The purpose of this study was to measure the acceptance attitude of Okinawan residents toward Okinawan immigrants, clarify the actual situation, and examine the factors that determine the acceptance attitude. The results of a web-based survey of 724 Okinawan residents revealed two factors, namely “positive acceptance” and “embarrassment”, and the scores for each factor indicated that Okinawan residents’ acceptance of Okinawan immigrants was relatively positive. A structural equation modeling analysis of the determinants of acceptance attitude toward Okinawan immigrants revealed that Okinawan identity and knowledge of Okinawan immigrants had a relatively strong effect on attitude toward these immigrants, regardless of whether Okinawan residents were from within or outside Okinawa.

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This paper examines how Japanese in Hawaiʻi have attempted to share and pass down their war memories (especially the memories of arrest, eviction, detention, and internment) during the Days of Remembrance (hereafter DoR), between 1989 and 2022. There were 26 DoR events held during this period in Hawaiʻi. The first DoR event in Hawaiʻi was held in 1989, a year after the enactment of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Over the past 33 years, DoR events in Hawaiʻi have provided participants with hazy wartime memories of Japanese people in Hawaiʻi. Since 2006, the focus of the event has been on the Honouliuli Internment Camp, but the experiences of those sent to internment camps on the mainland and those evicted from their homes have been underplayed. Moreover, the experience of living under martial law, which was the experience of most Japanese people in Hawaiʻi, has not been widely discussed in the event.

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Okinawans who were captured in the Battle of Okinawa and held as Prisoners of War (POW) in Hawaiʻi have spoken about writing songs and holding theatrical performances during their time at detention facilities in Hawaiʻi. However, their cultural activities have been overshadowed by the cultural revival in civilian camps in postwar Okinawa. Popular songs in Okinawa depicting experiences during the Battle of Okinawa and the postwar revival of Okinawan theatre served to forestall adequate study of the cultural activities of Okinawan POWs in Hawaiʻi. Nevertheless, songs about the experiences of Okinawan POW that spanned Okinawa and Hawaiʻi and multiple performances of Okinawan theatre in the POW camps in Hawaiʻi show that the cultural activities in POW camps in Hawaiʻi not only passed on prewar Okinawan culture but also produced new creative works.

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This article focuses on the letters and reports about three French missionaries who began to stay in the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1855. Among a number of missionaries’ documents collected in the Paris Foreign Missions, only those written in 1855 will be mainly examined to clarify how their arrival to Ryukyu was realized, how their life was settled and how the Ryukyuan government took measures for their settlement. These documents will provide complemental aspects to what we knew already about the French missionaries stay in Ryukyu through the documents as the Kingdom’s official reports and the missionaries’ already published letters.

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In the 1840s and 1850s, seven French missionaries stayed in the kingdom of Ryûkyû. While waiting for the conclusion of the treaty between Japan and France, they used their time to learn the different languages (the dialect of Ryukyu, Mandarin and Japanese). The first French missionary in Ryukyu at that time could not get any help from the government of the kingdom. Following the meeting between the Ryûkyû governors and the French admiral in 1846, the next two missionaries were able to learn the language with Ryûkyû language teachers and some texts. In the 1850s, missionaries arrived in Ryûkyû bringing the result of the studies of their predecessors. Contrary to the previous decade, the Ryûkyû government allowed to provide not only language teachers but also books in Japanese since the conclusion of the Franco-Ryûkyû convention in 1855. Thus, even if their language teachers taught without too much zeal, the French missionaries redoubled their energy to learn and improve their level.

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The purpose of this study is to obtain basic data about suicides outside of community in a remote island. The results of the survey showed that the highest percentage of suicides were committed at home. This fact indicates that they had a living base in where they committed suicide. In addition, the results of the Fischer’s exact test for suicide outside and inside the community showed that “20s,” “unmarried,” of outside suicides were significantly higher than inside in terms of household composition, and “working in category II” and “other” were significantly higher in terms of the main work type. The proportion of suicides outside community is higher in smaller communities than larger one. This result suggest that suicide occurred in larger communities than original community in which the resident registration card was issued. Since many people on remote islands leave the island for looking for employment or higher education, suicide prevention measures in school education and the establishment of social support systems outside of remote island communities are considered necessary to prevent suicide.

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