Kamoshita and Aihara at their talk in London on 1 February jointly organised by Voices for Creative Non-Violence UK (VCNV), Nipponzan Myohoji and SOAS Save Jeju Island and SOAS CND Societies. Native Nomad Pictures Ltd./Jason Verney. All rights reserved.Not many people outside Japan have even heard of the place called Okinawa, a semi-tropical archipelago of numerous islands with unique and invaluable biodiversity situated in the East China Sea – let alone have any knowledge of its modern history, dominated by the sequence of invasion, colonisation, war and militarisation.
Two peace activists from Okinawa, Aihara Sarasa and Kamoshita Yuichi, set out on a two-week European lecture tour in February 2016 to spread the word about the ongoing struggle by the Okinawan people against the construction of a new US military base adjacent to Camp Schwab in Henoko.
Invaded and colonised in the early seventeenth century during the Tokugawa Era, and annexed by the Meiji government in 1879, Okinawa and its people have suffered from serious discrimination and exploitation for centuries. In particular, towards the end of the Asia-Pacific War, Okinawa became a battlefield, the only one, in Japan. There, Okinawans found themselves not only under attack by the US military; the Japanese military, which was supposed to protect the Okinawan people, in fact used them as a human shield and forced them to commit ‘honourable’ suicide before ‘they are captured by the US soldiers’. Within three to four months of the Battle of Okinawa, it is said that over 200,000 people were killed, of which over 120,000 were from Okinawa, including 94,000 civilians. One in five Okinawan people were killed.
