Emperor Hirohito’s radio announcement of the Japanese surrender on
August 15, 1945 was a mediated collective experience for mainland Japanese
people, but the Okinawan experience was different as a result of media deprivation.
On the same day, the U.S. Military Government of Okinawa announced
Japan’s defeat to local Okinawan leaders, handing out the Uruma Shimpo, a
handwritten Japanese language mimeograph prepared in a U.S. civilian camp.
The Uruma Shimpo headlined Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration
as good news: “a long-waited peace finally came!” The Emperor’s rescript was
not published in the same issue, but on September 12 after the 9.2 Surrender
Ceremony on the U.S. Missouri between Japan and the Allied Powers. Based on
U.S. archives and the reconsideration of Okinawan memoires, this paper discusses
the U.S. occupation force’s strategic suppression of the presence of the
Japanese Emperor as a symbol in order to psychologically detach Okinawans as
part of their plan to separate Okinawa from mainland Japan. However, on September
12, the U.S. Military Government of Okinawa published the rescript for
the purpose of psychological warfare to effectively organize the U.S. mopping
up operations, targeting Japanese soldiers and local civilians who still showed
resistance. While the U.S. Military Government regarded the Uruma Shimpo as
their official newspaper for disseminating news regarding the Japanese surrender
to the Okinawan society without any civilian media, the Okinawans engaged in
its early production regarded it as their own newspaper. The Ryukyu Shimpo,
the successor of the Uruma Shimpo, documented the mimeograph days in a
corporate publication in 1973. Unable to fully record the experience in 1945
under U.S. censorship, the Okinawan press reported the media history after the
reversion.
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