Most of the growing body of literature on Okinawa addresses issues of security, local politics, or war memories. Little of it is gendered with the exception of the Battle of Okinawa, 1945, the bar and brothel culture which developed under American Occupation, and cultural contributions to music and dance. The life of Nakamura Fumiko provides a rare glimpse into the varied experiences of Okinawan women in the 20th century. Her story, which covers the Asia-Pacific War, the long occupation of her home island (1945-1972), and return to Japanese sovereignty, has been told primarily through oral history and a short published reminiscence. These are both good sources but are somewhat fragmented and instill a desire to know much more about her and other women of the same period. The following brief biography is based on the only currently available source in English (see text "Nakamura Fumiko" on this site).

Early Years. Born c. 1913 in the coastal village of Motobu (located northwest of the prefectural capital at Naha), Nakamura attended elementary school in the 1920s and assimilated with little question the ritual and ceremonies of becoming a good Japanese subject and learning to revere the emperor. Her courses included Japanese to correct the local Okinawan dialect. By 1933, she was a graduate of a normal school and had returned to her home village as a teacher and leader of a girls’ organization. Together with her students, she waved flags, sang songs, saw soldiers off, and in various ways supported the expanding war in China. She helped to make comfort bags (or care packages) and to sew thousand stitch amulet belts for servicemen. Though patriotic, she overheard critical comments and was aware of local surveillance by the regular and military police. News of glorious victories was undercut by the return of bone boxes, a clear sigh that Japan was in fact not winning the war. There were many funerals to help families mourn those who had died.

Marriage and Migration to the Mainland. Nakamura married a fellow villager in 1940, and the two left to find work in Yokohama the following year. They had a taste of war on the home front when an American bomb hit a factory not far from where they lived. In April 1945, their own house was hit and burned down, leaving the couple and their two children with virtually no possessions. They were not caught in the Battle of Okinawa and its terrible loss of civilian and military lives, but Nakamura got word that her mother had died while attempting to hide from American soldiers in a cave. The family was unable to return to Okinawa until early 1946 and in the meantime took up residence in a detention camp. By then, Okinawa had come under the direct rule of the American Army.

Occupied Okinawa. Nakamura was horrified to find Okinawa so devastated by the war. With her husband ill and unable to work, she had no choice but to return to teaching, carrying her third baby on her back. The village school was literally a hut with a dirt floor. Somehow, the family got through the next few years. Books and magazines became their greatest luxury. As Nakamura said later, Occupied Okinawa, 1945 to 1972, “was a terrible experience.” There was crime, the use of the island to bomb Korea and Vietnam, and GIs on the prowl for drink and women. Most of all, she resented violations of human rights. Americans preached but did not practice democracy. Protest, she said, became her calling. It was an easy path to pacifist activism. Okinawa’s return to Japan in May 1972 was a joyous occasion.

Reversion Years. Reversion to Japanese sovereignty had been a popular issue with Okinawans, but they were soon disappointed in Japan’s policies. Nakamura said the Japanese made them feel inferior. Moreover, Okinawa remained a garrison island and host to at least 75 percent of the U.S. military stationed in Japan as well as a contingent from Japan’s Self-Defense Force. Nakamura began to protest against the Japanese as well as the Americans. The Japanese government pushed tourism but not economic rehabilitation and better education. In her later years, following retirement in 19974, Nakamura became a documentary filmmaker in an effort to educate young Okinawans about the last battle in Okinawa and the reality of war. Ironically, much of the evidence, both stills and film, was created by Americans and obtained from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Nakamura traveled to Hawaii and the United States to show the film and subsequently made a second one while continuing to agitate against war itself, not simply to protest American bases in her home island.