Keystone: The American occupation of Okinawa, and United States-Japanese relations, 1945--1972

From 1945 to 1972, the United States ruled Okinawa and the surrounding islands of the Okinawa prefecuture as a colony in everything but name. The island was the keystone of the post-war U.S. base system in the Pacific and the only spot in that chain that Americans, primarily those in the military, insisted on administering and governing. The reason for this odd fact is simple. The U.S. had two sets of potential enemies in the Pacific. The communists in Soviet Russia (and later China) were one. The Japanese were the other. Americans could not answer one question: was Japan friend or foe? The U.S. decided to keep Okinawa as a forward base against the Communist and Japanese threats. As the years passed, Americans could see that Japan had neither the power or inclination to threaten the United States. Japanese politics and its flirtation with neutrality, however, convinced many U.S. planners, particularly those with offices in the Pentagon, that Japan was an ally of dubious dependability. Planning on Japanese support and cooperation in a moment of crisis seemed unsound. The U.S. needed a base that it could use without question. Military leaders might have modified their reasoning over time, but the basic need for continued American rule remained fixed. The United States agreed to return the island chain to Japan only when the Okinawans made their feelings and nationalism clear at the ballot box in an election warning Americans that the continued occupation put the security relationship with Japan and the regional political order based on it, at risk.