Okinawa was occupied by the U. S. Armed Forces after World War II. It served as the starting point of that control system from 1945 until 50. In that age, Christianity became the core of the mental reconstruction of the community. The Christianity of Okinawa then expanded this power by enriching political relations with the occupation forces. This paper demonstratively clarifies these facts by analyzing the memorandums of the concerned persons in those days and the first historical materials. During that period, the Christians in Okinawa established the “Christ League of Okinawa” and propagated Christianity in a systematic manner. They received the indirect support of the U. S. Armed Forces. A part of the Christian leaders made maximum use of this support and tried to favorably proceed with the postwar reconstruction. They partly acknowledged military occupation. On the other hand, another leader maintained a bridge between the Occupation Forces and the Okinawan government. They devoted themselves to the mission's activities. Such two tides existed in the Christianity of Okinawa later on as well.

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By Article 3 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty signed in September 1951, the U.S. could continue to rule over Okinawa and have the exclusive right to maintain military bases there. After the ratification of the treaty in April 1952, people of Okinawa voiced opposition in regard to the use of land by the U.S. military. In June 1956, the U.S. authorities in Okinawa released a Report of the Price Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee (hereinafter called the Price Report) that supported the land policy proposed by the U.S. military. The Price Report recommended lump sum payments for fee title and accepted to the planned acquisition of additional land. However, the release of the report inflamed the opposition movement of the people of Okinawa.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the political process over the Price Report in 1956 by focusing on the attitudes of the Japanese Foreign Office and the U.S. Department of State.
After the release of the Price Report, Okinawans requested that the Japanese Foreign Office negotiate with the U.S. government to solve the land dispute. During June and July of 1956, Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu requested the U.S. Ambassador John Allison to abandon lump sum payments and to reduce the acquisition of additional land.
Following the recommendation of the U.S. Embassy in Japan, the U.S. State Department carefully reexamined the Price Report in regard to the possibility of abandoning lump sum payments in order to improve U.S.-Japan relations. However, shortly before the State Department was due to hold a conference with the Department of Defense (which supported the Price Report), the issue of abandoning lump sum payments was dropped, because the U.S. Consul General in Okinawa strongly recommended that the State Department not retreat from the Price Report. However, the State Department did ask the Pentagon to make some modifications, such as abandoning the acquisition of the fee title, in view of possible damage to U.S.-Japan relations.
After this political process revealed the importance of taking into consideration the involvement of the Japanese Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department, it was clear that the U.S. military was not capable of ruling Okinawa on its own. Thereafter, U.S. military control over Okinawa was always considered in the context of Japan-U.S. relations. Therefore, the political process over the Price Report in 1956 marked the start of Japanese Foreign Office and U.S. State Department involvement in U.S. military control of Okinawa. Concomitantly, it also was the starting point of recognizing that the role of the U.S. military in Okinawa was an issue affecting Japan-U.S. relations.

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This study aims at elucidating the significance of the struggle against the U. S. military land acquisition program in Okinawa, a movement which gained momentum immediately following the announcement of the so-called Price report in June 1956. To accomplish this aim, we divided the movement into the three periods of inception, enhancement and expansion, and analyzed the character and distinguishing features of each period. The significance of the land struggle may be summarized by the following two points. First, this struggle represented an Okinawan people's challenge to the basic U. S. policy of maintaining military bases in Okinawa for the defense of the free world as well as to the concomitant policy of retaining long-term administrative rights over the islands. Second, the struggle was not only a movement against the U. S. military land acquisition program but also a prototype of the reversion movement in the 1950's. The character of this reversion movement was clearly based on the concept of reversion developed during the land struggle.

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The main objective of this paper is to clarify the basic character of the reversion movement in Okinawa. To achieve this objective, the paper has first explored the patterns of orientations among Okinawan inhabitants towards the politics of reversion, then examined the attitudes of several influential Okinawan political groups towards the reversion problem, and finally analyzed some important reversion activities, especially in the period after 1965. As a result, it was found that the pattern of resistance or rejection, rather than that of easy accommodation, prevailed among the Okinawans under U. S. administration, that a wide range of differences in attitudes towards the reversion problem, particularly towards the issue of U. S. military bases, existed among the Okinawan groups, and that three closely related aspects or phases of the reversion movement, characterized respectively as the nationalistic, Constitution-oriented and antidiscrimination movement, were discernible.

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近年、歴史研究のなかで、記憶と場所の関係が重要なテーマの一つとなっている。本稿もこの流れをふまえるものであるが、重視するのは集団ごとに場所の記憶は異なっているという点である。何らかの機会にある場所が記憶の場として形成されていく時、その場は複数の集団が関与するコンタクト・ゾーンとなる。そこには、支配的な記憶が単純に敷衍されるのではなく、集団相互間の抵抗・交渉 協調といった営為があり、必ずしも単一の記憶が構成され るわけではない。本稿では、戦後の沖縄県糸満市域を研究対象地とし、沖縄戦戦没者をめぐって琉球政府などが「慰霊空間の中心」を形成していくなかで、地域住民がどのような反応を示し、行動していったのかを具体的に検討することにより、この点を例証していく。

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