The transformation of hi no maru in postwar Okinawa: from symbol of hope to object of contempt

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Reversion movement
• protests
• U.S. military
• Okinawa Reversion Agreement
• Japanese government

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Steve Rabson is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University. He is the author of, among other books, Okinawa: Two Postwar Novellas (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1989), Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly: Changing Views of War in Modern Japanese Poetry (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1998), and The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). He was stationed in Okinawa as a U.S. Army draftee in 1967–1968.

Notes

1 Chibana was charged with trespassing and vandalism, and detained for twenty-five days. After the flag-burning incident, right-wing gangs, led by bosses from the Japanese mainland, parked sound trucks blaring threats and insults in front of the Chibana family’s store. Not satisfied with this level of intimidation, they set the store on fire and threatened his customers. See Field 1991, 40–56.

2 Field 1991, 55.

3 Baker 2012.

4 In contrast, both Germany and Italy changed their national flags after World War II.

5 Quoted in Yoshida 2001.

6 Inoue 2007, 102.

7 Rabson 2012a, 2012b.

8 Okamoto 1976, 10–12.

9 See Rabson 2008.

10 Quoted in Japan Times 2012.

11 These included the cover of the November 6, 1995, issue of Time magazine.