Fifty years after the Okinawa retrocession by the Americans, a basic anti -missile project of the Japanese forces divides a population marked by the Second World War and the years of occupation which followed, but worried for the economy.
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“The Deigo Fleuri, called the wind but the storm came …” Shima Uta, moving “song of the islands” of the group The Boom, resonates in the alleys crushed with sun and lined with gray concrete of the old market ‘Ishigaki, small island of the Okinawa archipelago, in southwest Japan.
In local culture, red flamboyance of Deigo Fleur announces the severity of future typhoons. His flowering, in the song of Kazufumi Miyazawa, symbolizes “the sacrifice of the islands of Okinawa for the rest of Japan”. Battle of Okinawa in April-June 1945, US military omnipresence, Tokyo diktats: so many dark moments that resurface on the occasion of the commemoration, on May 15, of the 50
In Ishigaki, 50,000 inhabitants, nothing indicates the birthday if not a few fronts like that of the Hamauta store, where a yellow and red sticker greeting “the return of Okinawa”.
The municipality did not plan a party, just an online conference. Officially because of the coronavirus, unofficially because the event arouses mixed reactions, exacerbated by the construction of an anti -missile defense of the Japanese self -defense forces (FJA, the Japanese army).
Since 2020, the bulldozers plows a green hillside nestled in the shadow of Mont Omoto, a highest point of the island at 526 meters, above sugar cane and pineapple plantations. The installation is considered essential by the Ministry of Defense, engaged since 2015 in the strengthening of the Nansei Islands. Seen from Tokyo, this rosary extending to Yonaguni, a hundred kilometers from Taiwan, forms “a barrier against China”.
Persistence of injuries from the past
The Japanese government fears that a conflict around Taiwan leads China to seize the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands – administratively dependent on Ishigaki but claimed by Beijing and Taipei – even threatening Okinawa. He has already set up bases on the Miyako, Yonaguni and Amami Islands.
Favorable to the arrival of the FJA, the mayor of Ishigaki, Yoshitaka Nakayama, obtained a fourth term in February. Reputed to be close to nationalists of the liberal democratic party in power, Mr. Nakayama advocates a firm line against China, not hesitating to brandish the threat of “provocations”. He rejected a referendum project on the new base claimed by the 14,000 signatories of a petition. “National defense issues cannot be decided by a simple municipality,” he swept away. Ishigaki already houses the largest Japanese coast guard, busy monitoring the Senkaku.
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