Word: ryukyu
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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...
...RYUKYU ISLANDS...
Unlike previous conquerors, the U.S. has always declared its intention to hand Okinawa and the rest of the 73 islands it administers in the Ryukyu chain back to Japan. The question is, when? During 23 years of occupation, the U.S. has turned Okinawa into an American Gibraltar in the Pacific, a strategic forward base for nuclear-armed B-52 bombers and a logistics launching pad for the Viet Nam war. At the same time, the continued occupation has become the touchiest issue in Japanese politics-and virtually the only political cause that stirs the 952,000 Okinawans...
...Japanese colonists on the Bonins, which supplied Japan with fish and many of its winter vegetables, were evacuated during the war, when the large Bonins were turned into a part of Japan's island defense system. After the U.S. took them over, it made them and the Ryukyu chain (including Okinawa) bases for air and naval installations. While Okinawa has since become the major U.S. military base in the Western Pacific, the Bonin area installations are now only three small stations and a complement of only 75 men. Last November, as an omiyage (gift) to Japan's visiting...
...been clouded by the war, since Okinawa is America's major Western Pacific base, and a key way station for heavy bombers and troops headed for Viet Nam. The sooner the war in South east Asia ends, the sooner Japan will regain administrative control of Okinawa and the Ryukyu chain of which it is a part. With that in mind, perhaps, Sato offered last week to serve as best he could as a "third party" in seeking a negotiated...