On April 1, 1945, eighty years ago, American forces landed on the main island of Okinawa after brutal battles on the surrounding islands, most notably on Iwo Jima. The total force of 1,600 ships and 400,000 troops from the United States launched the largest amphibious attack of the war on that day with horrific consequences for civilians and soldiers alike.
Okinawa had been an independent nation, much like Hawaii, that wisely maintained a sustainable peace economy and kept up good relations through cultural and diplomatic exchanges with Japan and China for centuries. The Kingdom of Ryukyu was the first victim of the embrace of imperialism, annexed by Japan in 1879, just fourteen years before the United States overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893 to create a base for its own ambitions in East Asia.
Both the United States and Japan made these island kingdoms central to their military plans for imperial expansion, ignoring the native people’s wishes for peace and building up vast military bases and support facilities for war that generate great wealth for the few down to the present day.
The military bases of the United States and Japan, and of the United States in Hawaii, are rapacious in their call for funding and their supporters search constantly for some threat, some chance for a military conflict, that will allow them to continue to generate wealth.
The Battle of Okinawa demonstrated a new level of brutality for mechanized war on both the Japanese and American sides.
The Japanese military did everything to put the people of Okinawa in harm’s way, using them to absorb the “typhoon of steel” unleashed by the United States, ordering them to commit suicide by hand grenade or poison—telling them tales of the horrific rape and murder they would suffer if they did not comply.
Japanese troops were also ordered to commit suicide, including hundreds of kamikaze suicide attacks on the incoming American ships. There was not much strategy at that late date except the priority of protecting officers and compelling everyone to sacrifice himself or herself for the Emperor and the glory of the Japanese Empire.
The Americans were no less brutal, taking advantage of this opportunity to try out flamethrower tanks to incinerate civilians and soldiers. Surrender was not possible for most Japanese and Okinawans, in part because of the racist anti-Japanese propaganda extensively employed by the US military to make soldiers as ruthless as possible. Moreover, following the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, mass killing of civilians was becoming military policy for the first time in American history.
Although 1945 brought a painful end to the war for much of Japan, for Okinawa the trauma lingered on. During its post-war occupation by the United States, it was employed as the primary staging ground for the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Even after its reversion to Japan in 1971, the vast majority of US bases in Japan were located in Okinawa and it evolved into the frontline fortress for an impending war with China that it is today.
Rape and violence of civilians by US troops, the introduction of economies supported not by traditional fishing and agriculture, but by prostitution and exploitation in a wretched consumer culture were the consequences. Groundwater was polluted with PFAS and other “forever chemicals” that caused mass suffering; the coasts, the coral reefs, and the virgin forests were destroyed for military installations to generate profit.
And then, just as the United States military and economic position started to wane in Asia, a demand to build up for war with China became an excuse to militarize Okinawa even further.
Perhaps some thought the eightieth anniversary of that brutal battle would be a chance for both the Japanese and the Americans to recognize their terrible brutality towards the people of Okinawa, and towards their own people, to acknowledge that the conflation of profit with military expansion had been the cause of the Pacific War, and the continuing cancer of bases in Okinawa. Perhaps Japanese and Americans, school children and poets, would hold hands, declaring, “never again,” and take steps to establish a culture and an economy of peace based on the recognition of the sufferings of Okinawans—and extending to the young men drafted to die in that brutal battle on both sides.
Sadly, that was not the way that the start of the Battle of Okinawa was commemorated. Pete Hegseth, the newly appointed US Secretary of Defense, arrived like a conqueror, stepping down on Iwo Jima, to deliver a militarist speech to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and others in which he praised the “warrior ethos” of the American and Japanese troops who had fought over this island without a word about the civilians who died, or who will die in future wars launched from Okinawa.
Hegseth spoke of the pointless slaughter at Iwo Jima in this way: “You see, Iwo Jima embodies our shared warrior ethos; our shared devotion to nation and to duty; and our shared reverence for the men of valor who preceded us.”
That is to say honor and devotion to duty trump human compassion. Mass killing is a sacred act to be held in reverence. This speech was not about peace at all, it was an unabashed call for glorious war.
Hegseth, who was promoted to this position without any qualifications because he follows Donald Trump loyally and promotes white supremacist Christian nationalist ideology, is above all a TV personality on Fox News who openly glorified the brutality and mercilessness of soldiers, defending war crimes by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as promoting torture as a legitimate tool of war.
Claiming that he was ending the excesses of DEI policies (which were real), Hegseth ordered a ruthless purge of all recognition for those who were not white in the Pentagon, bringing back the racist culture that permeated the military during the Second World War.
The removal of the photos and description of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team from the Department of Defense website, a unit made up entirely of Japanese Americans, was a clear shot across the bow indicating that anti-Asian racism was welcome (the entry was eventually restored after immense protest).
Hegseth’s appeal to Christian nationalist fervor in his book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free and to a warrior ethos of killing for personal glory in his book The War on Warriors is unmistakable and suggests an end to the military as a place offering opportunities that it became after the Second World War.
Hegseth made his way to Iwo Jima from the Philippines like a MacArthur. He gave a bellicose speech in Manila unlike anything in recent memory from a Secretary of Defense. He left discussions of “freedom of navigation” and “international community” behind and replaced them with the menacing “preparing for war” which he repeated. He even praised US Seventh Fleet commander Admiral Samuel Paparo for “his war plans; Real war plans!”
The press conference with Defense Minister Gen Nakatani in Tokyo on March 29 outlined plans for a massive expansion of defense industrial cooperation, including the co-production of air-to-air missiles AMRAAM, and of surface-to-air missiles. There was not a trace of plans for peace; the clear assumption was that Japan would continue to increase military expenditures—up to 3%, according to the Pentagon. Hegseth did not even have to negotiate on this point.
But the pièce de résistance was the upgrading of US Forces Japan to a Joint Force Headquarters that will be seamlessly integrated with Japan’s new Joint Operations Command (JJOC) as part of an effort to create a military chain of command that is beyond the politicians, and whose communications and command system has been outsourced to IT firms like Oracle, Google, and Amazon—with some “AI” thrown in for good measure. In effect, a system to start a world war on remote control is being put in place.
Hegseth made it clear what the changes meant for him: “reorganizing (of) US Forces Japan into a warfighting headquarters.”
None of the advocacy for international law, diplomacy, dialog, and peace was anywhere to be found in Hegseth’s statements. When he called China “Communist China” the Chinese translator rendered it as “Chinese Communist Party” because such an archaic bit of red baiting seemed so entirely out of place. Hegseth’s closing remarks were ominous:
“We must be prepared. We look forward to working closely together as we improve our warfighting capabilities, our lethality, and our readiness.”
Current plans to make Okinawa the launch pad for an attack on China are increasingly out in the open. Japan released plans on March 28 for how it would evacuate 100,000 civilians from islands near Taiwan in a conflict—with drills to start next year. That will mark the 81st anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa.
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