Word: senaga
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When fiery, brittle little Kamejiro Senaga was elected mayor of Naha last year, conservative Okinawan businessmen and U.S. authorities immediately went to work to unseat him. Senaga, an ex-journalist who ran a general store as a sideline to his job as mayor, had already served 18 months of a two-year jail sentence for harboring a wanted Japanese Communist, and was widely regarded as a Communist himself...
...Mayor Senaga lost no time in making the U.S. occupation authorities miserable. Though the money spent by the U.S. on its base has made Okinawans rich beyond their modest dreams, there is resentment that the U.S. has reserved 21% of the arable land for U.S. use, planted on it jet runways, housing for 40,000 military people, and three golf courses. The Okinawan base is crucial to the West's Pacific defenses, and the U.S. has made it clear that it has no intention of turning over administration to local authorities "in the foreseeable future." Senaga played on these...
...years the chief Okinawan thorn in the U.S. side has been an emaciated little man with a jet-black mustache and eyes that glare from behind thick spectacles. He is Kamejiro Senaga, the 49-year-old chief of the Okinawa People's Party. The party's principal plank was opposition to U.S. requisitioning of land for military purposes, which over the years has resulted in the seizure of one-fifth of Okinawa's arable land and the dispossession of 50,000 Okinawans. In a low, mild voice, Senaga called the U.S. occupation authorities "criminals, murderers, rapists, arsonists...
Emerging from jail last spring, Senaga was greeted by mobs of cheering supporters. He pounded away at such slogans as, "End U.S. rule of the saber," "Restoration of Okinawa to Japan the motherland," "Yankee go home." Last week, despite the best efforts of U.S. authorities, Senaga got himself elected to Okinawa's top elective office-mayor of Naha, the island's biggest city (pop. 170,000). With the two other candidates splitting the pro-U.S. vote, he won with only 40% of the votes...
...city councilors announced that they would "refuse to cooperate with a Communist mayor pledged to destroy all the progress Naha has made with the aid and good will of the U.S." Simultaneously, all 22 of the city department heads resigned "in protest against serving under ex-Convict Senaga." Moriyasu Tomihara, president of the Bank of the Ryukyus (in which the U.S. holds 51% of the stock and supplies nearly all the funds), declared that "no more money will be advanced to Naha city because of the changed situation," and froze payment of a $666,000 installment on Naha...