HILD 12 wk7 section discussion

How do you think the trauma that Okinawan women experienced during the Battle of Okinawa impacted their responses to the military base construction that the US military Occupation authorities enacted during the early 1950s that we see in the Isahama struggle? What traumas have to be dissociated from the Battle of Okinawa and understood as new to the time of US military occupation?

Okinawan women experienced a different trauma during the Battle of Okinawa than their male counterparts, which impacted their responses to the military base construction that the US military Occupation authorities enacted during the early 1950s that we see in the Isahama struggle. The male counterparts experienced a different kind of trauma as they were in the frontlines of the war and Battle of Okinawa. However, this does not degrade the trauma Okinawan women experienced, as they lost loved ones through these battles, and struggled in keeping their family alive and safe. As in this period of time, the women were the ones who took care of daily tasks to support their family, but the US military Occupation made this struggle almost unbearable, which turned to the negative responses to military construction. As Matsumura details in “Postwar Reconfigurations of the US Empire and Global Military Occupation: Struggles against Enclosure in Okinawa”, Okinawa became “a hyper-militarized site that compromises 0.6% of Japan’s land mass but houses nearly 75% of all US military bases in the country is well known” (152). Okinawa became a militarized state, and the eviction from lands, pollutions and other factors served as walls for Okinawan women to overcome. According to Matsumura, rental for land was paid cheaply by the US government, and the military occupied bases lead to pollution such as the “water problem” (156–157). These problems that invaded into day to day life for the Okinwans probably was a main reason for the negative responses to the military occupation. Additionally, the land problem, pollution and other problems that came after US military occupation is new, and have to be dissociated from the Battle of Okinawa.