Week 6 Discussion

What do you think are some of the impacts of being labeled as spies, or national traitors by the state and military for internal relations within Okinawan society? How do you think this impacted Okinawans’ treatment/views toward Korean women who were brought to the islands as “comfort women” beginning in 1941?

During the National Spiritual Mobilization in Okinawa, local Okinawans’ lifestyle reform toward Japanization changed their standard of morality based on Japanese culture, customs, and language. Everything about Okinawan culture was labeled as “peculiar” and needed to be reformed. The most frightening part of the reform is that “those who spoke Okinawan were exposed not merely by the movement’s leaders or policemen but also by one another, as they surveilled their peers as ‘moral criminals’ ”. This means that some Okinawans who were being labeled as spies or national traitors were not only oppressed by the government but by their compatriots who were reformed and Japanized. They might have received suspicions and sanctions from Japanese governments and also other Okinawans’ moral condemn which could bring the internal conflicts within the Okinawan community.

Compared to other real Japanese citizens, Okinawa people were easily suspected by their loyalty to tenno and Japanese governments, so they were the underprivileged group in Japanese society. Thus, there was no reason for them to be treated nicely or equally. When the comforting Korean women arrived in Okinawa whose social status was war’s prisoners that were even worse than the Okinawans, one possibility is that Okinawan people would oppresse these women to relieve their anger from Japanese or torture them to show Japanese their loyalty and resolution to fight with tenno.