الأزمة السياسية حول جزر أوكيناوا و أثرها في العلاقات اليابانية-الأمريكية (1945-1972)‎ م في ضوء وثائق الخارجية الأمريكية

Abstract EN

With the great military strategic importance of the Japanese islands-Okinawa-to the American administration, it was not ready to give up control over them, and refused to get out of the islands, and even the united states of America imposed strategic guardianship on the islands in 1948 ad, and the Americans continued to rule them as a major military base after Japan’s defeat in world war II (1939-1945 ad), and this did not concern the Japanese much at the time ; because they were preoccupied with restoring their economic structure after the war.

as for the people of Okinawa themselves, they were vacillating in their position ; but the American rule made them the most adherent of the Japanese nationalism, and then they demanded to return to join their country.

however, the strategic and military importance of the Okinawa group of islands for the united states of America.

it made Okinawa a special position in the American strategy, and Japan kept quarreling to stay in it and not leave it.

rather, it was described in most American documents as an insoluble crisis, and it became the most severe crisis in American-Japanese relations, especially in the early seventies, and the more the Japanese economy became stronger, and became the Japanese are more self-confident, have become less tolerant of their subordination to American policy, and more critical of their dignity than the presence of American forces on their lands.

hence, the crisis of the return of Okinawa continued to arise from time to time to have an impact on American-Japanese relations ; and the political crisis between the two countries developed over the return of the islands to Japan, until the conclusion of the agreement known as the treaty of mutual cooperation & security between the two countries in 1960, which confirmed and consolidated the existing situation between the two countries regarding Okinawa.

then the Japanese fears increased with the war in Vietnam in 1965 AD.

many Japanese did not like what was happening in Vietnam, and then demonstrations took place throughout Japan against the us military presence in Okinawa ; at that time, the crisis of annexation of Okinawa arose sharply, despite the return of the Bonin islands to Japan at the time ; this did not ease the severity of the crisis resulting from the demand for the return of Okinawa, and the Japanese felt that the rule of the nearly one million Japanese inhabiting these islands by the Americans made them the only colony in the world after world war ii, and it became necessary and important to solve this crisis, the Japanese considered that in 1970 AD-when the end of the security treaty concluded for ten years since 1960 AD-comes a circumstance that carries with it a major crisis in the Japanese-American relations.

so it was imperative to avoid the aggravation of this crisis ; where the demand for the termination of the security treaty, the end of the us military presence in Japan, and the return of the Okinawa islands group to Japan the difficulty of returning Okinawa to Japan comes from the fact that the American bases established in Okinawa are among the most important American bases in the entire east Asian region at a time when the Vietnam war was in full swing, and Japanese sentiments were that the renewal of the 1960 security treaty would keep these bases also when they return Okinawa to the motherland, which created this political crisis both internally and externally-the subject of this research paper-which was exacerbated by the mismanagement of the American islands, and the united states storing nuclear weapons on the island, in violation of Japan's nuclear policy, and although Okinawa gained its independence , and returned to Japan in 1972, the united states maintains its military forces on the island still to this day.