Okinawa unease grows as Japan ramps up military budget

Rising geopolitical tensions in East Asia have prompted Tokyo to revise its defense and security policies

Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida has ordered an increase in defense spending by 56 percent over the next five years, to reach a total of 43 trillion yen (US$318 billion).

The sum is more than 1.5 times greater than the 27.5 trillion yen already being spent on the current five-year spending plan.

The move is in response to regional challenges from a nuclear-armed North Korea and an aggressive China. Rising geopolitical tension in East Asia is leading the government to revise its defense and security policies. 

Legislators from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its minor coalition partner, Komeito, agreed that the nation must be able to strike enemy bases planning to attack Japan, paving the way for long-range missiles.

The resulting unease is concretely evident in Okinawa prefecture, and more precisely around Miyakojima. This little cluster of subtropical islands between Okinawa Island and Ishigaki, part of Japan’s Ryukyu archipelago, is renowned for its top-notch diving and snorkeling. A great number of these beaches are frequently listed among Japan’s top spots.

“We hope it is going to be a peaceful island for a long time but with the ramping up of the jieitai [Japan Self-Defense Forces] over the past few years we cannot be sure anymore,” said Yudai Sato, a hostel owner in Miyakojima, who has been serving domestic tourists for more than a decade.  

“It is definitely scary to think that ballistic missiles are already installed here on this tiny island.”

Not too far from Yudai’s hostel, there is an atelier belonging to an artist called Daichiro-san, born in 1992 on this very island. The artist every now and then visits Tokyo to sell his artwork which is inspired by Zen philosophy and Okinawan spiritual culture.

“If you consider the recent history of these islands, it is kind of scary what’s happening. We have had the American military on our island for almost 80 years and now the Japanese national defense force is also picking up. Sure, we Okinawans consider ourselves Japanese but we are very well aware that we belong to two very different cultures,” he said.

Okinawa is home to more than 70 percent of US troops in Japan and they occupy over 20 percent of the land. The military bases have always been seen by Okinawans as a symbol of discrimination on the part of Americans and mainland Japanese and their immediate reaction is that of mistrust.

“On Okinawa, we study the same history as Japan but we can search our own history as well now thanks to the internet, and you find out things such as local people being shot by Japanese troops during the war just because they spoke the local language and that was enough to label them spies,” he said.

Saika Higa is a 24-year-old local whose father works in the military, assigned to guard the skies against a potential North Korean missile strike. “He is always on the alert given recent events. Now the military presence on Okinawa is higher due to the surge in Self-Defense Forces numbers who act in coordination with the US forces. My father had to train in the US as they have enough land where they can actually practice,” he said.

Besides the military, Okinawa is home to a number of Catholics. Okinawa prefecture and Kagoshima prefecture split from the Nagasaki diocese on March 18, 1927, and merged to form the Apostolic Prefecture of Kagoshima. After the war, the Ryukyu islands, the Amami islands and Okinawa prefecture all came under American military occupation as a result of the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

Naha diocese’s population, which includes 6,000 worshippers who are primarily old and dispersed across its parishes, is mostly composed of a Spanish-speaking community, mainly Peruvians, Filipinos who form the backbone of the local entertainment and restaurant industries and young Vietnamese who are the fastest-growing group due to a surge in trainees in the construction industry. 

Protests calling for a drastic reduction in the number of military bases have been going on for decades and many Catholics have actively participated. So much so that in 2013 the then bishop of Naha, the capital of Okinawa, Berard Toshio Oshikawa, during one of the many protests against the US Marine Corp’s Futenma air base, bluntly expressed the common feeling of the inhabitants of the island: “On Okinawa, we don’t want the American bases, but we are hostages of a pact between Japan and the US. We are very important strategically.”

Bishop Berndt, who succeeded Oshikawa in 2017, at the Korea-Japan Social Apostolate Meeting in Okinawa also discussed the harsh labor practices of the technical intern trainee program and the hot military topic. One of the crucial points of the discussion was the extremely hazardous practice of military helicopters flying over residential areas. 

“Still to this day grandparents in Okinawa remind the young to always be on the alert, because military aircraft may descend from the skies at any minute,” Saika said.

As a matter of fact, in 2004 one helicopter crashed on the campus of Okinawa International University. Miraculously, no one was killed.

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