The Meiji government, aiming at a "Prosperous Nation, Strong Army", modernized the military along the lines of Western military structure and an obligatory military service was instituted with the promulgation of the Military Conscription Ordinance in 1873 .
Planning for the application of this edict in Okinawa began in 1885. By 1896 military service was implemented for primary school teachers and two years later it was applied to the general population. The motivation for conscription of schoolteachers first was to implement an ideological system for indoctrinating loyalty to the emperor in his subjects so that the teachers would then pass on the ideals of military education to the students they taught.
The public servants, educators, and newspaper journalists of Okinawa greeted institution of military conscription as a way the prefecture's citizens could at last be admitted into the circle of citizens of Imperial Japan. The ordinary citizens of Okinawa however saw this in a different light and sought a myriad of ways to avoid military service, from becoming fugitives to feigning disabilities. The number of persons jailed for draft evasion in the first 18 years of conscription was 744 persons.
And those that chose to enter found because many of them spoke no or very little Japanese that there was considerable discrimination against them by mainland Japanese. Having been instilled with the Imperial ideology and as Japanese citizens, there was very little that Okinawans could do to transcend the discrimination they found, except to prove themselves in the battlefield with their blood. The soldiers of Okinawa, unable to change the perceptions of them, finally entered combat in the Russo-Japanese war. The casualty rate for them was around ten percent. Their sacrifice earned them the praise of the Japanese government as true subjects of the Japanese emperor.
Those Okinawans who had turned their backs to the Meiji government over the Sino-Japanese War joined in on the Russo-Japanese War in the spirit of "Chukun- Aikoku" (Loyalty to the Emperor and Patriotism) and started down the way to becoming citizens of the modern Japan.