On August 15,1945 Japan signed the Potsdam Declaration, ending World War Two after fighting for fifteen years. The Allied forces occupied Japan and the Nansei Islands were put under U.S. military rule.
The United Nations was founded centering on the nations that had won in WWII, but a new kind of international tension arrived with the Cold War competition between the West, allies of the United States, and the East, centered on the Soviet Union. With the intensification of the Cold War and the establishment of socialist governments in China and North Korea, the U.S. came to regard the geographic position of Okinawa as strategically important and the basis for a long term rule over the islands became a fixed policy.
In 1949, with long-term rule in mind, the military government implemented economic reconstruction and democratic government, consolidated the military facilities, began planning for permanent bases and granted a certain degree of self-autonomy to the residents of Okinawa. In December of the following year, the strong direct government of the U.S. Navy was replaced by the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR) but overall control remained unchanged and was retained by the military.
USCAR and the Struggle for Autonomous Rights
In 1951 the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the U.S. Japan Security Treaty were concluded and Japan regained independence, but the islands of Okinawa remained under the authority of the U.S. Government. As Japan joined the other nations of the West, Okinawa became a stronghold in the fight against the communists of China, North Korea, and the Soviet Union.
With the international situation such as it was, the bases on Okinawa underwent full-scale strengthening. In 1953 The U.S. Civil Administration began land expropriations in support of the strengthening of the bases. The Okinawan resistance to the land requisitions was strong, igniting an "island-wide struggle" whose momentum continued to gather steam under the "Reversion Movement."
The Rise of the Popular Movement and Reversion
In 1965 Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato visited Okinawa and began to press for the return of Okinawa to Japan. Okinawa's reversion to Japan was realized on May15, 1972. Still 25 years since the reversion to Japan, Okinawa, occupying only 1% of the land area of Japan, is the location of 75% of the U.S. military bases in Japan. There remain many issues concerning the bases.
