In his paper, “How Does Positionality Bias Your Epistemology,” David Takacs asks, “How does who you are shape what you know?” Born and raised in Okinawa, I only came to understand the gravity of the occupation of my homeland by U.S. military forces when I engaged in a conversation with an elderly Canadian woman in Nanaimo who was very well informed about the post-WWII world in which we live. She asked me where I was from, and I replied, “Japan.” She was curious to know which part and asked where. I said, “Okinawa.” Her reply was an epiphany for me, “Oh, so you're from America.” Though she believed that all Okinawans also spoke English, she was right about the extent of our own relative blindness to the structural discrimination we are born into. Like the tides, the wind, and rain, the U.S. bases are a part of the scenery that becomes normal as we live and grow. It is not until we begin to question this strange normalcy that we encounter an awakening and ultimately if we dare to question it, a resistance from those who are happy to accept this kind of normalcy. This is how what I know has come to shape what I am, a person who wants to continue pressing forward with hard questions about these present conditions.Google Scholar

Some readers may question how a foreigner holding a position of relative influence in a Japanese institution of higher learning can justifiably be engaged in research that critiques local systems of dominance and coercion. The Christian University in Okinawa declares that truth is a universal aspiration and condition to real peace, all of which prompt me to draw upon my military experience, studies of human language, and observations of how language is used to fortify systems of unfairness.Google Scholar

Schiller, Herbert “U.S. as Global Overlord: Dumbing Down, American-Style” Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1999.Google Scholar

Visit the site here.Google Scholar

The full interview can be accessed here. One sector of the Japanese public that appears to sympathize with the extremism (netto-uyoku) voiced by neo-nationalists also reveals various levels and forms of support in social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, and blogs) for Channel Sakura. Though expressing conflicting ideas about Emperor worship, Article 9 of the Constitution, the status of foreigners, the perceived Chinese threat, and attitudes toward the U.S. military presence, overtly disparate right-wing organizations also maintain common reinforcing interests with regards to current conditions of militarism in Okinawa, particularly as specified by the Japan-US Security Treaty. Image and video content in the following social media appear to substantiate the associations among members of the Channel Sakura, the Heart Clean Project and the Osprey Fan Club: See the blog here, and the SNS here and here.Google Scholar

The article is available in Japanese here.Google Scholar

Ibid.Google Scholar

Further details can be found here.Google Scholar

Mitchell, Jon, “In appearance on far-right TV, U.S. official calls Okinawa base protests ‘hate speech’,” The Japan Times, February 16, 2015.Google Scholar

Efforts to acquire a full transcript of the interview on AFN are ongoing.Google Scholar

Lummis, Douglas “Okinawa State of Emergency” Counter Punch, February 19, 2015.Google Scholar

Further details may be found at Real Okinawa.Google Scholar

Further details may be found here.Google Scholar

McCormack, Gavan and Yonetani, Julia (2000). “The Okinawan Summit Seen from Below,” JPRI Working Paper 71.Google Scholar

Tanji, Miyume. Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa (London: Routledge 2006), 76.Google Scholar

For further details, visit Things You May Want to Know if You are Japanese.Google Scholar

For further details, visit Is There Democracy in Okinawa?.Google Scholar

Further details of the background in the city's complaint and the Marine Corps' response can be found at Ginowan City Office.Google Scholar

For further details, visit Project Syndicate.Google Scholar