islands they were charged with storming, there were fake buildings set up to trick the US military into thinking the island had inhabitants, so they spent the typical length of time going throught their lengthy amphibious landing only to find that the island was completely devoid of humans and was covered in cardboard-like cutouts of housing structures designed to waste their time and resources. Similarly he recalled hearing that, in San Diego a huge net had been laid out above the city, because they feared potential US land battles, and a network of fake farms had been designed and put on top of the net so that if a Japanese plane made it into the airspace the city would look like farmland. I had never known about this tactic and found it fascinating.

I know that information does not relate directly to the continued US presence in Okinawa, but it was amazing hearing these stories first hand and it helped me to have a background for the initial US invasion of Okinawa that turned into such an extended stay.