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We Cannot Allow Governor Nakaima to Falsify the History of the Battle of Okinawa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Medoruma Shun
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The following is from novelist and commentator Medorama Shun's blog, Uminari no shima kara (here) dated March 17, 2012. Medoruma has reported on the ongoing controversy surrounding the placement of a new sign outside the entrance to the site of the 32nd Army HQ Shelter, which is located in Shurijo Castle Park, the pre-eminent symbol of the Ryukyu Kingdom, and Okinawa's leading tourist site. The controversy, which has continued over many years, entered a new stage with the 2012 decision by Governor Nakaima Hirokazu to approve new wording in the sign explaining the events. At stake is the language used to represent key events in which many Okinawan civilians died during the 1945 Battle, and particularly the relationship between Japan's 32nd Army and the Okinawan civilian population. The Battle, took the lives of more than one fourth of Okinawa's civilian population. Phrases such as ‘comfort women’ and ‘massacres of civilians’ have been removed from the new signage ordered by Governor Nakaima. The following blog refers to the draft in Japanese of a new explanation panel, which has since been translated into English, Chinese and Korean and now appears on the new sign outside the 32nd Army HQ Shelter site. ~ RS & MA

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 15 , April 2012 , e2
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Copyright © The Authors 2012

References

Notes

1 Suteishi refers to a stone in the game of go which is sacrificed in order to gain further strategic advantage, much in the way that a pawn can be sacrificed in a chess game to gain significant advantage.

2 Col. Chō Isamu was in Nanjing in December 1937 as aide de camp to Prince Asaka. He is frequently cited as having ordered the massacre of Chinese prisoners (see, for example, Honda Katsuichi, The Nanjing Massacre (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1999), p. 169.) Da-qing Yang notes that while Chō is believed by some to have issued the order to kill all Chinese prisoners in the name of General Iwane Matsui, he left no paper trail. “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre,” in Joshua Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, here (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000), p. 141. For earlier discussion of controversies over representation of the battle in monuments, memorials and exhibits, see Gerald Figal, “Waging Peace on Okinawa” in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Islands of Discontent. Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power, (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), pp. 65-98, especially pp. 91-94, and Figal's book Beachheads: War, Peace and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012).