The Return of the Amami Islands and U

The Return of the Amami Islands and U.S.-Japan Relations[1]

Robert D. Eldridge, Ph.D., Osaka University

A Paper Presented before the Asiatic Society of Japan, founded in 1872

October 20, 2003, Tokyo

At one minute after midnight on December 25, 1953, the Amami Islands in southwestern Japan were returned to Japanese administration after being under U.S. military control for eight years. Literally a “Christmas Present,”the return of the islands was highly welcomed by the Japanese Government and, in particular, by the 219,000 islanders and almost 200,000 Amami residents on the Japanese mainland.

Occupied by the United States since 1945, these islands were viewed as part of the strategically important island chain of the Ryukyus, otherwise known as the Nansei Islands. This view would continue following the conclusion of the 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan, whose Article 3 allowed the United States to carry on with the administration of the islands on behalf of the Allies and Japan following the end of the occupation of Japan in April 1952.

Article 3, negotiated by then special representative John Foster Dulles during the Japanese peace treaty preparations in 1950-1951, was in many ways a product of compromise.[2] It permitted the U.S. military to maintain its rights in the Ryukyu Islands while allowing Japan to retain “residual sovereignty”over them. However, of the Ryukyus, the Amami Island group was geographically, historically, economically, and culturally closer to the main islands of Japan, having been part of one of Kagoshima Prefecture until the end of the war. An active reversion movement, including signature drives, petitions, rallies, and hunger strikes, began in the islands demanding the return of the islands in early 1951 and continued until the time of the August 1953 announcement by Secretary of State Dulles that the United States had decided to return the islands. Influenced by these local movements, the Japanese Government had also increasingly sought the return of the Amami Islands beginning in 1951, and began to strongly push for their return in late 1952 and early 1953. The U.S. Government, which had been stalemated over this question on the eve of the peace treaty, was also unable to ignore this local pressure and official requests. It was able to move toward a resolution of this issue with the decrease in tensions on the neighboring Korean Peninsula, and subsequently made its announcement following the conclusion of the Korean War ceasefire agreement. Fearing the possible damaging of post-treaty U.S.-Japan relations, Ambassador to Japan Robert D. Murphy, Assistant Secretary John M. Allison (who was soon-to-become Ambassador himself), and Secretary Dulles recognized the importance of returning the islands and the forward-looking President Dwight Eisenhower agreed to do so in a June 1953 National Security Council meeting. Dulles, who wanted to see a greater role by Japan in regional security, also hoped to see an increase in Japan’s military strength, but became disappointed with Japan’s lack of initiatives in that direction. Because of this, Dulles, always the realist, did not press for Okinawa’s return at this time in his consultations with his military counterparts.

Nevertheless, the significance of the reversion of the Amami Islands should not be overlooked or downplayed. The reason is that Amami’s return created the very important precedent by which Ogasawara and Okinawa would be returned peacefully, within the framework of Article 3 of the Peace Treaty, in 1968 and 1972 respectively. Moreover, and equally significant, the well-organized Amami reversion movement, active in Tokyo, Kansai, and Kyushu, as well in Amami’s main city of Naze, played a vital role in raising awareness and demonstrating the importance of their return to policy makers at the time, and thus represents, in my opinion, one of the most successful socio-political movements of postwar Japan.

Despite being an important event in postwar Japanese history and U.S.-Japan relations, as well as being greatly intertwined with America’s Okinawa policy as a whole, the return of the Amami Islands has remained curiously unexamined. American historians have not explored the issue in a full study, instead focusing on the more contentious and well known so-called “Okinawa Problem.”This is true as well for Japanese (and Okinawan) scholars. Likewise, the views and efforts of the Japanese government toward seeking the retention by Japan Amami (and Okinawa), have traditionally received little or no attention in the literature (even that in Japanese), although the writer’s The Origins of the Bilateral Okinawa Problem: Okinawa in Postwar U.S.-Japan Relations, 1945-1952, published in 2001 (with the Japanese language version appearing in 2003), went a long way to change that. In addition, little research exists on the Amami reversion movement itself, despite its having had an impact on the policymaking of both the Japanese and U.S. governments.

Fortunately, however, there is a rich, multiarchival base from which to draw. Original documents from the reversion movement, for example, are preserved in Naze City, Kagoshima Prefecture, and several volumes of memoirs and remembrances, written by participants in the movement, also exist, shedding light on the activities of the various reversion groups. Moreover, adding to the different and sometimes colorful viewpoints, these accounts were written by individuals in local Amami-based groups as well as support groups on the mainland, by those of conservative as well as progressive and Communist political persuasion, by those who identified themselves closely with mainland Japanese as well as those who felt themselves to be more“Okinawan,”or southern, and finally, by leader and follower alike. However, because these accounts did not access official papers on the U.S. and Japanese sides, the movement’s impact has remained unknown. With recent declassification of U.S. government and Japanese Foreign Ministry documents, the task of writing this history has now been made easier.[3]

Indeed, these latter materials reveal a rich history and will be of great interest for those interested in Japanese political and diplomatic history, U.S.-Japan relations, postwar Okinawa history, social movements, and studies on the bilateral alliance. Despite the availability of these materials and the fact that almost 50 years have passed since the Amami Islands were returned to Japan in 1953, no comprehensive study of the political and diplomatic history of this reversion process had been done.

The book (Amami Henkan to Nichibei Kankei) that I published recently seeks to correct that. Simply stated, the purpose of it is to introduce an unknown episode in postwar U.S.-Japan relations: the return of the Amami Islands. In this story, a summary of which I will attempt to present tonight, there are three major actors—the U.S. government, the Japanese government, and the Amami Reversion Movement, although as will become clear, there were many sub-actors—groups and individuals—involved that show the many different forces influencing the actions of each larger actor. I conclude by stating, as I alluded to a few moments ago, that the return of the islands resolved an emotionally charged issue in the relationship and established an important precedent for the resolution of other outstanding issues, namely the return of Okinawa.

With this December being the 50th anniversary of the return of the Amami islands, I believe it is a particularly appropriate time to introduce this history. It is to this unknown, but important, story that I now turn.

The story of the reversion of Amami did not suddenly begin in 1953, nor did it start in 1951, when the reversion movement became active. It began long before that during the postwar planning of the U.S. government.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the State Department began its studies on the postwar world and its policies vis-à-vis Japan. These studies picked up in pace immediately following America’s entry into the war in December 1941 after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. The summer before saw U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announce the“Atlantic Charter”which declared among other important ideals that the Allies would not seek territorial expansion through war and would respect the will of the people in any territorial changes. Adopting this as the basis for its policy for territorial disposition, the State Department sought to distinguish between territories Japan acquired by aggression and those historically a part of Japan. It also had to take into consideration the security requirements for the region. As a result a tentative conclusion was reached in September 1942 that the Nansei Islands could“possibly be left in Japanese hands”but that further study was needed.

In July of the following year, the so-called“Masland Paper,”written by Dr. John W. Masland, Jr. of the Territorial Subcommittee within the State Department, was completed suggesting that“conditional retention by Japan”was probably the best solution for the disposition of the“Liuchiu Islands,”the Chinese name by which the State Department was then referring to the Ryukyus. This paper would form the basic policy of the State Department over the years in seeking to leave Okinawa and Amami with Japan.[4]

From their earliest inter-agency discussions regarding the disposition of Japan’s territorial holdings, however, the State Department and the U.S. military, represented primarily by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held completely opposing views. There would be numerous discussions and compromises in later years, particularly around the time of the Peace Treaty, but the basic positions remained essentially far apart.

Unlike the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, established in 1942, saw the Nansei Islands as strategically vital. This view included both Okinawa and Amami, although even the military would come to admit that Amami was less important.

In 1945, following the end of the war, the U.S. military, which had become aware of America’s vulnerability in the wake of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, began to clarify its postwar strategic requirements with the study known as JCS 570. These studies had actually been going on since 1942, but began to take shape near the end of the respective European and Pacific conflicts.[5]

On January 31, 1946, the JCS study (JCS 570/50) was given to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, who had earlier requested it in order to know of the actual military requirements of the Joint Chiefs. The study, to the shock of the State Department, delineated the Nansei Shoto Islands south of 31 degrees North Latitude as a strategic trusteeship in order to allow for U.S. bases, in other words, the entire Nansei Island chain immediately south of Kyushu. The next day, a State Department committee reviewed the JCS study in an attempt to bring the paper it had been working on in line with that of the JCS. In the end, however, they were unable to resolve their differences over trusteeship arrangements for the Nansei Islands during discussions in 1946 and further talks were shelved for the time being. Instead, U.S. President Harry S. Truman announced that the former Japanese Mandated Islands would be placed under a United Nations Strategic Trusteeship (with nothing mentioned as to the fate of the Nansei and Nanpo Island groups, both historically Japanese territory, as opposed to the Mandated Islands which were administered after World War I by Japan on behalf of the League of Nations). In the meantime, as progress on preparations for an early peace treaty conference with Japan was being made, the State Department’s task force on the peace treaty, led by Japan specialist Hugh Borton of Columbia University, finished a draft of it that he had been working on since the fall of 1946. This version reaffirmed the State Department’s position to date, permitting the Ryukyu Islands to be retained by Japan.[6] The Joint Chiefs were furious however and later successfully revised it, although the early peace conference scheduled for August 1947 was not held due to the Soviet Union’s refusal to attend.

As this “great debate”continued in Washington, locally in Okinawa, representatives of the Military Government had actually attempted to prevent the extension of the occupation of Okinawa northward into the Amami Islands. Had these efforts been successful, the badly run occupation and poorly thought-out partition of the Amami Islands and its people from mainland Japan could have been avoided.

On February 2, 1946, General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters announced a directive separating the islands from Japanese control, defining Japan as“includ[ing] the four main islands of Japan (Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku) and the approximately 1,000 smaller adjacent islands, including the Tsushima Islands and the Ryukyu (Nansei) Islands north of 30°North Latitude (excluding Kuchinoshima Island).”Although not specifically named, the Amami Islands were excluded from the geographical definition of Japan in this directive. The“invisible, artificial line”of 30°North Latitude, just south of Kyushu, became in fact a real boundary.[7]

Interestingly, however, the Headquarters of the U.S. Naval Military Government based in Okinawa, to whom the task of managing the occupation of the Amami Islands fell, initially opposed the extension of the military government to the islands stating that“the only effective and economical method of administering [the] Northern Ryukyus is to continue them for the present under Kagoshima Prefecture.”[8]Indeed, in a more strongly worded memo on January 20, approximately one week before the GHQ directive was issued, Rear Admiral John D. Price, Commander, Naval Operating Base, Okinawa, reported to both CINCPAC in Hawaii and the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington that“it is the considered judgment of this Command, after a thorough examination of the whole problem, that the [proposed] course of action . . . is impracticable under the present circumstances and fraught with such serious consequences as to jeopardize the prestige of the United States and of Naval Administration in Far Eastern Waters.”Price’s appeal to Washington went on to explain the circumstances that made the extension of the occupation to the Amami Islands impractical:

The coming of Military Government administration to O-Shimas (sic) Gunto in accordance with the directives will be attended by an economic and political breakdown, and American prestige will have suffered a blow from which it will be possible to recover only through the expenditure of money, time, talent and effort which might have been saved by continuing the present arrangement. All sections of the population will resent American rule on account of the economic collapse. But especially resentful will be the civil servants and others who will lose such vested interests as seniority rights, retirement annuities, anticipated bonuses and the like. Yet it is upon these that the U.S. Military Government must rely for the conduct of local affairs, if the Military government is to avoid inordinate costs in American personnel and facilities. Furthermore, in view of the possible future status of the Ryukyus as wards of the United States, their interim administration must avoid if possible taking such form as to destroy the confidence of the population in American political know-how and in American justice.

Price’s appeals were unsuccessful and in the end the Joint Chiefs of Staff supported MacArthur’s plans to administratively separate the islands.

The GHQ announcement, heard over the radio in Amami and known locally as the “2/2 Proclamation,”obviously came as a great shock to the people there (a“thunderbolt out of the sky”in the words of one resident).[9] It was extremely unsettling as well, as the islanders did not know what to expect with regard to the occupation and the future status of their islands. Two days later on February 4, interaction between Amami and mainland Japan was stopped. The free import and export of items was banned, as was unrestricted travel. Everything subsequently would require permission.

Following this shaky start, nevertheless, a period of cautious optimism set in among the islanders. The people were concerned, of course, about their islands being cut off from mainland Japan, but they also looked forward to the liberal, democratizing policies of the United States and the chance to work toward the creation of a peaceful and prosperous Amami under American guidance.

However, as Price had so accurately predicted, many problems with the military government emerged, and in order to resolve these problems, the islanders had come to the conclusion that the only solution was to be allowed to return to Japanese administration, hence the start of the reversion movement or Amami Fukki Undo.

The Amami Reversion Movement was actually two movements—one based mainland Japan and centered in Tokyo led by the Amami Federation (Amami Rengo), which was the successor organization of the Amami Association of Tokyo, or Tokyo Amami Kai, and the other in Amami, the Council for the Reversion of Amami to Japan (Amami Oshima Nihon Fukki Kyogikai), or Fukkyo. These two groupings worked together closely, despite the great distances and primitive communications that existed at the time, and was in the author’s opinion highly successful.