Returning from US Study Abroad: Cold War Representation Title and Construction of Beiryu : Gumi's Identity in the US Military Occupation of Okinawa Author(s) 琉球大学欧米文化論集 ＝ Ryudai Review of Euro-American Citation Studies(63): 19-39 Issue Date 2019-03-31 URL http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12000/44226 Rights Ryudai Review of EuroAmerican Studies No. 63, 2019 Returning from US Study Abroad: Cold War Representation and Construction of Beiryu-Gumi’s Identity in the US Military Occupation of Okinawa Kinuko Maehara Yamazato This is not a burden of responsibility that I am placing on you. It is one that you must assume voluntarily as Ryukyuans, and as leaders and future leaders of these islands. The people are turning to you among others, for advice, guidance and leadership. They want to hear your voice. They want to share your education. They want to benefit from your views of the wider world and, most of all, they want to learn the truth. ―Paul Caraway, High Commissioner of Ryukyu Islands, in “Facing Reality,” a speech given at the Golden Gate Club on June 12, 1962. 1 1. Introduction On March 5, 1963, General Paul Caraway, High Commissioner of the Ryukyu Islands, gave a speech at the monthly meeting of the Golden Gate Club. The Golden Gate Club was an alumni association established in 1952 by Okinawans who had received US government scholarships and studied in the US during the Occupation of Okinawa (1945–1972). In his speech entitled “Autonomy,” Caraway referred to the autonomy of the “Ryukyus” under the US military occupation as a myth, and further referred to Okinawans who worked for the Government of Ryukyu Islands as lacking of efficiency.2 He contrasted them with his audience at the meeting, the members of the Golden Gate Club, which consisted of Okinawans who had returned from their study abroad in the US, who he deemed highly sophisticated and praiseworthy for their contribution to developing mutual understanding between people in Okinawa and the US. The following day, the local newspapers strongly −19− criticized the speech and quoted responses from representatives of each political party in Okinawa, all of whom criticized Caraway’s speech, especially his references to Okinawa’s autonomy and the Ryukyu Government. Caraway’s sensational address received substantial coverage from local newspapers for almost one month. Prior to this speech, he gave his speech “Facing Reality,” at the Golden Gate Club meeting on June 12, 1962. Both of his speeches not only revealed his disinterest in fostering Okinawa’s autonomy but also publicized his view that US-educated Okinawans were the leaders of Okinawa. In the context of the Occupation and the political tension in Okinawa at the time, such remarks added to the public’s negative perception of US-educated Okinawans. While Caraway’s speech fueled the social movement demanding that Okinawa be returned to Japanese administrative control, the general public’s view of those who had studied in the US as “pro-American” or the “bodyguards of the US military” became more salient as well (GARIOA Fulbright Okinawa Chapter 16). In 1945, Okinawa became the last battleground of the Asia-Pacific War and came under US military control. Although the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 ended the US occupation of mainland Japan in 1952, Okinawa remained under US military control until the reversion to Japanese administrative control in 1972. In 1949, four years after the end of the Battle of Okinawa, the US study abroad program began under the Government and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA) fund. The GARIOA fund was first approved by the US Congress in 1946, allocated mainly for the rehabilitation of the war-devasted islands and the development of the economy. It also included projects to support higher education in the islands (Fisch 77). Through the US study abroad program, more than one thousand Okinawans were given the opportunity to study at higher educational institutions in the US. On their return to occupied Okinawa, many of the study abroad participants worked in the fields of higher education, business, and politics; they generally had status and privileges that distinguished them from others in Okinawa, and they came to be known collectively as the beiryu-gumi, or the “study in the US group.” This article focuses on the US study abroad program established during the US Occupation of Okinawa and the experiences and identity formation of those Okinawans who −20− studied at American colleges and universities through the program. While I have focused in other publications on their experiences prior to their departure for the US (Yamazato “Studying in the US was the Only Hope” 26–33) and during their study abroad in the US (Yamazato “Encountering Gendered and National Selves” 49–55), in this article I focus on their experiences and their identity formation after they completed their programs in the US. By focusing on these beiryu-gumi life experiences and their distinctive identity formation, this article shows how the US Occupation shaped post-war Okinawan society and created complicated and multilayered senses of belonging for Okinawan people. While most studies on the US Occupation and the continuing relationship between Okinawa and the US focus on Okinawa’s relations with Japan and the US at the macro-level, this article’s examination of beiryu-gumi’s life stories contributes to better understanding of relations between Okinawa and the US at a micro-level. As I have argued elsewhere, the establishment of the program was not only a part of the US project to democratize Okinawa along with Japan in the postwar period but also a part of the US attempt to develop leaders who could understand and support its policies in the conduct of its administration in occupied Okinawa (Yamazato “Encountering Gendered and National Selves” 46–48). The US study abroad program for Okinawans also played a role in justifying the military occupation of the islands, which secured the territory as a base for its military presence in Cold War Asia. As noted in previous studies (Choy 2003; Shibusawa 2006; Alvah 2007), the initiation of cultural and educational exchange programs was a significant Cold War strategy to restore the image of the US as the nation of freedom and democracy and to engender public support for American policies toward Asia. These programs worked to create what Christina Klein (23) has called a “global imaginary of integration” among allied societies. The US study abroad program in Okinawa was one such Cold War strategy. The US represented the educated Okinawans as “leaders for tomorrow” and highlighted their contributions to the development of postwar Okinawan society with the US’s assistance. Such representations worked to sell the US as a benevolent ruler and to depict the US Occupation of Okinawa as a model of the US military’s interventions in foreign lands. −21− This article first provides a brief review of studies on US perceptions of Okinawa as reflected in popular and military media. I argue that the representations of beiryu-gumi as “leaders for tomorrow” in the US military media supported the US Occupation of Okinawa as a strategy in the Cold War battle for “hearts and minds.” Second, I explore the experiences and identity formation of the Okinawans who studied in the US after they returned to postwar Okinawa. Focusing on their agency, I examine their social interactions as sites of identity construction and negotiation. In this examination, I take Cornell and Hartmann’s (199) view that “identities are signified, underlined, asserted, and reinforced through the informal interactions that compose so much of the fabric of daily living.” This article examines how the realm of everyday life under the US military occupation mediated the identity formation of beiryu- gumi. Following other scholars of identity formation and negotiation, I look at identity as a process of identification rather than as a fixed state – in other words, identity as fluid, not fixed, and as a product of social construction. Stuart Hall, emphasizing both the fictive nature of identity and the social process of identity formation, sees identity not as “already accomplished fact” (222) but as “a ‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (392). My perspective is also informed by interactionist and dramaturgical approaches to identity, which treat it as a product of interactions with others and emphasize that individual identity is shaped through experiences of interaction that affect the ways in which individuals or groups see themselves3 Identity is continually being made and remade in different contexts and situations of interaction among individuals. In this study, I examine how their interactions with others influenced the ways in which they saw themselves in relation to other local Okinawans and US officials in Okinawa, and how they negotiated the meaning of beingbeiryu-gumi . My analysis is mainly based on primary sources such as US government archival documents, US military media related to the study abroad program, and my open-ended and in-depth interviews with 38 former study abroad participants, including 10 women and 28 men. Between 2010 and 2012, I interviewed 27 Okinawans who studied on the US mainland and another 11 who studied in Hawai‘i. The participants’ ages ranged between 66 and 86 −22− years old at the time of the interviews; they were born between 1929 and 1946. They stayed in the US from two to six years between 1952 and 1973, and their ages at that time ranged from 19 to 34. I located interviewees through the snowball sampling method. Snowball sampling was the most appropriate method for this study because an introduction from a previous interviewee allowed me to develop rapport with the interviewees more easily.