Occupational Problems

Angry and embarrassed, the Okinawans stared at the television monitors in a Tokyo TV studio. Across the screen flashed scenes of Japanese student rioters surging through the Ginza area, hurling Molotov cocktails, jamming auto and rail traffic and stoning every cop in sight. Police kept the 8,000 demonstrators under a degree of control with the generous use of throat-clogging tear-gas grenades and high-pressure water hosings. In the process, some 160 people were injured and 900 students were seized.

Once again it was Okinawa Day in Japan, and the students were ostensibly demonstrating their support for the return of the U.S. -occupied Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa, to Japan. In fact, the demonstrators' slogans paid scant heed to Okinawa, concentrating in stead on anti-Premier Sato and anti-U.S. posturing. For the 300 Okinawans who had come to Tokyo to hold their own restrained protest -- and who felt that their interests were what was at stake -- the day was sobering. "I'm afraid the student violence will end up dampening the movement for us," said 20-year-old Tsuneo Tomita of Koza. "It will confuse the basic issue."

Demanding Fukki. Both in Tokyo and the Okinawan capital of Naha, Okinawans held demonstrations too, but of a far more purposeful and peaceful nature. In Naha, about 20,000 showed up to hear Chief Executive Chobyo Yara and Shinei Kyan, head of the Council for the Return of Okinawa Prefecture to the Fatherland, demand that Okinawa revert to Japanese control. "The more people shout," said Kyan, "the stronger will be public opinion for our goal." Shouting is hardly needed to convince most Okinawans: Yara was elected last November on a platform demanding fukki, or immediate reversion. Yara has no illusions, however, about the problems that fukki may bring. "I am not at all satisfied with what the Japanese politicians have been doing," he said. "Emotionally, everyone is talking of reversion, but when it comes down to fine points like what to do about the economy, nobody knows what to do."

In the 24 years since U.S. forces stormed ashore on Okinawa in the final major battle of World War II, the island has been transformed into the equivalent of the world's largest aircraft carrier. There are 45,000 American servicemen now based on Okinawa. From sprawling Kadena Airbase, huge B-52 jets roar out nearly every day on bombing missions over South Viet Nam. Much of the island has come to resemble a particularly vulgar version of American suburbia, and U.S. spending now accounts for 60% of Okinawa's $644.4 million G.N.P. If the U.S. were to pull out, Okinawa's economy would be severely damaged. The island's businessmen are already pessimistic. A poll last year indicated that 75% of the 200 businessmen questioned felt that U.S. withdrawal would hurt profits.

Pizzas and Laundromats. Evidence of the American presence is everywhere. Along blacktopped, four-lane Route 1, built by the U.S., there are miles of drive-in restaurants, Laundromats, pizza parlors and souvenir stands. Big American cars squeeze through Naha's narrow streets. G.I.s and their families crowd in and out of shops, housewives wearing scarves over the inevitable hair curlers. In Koza, the nearest large town to the Kadena base, there are numerous bars, such as the Night Queen, Cabaret Aloha and U.S. Club, and few nights go by without at least one fistfight involving overloaded Americans and Okinawans. Not quite as visible, but equally pervasive, is American control of Okinawan affairs. Except for Berlin, Okinawa stands as the last occupied territory of World War II.

Although Okinawa has its own chief executive, he is subordinate to the American High Commissioner, who currently is Lieut. General James B. Lampert. The "Hicom," as local slang dubs him, has full veto power over all island legislation, can intervene in civil and criminal legal matters at will and even remove any public official from office.

So far, the legislative veto has not been invoked directly: Okinawan lawmakers simply do not introduce bills that they feel may be killed. But several officials have been removed in the past, and when Naha in 1956 elected a Communist mayor, the then-High Commissioner forced him out of office.

Talks in Washington. Officially, the U.S. position is that while Okinawa is rightfully and eventually Japan's, the is land's strategic location makes continuing U.S. control necessary for some time to come. Reversion to Japan would cut severely into its usefulness, since Sato has been forced by heavy domestic pressures to maintain that the tough strictures on U.S. bases in Japan would also apply to Okinawa.* This fall, when Sato meets Richard Nixon in Washington, he is expected to hold to that uncompromising stand.

As long as the U.S. commitment to Asian security remains strong, any withdrawal from Okinawa seems a dubious prospect. Those ugly black B-52s will probably keep on rolling off Okinawan runways toward targets in Viet Nam, or rest poised to defend Taiwan, South Korea and Japan should the need arise.

*The U.S. cannot store nuclear weapons in Japan, for instance, and it is highly probable that warheads are stored somewhere at the Kadena base. The U.S. is also prohibited from using Japan bases as staging points to send men and equipment directly into combat.

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