Uniquely Okinawan explores how American soldiers, sailors, and Marines considered race, ethnicity, and identity in the planning and execution of the wartime occupation of Okinawa, during and immediately after the Battle of Okinawa, 1945-1946.
Author Courtney A. Short holds a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and specializes in Military, American, and Japanese History, as well as Race and Identity Studies. Lieutenant Colonel Short, US Army, presently serves as Garrison Commander,US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
Reviews
This well-researched and organized work addresses how the US armed forces engaged the fraught question of how the Okinawa population would react to the April 1945 US invasion. This is far more than an admirable study of an interesting episode in the Pacific War. It abounds in lessons in planning and then handling encounters with diverse civilian populations caught on a battlefield with US forces. (Richard B. Frank, leading authority on the Asia-Pacific War, and author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire)
This well-researched and organized work addresses how the US armed forces engaged the fraught question of how the Okinawa population would react to the April 1945 US invasion. This is far more than an admirable study of an interesting episode in the Pacific War. It abounds in lessons in planning and then handling encounters with diverse civilian populations caught on a battlefield with US forces. (Richard B. Frank, leading authority on the Asia-Pacific War, and author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire)
In a meticulously researched study including oral history accounts from both US and Okinawan sources, Short composes a compelling narrative to explore constructions of race and identity amidst the wartime and postwar encounters between the American military and Okinawans. Informed by the historian's personal experience of serving in the US armed forces on Okinawa, the author's archival evidence engages with layers of individual stories of a twice colonized people. Short argues that Okinawan culture permitted the people to reclaim an identity distancing themselves from a defeated imperial Japan, while also negotiating an uneasy relationship with their new American occupiers that continues to evolve. (Annika A. Culver, is Associate Professor of East Asian History, Florida State University, where she specializes in Japan and Northeast Asia-related topics. She is the author of Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo)
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