Securing Okinawa for Miscegenation: a Historical and Literary Discourse Analysis of Amerasians in Okinawa, 1945-2000
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! ! SECURING OKINAWA FOR MISCEGENATION: A HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF AMERASIANS IN OKINAWA, 1945-2000 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Annmaria Mitsuko Shimabuku February 2010 ! © 2010 Annmaria Mitsuko Shimabuku ! SECURING OKINAWA FOR MISCEGENATION: A HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF AMERASIANS IN OKIANWA, 1945-2000 Annmaria Mitsuko Shimabuku, Ph. D. Cornell University 2010 Through an extensive collection of journalistic, archival, and literary materials, I illustrate the establishment, maintenance, and controversy surrounding miscegenation between U.S. military men and Okinawan women specifically from the standpoint of Amerasians that were born as a result thereof. As Okinawans were exposed to the raw violence of extraterritoriality of the U.S. military—most frequently expressed through the trope of sexual violence—an escape from that violence was quickly configured as a recuperation or increased protection of state sovereignty. In this way, journalists, politicians, and activists have frequently used mixed-blood children as the “evidence” in a juridical model to prove the “fact” of oppression. However, in a declension into biopolitics via three genealogists Nietzsche, Weber, and Foucault, I illustrate the assumptions implicit in this claim. The state is posited as a repressive institution that a political group known as “we” must resist. Here, metaphor is misconceived as the relationship between the state as an external force that exerts violence onto individual bodies that are in turn called to arms in the name of resistance. However, this rests on a causal understanding between the doer and the deed, or a political will that can be realized through sheer tenacity. Instead, I show through ! Nietzsche how this function of metaphor is repressed to give rise to the fiction of a causal agent. Furthermore, I inflect my reading of metaphor with biopolitics through Esposito’s account of Nietzsche. That is, the state is not merely the repressive power that threatens life, but it must be articulated in conjunction with the power to secure life. The biopolitical state is concerned with the life of the population at large and the power of the state becomes literally infused through the veins of human bodies. This dissertation gambles with the hope of dislodging Amerasians from a damning biopolitical dilemma: seeds of destruction of a genocidal rape (of women as victims) that must be contained to secure the Okinawan population at large or Amerasians as the embodiment of the “success” of Okinawa’s ability to secure entry into a liberalized global economy (via the bodies of women as free-willing agents). ! BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Annmaria Mitsuko Shimabuku was born to Mitsuko Shimabuku and Thomas Schoonbeck in Muskegon, MI on January 11, 1976. From age one, she was raised solely by her mother alongside her two brothers, David and Steven O’Hanneson, and grew up in San Jose, CA from age four to seventeen. With the emotional and financial support of her mother and oldest brother, she was able to attend Middlebury College, where she majored in Japanese Language and Literature. While at Middlebury, she studied abroad to Kansai University of Foreign Languages, and completed a graduation thesis entitled “Marginality in the Literature of Ôe Kenzaburô” in 1997. After working for one year in Tokyo, she received a Monbusho fellowship to study at Tokyo University as a researcher from 1998, advanced to the M.A. course in Sociology in 1999, and completed coursework for the Ph.D. in 2004. In 2003, she matriculated into the Ph.D. program in East Asian Literature at Cornell University. While studying at Cornell, she became partnered with her long-time friend Masaki Kinjo, who joined her in the U.S. in 2006. Currently, she is Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages at University of California, Riverside since 2009. """! ! Dedicated to Mitsuko Shimabuku "#! ! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I feel infinitely lucky and a tad bit guilty to have been privilege to the enormous resources that went into my making at the institutional, community, and family level. My advisor at Tokyo University, Ueno Chizuko gave me invaluable training in feminist studies. Kang Sangjung provided a safe space in his seminars at Tokyo University in addition to many professional opportunities. The rich theoretical insights of Osaka University’s Tomiyama Ichirô were particularly helpful as they were rigorously informed with his specialized knowledge of Okinawan studies. My advisor at Cornell, Naoki Sakai challenged me with his hyper-philosophical seminars and encouraged my growth as a theoretician. My Cornell experience started with an exhilarating seminar with Satya Mohanty, in which I was introduced to a network of innovative scholars involved in the Future of Minority Studies including Paula Moya, who graciously hosted my year exchange at Stanford University in 2006. Derek Chang generously extended his time and suggestions to me, and served as an invaluable interlocutor on topics of African/Asian-American studies. Brett de Bary, Victor Koschmann, and Katsuya Hirano all went above and beyond their usual call to duty to take the time to read chapters and provide me with invaluable advice. Nomura Kôya of Hiroshima Shûdô University was my mentor. If it weren’t for his intellectual and emotional support, love for the Okinawan community, and insights as a minority intellectual who has weathered the Japanese academy without selling out, I am not sure if I would have been able to survive the demands of my profession. If Kôya-san showed me the possibilities of academia to intervene with real issues, then Kinjo Kaoru showed me its natural limitations through his example as a hands-on community mentor. Kaoru-san has demonstrated nothing less than pure genius in the art and physics of activism in the Okinawan community of Taisho-ku, Osaka City and #! ! beyond. Kutsuwada Ryûzô was my most intimate theoretical interlocutor, emotionally supportive friend, and patient editor of my Japanese papers during my time at Tokyo University. I am most indebted to his generosity, kindness, sensitivity, and impressive intelligence. Through camaraderie and conflict alike, there is no doubt my cohort at Cornell compelled me to strive higher and strengthened me as a mind. Chris Ahn, amongst others, enriched my total Cornell experience, and made Ithaca a little saner place to live. Lastly, I have discussed almost every issue in this dissertation with KSJ. Because of him, I have not been alone. Above all, it is my mother Mitsuko Shimabuku to whom I am most grateful. Her intelligence, grace, and generosity towards her children impress me more and more as I grow older. David O’Hanneson was my brother and fill-in father who disciplined and financially supported me through my college years. I am blessed to have my second brother, Steven O’Hanneson, who perhaps challenges the soundness of my research the most to mesh with our reality. Gene Smyth was not only a patient partner to my mother, but by extension, a faithful advocate (and handyman) for her children including myself. Masaki Kinjo has been my friend and partner through which I can only hope to create hope amidst our collective condition of hopelessness. It goes without saying that the problem with acknowledgments is by bringing into light certain names that are to be honored, the countless that are nameless are rendered into darkness. To that effect, I can only hope that my words carry the weight of the life that was allowed to die and the life that was prevented from being born. #"! ! TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch……………………………………………………………..…….iii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………..…iv Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………..v-vi List of Tables………………………………………………………………………….ix List of Abbreviations…………………………..…...……………………………….x-xi Introduction…………………………..……………………………………………..1-10 Chapter 1: “Stillborn: Amerasians and the Restoration of Japanese Sovereignty”.11-39 Chapter 2: “Petitioning Subjects: The Management of Sexual Relations in Okinawa from 1945 to 1952 and the Crisis of Sovereignty”………………………………..40-78 Chapter 3: “The Power of Resistance: Let the Amerasians Die and Make the ‘Japanese’ Live in the All-Island Struggle, 1952-1958”………………………...79-101 Chapter 4: “Responsibility for Consequence: Testimony of Okinawan Women and Amerasians on the Road to Reversion, 1958-1972”……………………………102-127 Chapter 5: “The Question of Resistance in the Age of Empire: Between Genocide and #""! ! Compulsory Nationalization, 1972-2000”……………………………………...128-145 Chapter 6: “A Genealogy of Sex under a U.S. Military Regime in Okinawa: Postcolonial Children in Exile who ‘Must Nonetheless Endeavor to Live’”…..146-195 &KDSWHU³6HFXULQJ2NLQDZDIRU0LVFHJHQDWLRQ$%LRSROLWLFDO5HDGLQJRI1DJDGǀ Eikichi’s ‘Tent Village of Garama’”…………………………………………...196-233 Conclusion……………………………………………………..……………….234-236 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………237-256 #"""! ! LIST OF TABLES Table 1: VD in the Ryukyu Islands and Japan from 1956-1960…………….………..70 Table 2: Mixed-blood Births for 3 Years as of September 1949……………………..77 Table 3: Middle District Social Welfare Association Survey of Mixed-Blood Children…………………………………………………………………….118 Table 4: April 1970 Survey of Mixed-Blood Children Attending Schools in Okinawa…………………………………………………………………....119 Table 5: April 1970 Survey of Racial Background of