Resistant Islands offers the first comprehensive overview of Okinawan history from earliest times to the present, focusing especially on the recent period of colonization by Japan, its disastrous fate during World War II, and its current status as a glorified US military base. The issue of the base is a hot button in Japan and has become more widely known in the wake of Japan's recent natural disasters and the US military role in emergency relief. Okinawa rejects the base-dominated role allocated it by the US and Japanese governments under which priority attaches to its military functions, as a kind of stationary aircraft carrier. The result has been to throw US-Japan relations into crisis, bringing down one prime minister and threatening the incumbent if he is unable to deliver Okinawan approval of the new base. Okinawa thus has become a template for reassessing the troubled US-Japan relationship-indeed, the geopolitics of the US empire of bases in the Pacific.
- ISBN10 1442215623
- ISBN13 9781442215627
- Publish Date 20 July 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 26 January 2021
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
- Imprint Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 312
- Language English