Long Journey to a Huge Country

Arriving in the U.S., women interviewed recalled worrying about leaving their parents and lacking English proficiency. They were impressed with the continent’s size compared to Okinawa Island and with America’s affluence. Yet some were disappointed that their husbands’ living standards fell short of what they’d seen in Hollywood movies. During the late 1940s and early 1950s women struggling to survive and support their children in Okinawa went into black marketing of commodities from Army post exchanges. One interviewee married the soldier who had been supplying her. When asked what had initially attracted them to their husbands, one woman recalled that, while she had hated Americans after the war, the soldiers she met impressed her with the courteous, gentle, and caring attitude they displayed toward women. Another remembered Americans as neatly groomed, smelling of soap, and well dressed in crisply starched uniforms. Some parents vehemently opposed their daughters’ marriages, even threatening to beat or disown them. But they later relented with the birth of their grandchildren, offering material and moral support to the family. As of 2010 there were at least thirty-eight Okinawa prefectural associations in the U.S., most founded by the wives of American soldiers they had met in Okinawa.

American Soldiers and Okinawan Women

In September, 1945, with most Okinawans still in refugee camps, the U.S. military ordered elections for civilian leaders in which women were granted the right to vote for the first time, seven months earlier than in mainland Japan. Yet they were far more concerned about the many rapes committed by American soldiers. Women and girls were abducted from fields while searching for food, dragged away from their homes, and assaulted in front of their families. After months of inaction, the U.S. military decided to set up “special amusement areas” for prostitution in certain towns. Some Okinawans favoured this policy as a “breakwater” to protect women and children of “good” families, while others opposed it as exploitation of women. In 1967, at the peak of the Vietnam War, an estimated 10,000 women engaged in prostitution. In 1948 the U.S. military rescinded a ban on marriages between U.S. soldiers and Okinawan women that failed to prevent couples from having intimate relations and living together. Still, commanding officers pressured soldiers not to marry, threatening disciplinary transfers. By 1967, among thousands of biracial children in Okinawa, about half were raised by mothers or their relatives with little or no financial support from fathers.

GI Brides

The Japanese term “ame-jo,” meaning women who date American men, carries a tone of disapproval. Such an attitude persists in Germany and other countries with U.S. bases. It contradicts the attitude of acceptance toward local men who date foreign women. The attitudes of Okinawan women toward their marriages have changed considerably over time. Among interviewees, younger women with higher levels of economic status and education were far less dependent on their husbands than older women. Older women felt more pressure to follow their husbands and adopt American culture while younger women encouraged their husbands to learn about Okinawan culture. Older women worked to help with household expenses while younger women sought jobs to develop careers even if they were still struggling with English. Within their marriages women cited differences in culture, rather than language, as a cause of misunderstandings. Some even said that their lack of complete fluency in English might have helped avoid conflict by preventing them from saying hurtful things. Older women felt more isolated in America, missing the closeness with relatives in Okinawa. But both younger and older women complained about complicated ties to relatives there, preferring their privacy in an “individualistic” America.

Varied Experiences of International Marriage

Interviewees included women with successful marriages whose husbands had died, one from the effects of Agent Orange after deployment in Vietnam and another from leukemia. Flashbacks from his deployment in Vietnam also led to alcoholism that eventually incapacitated another woman’s husband. The couple also had a successful marriage and four children who she worked to support after her husband was unable to hold a job. After two children were born, another woman’s husband turned verbally abusive and expelled her from their home. Emotionally devastated, she subsequently struggled to support herself. Another woman married a marine despite her family’s reservations and moved to the U.S. The marriage was going smoothly, but after the birth of their third child, her husband impregnated another woman and, over his objections, she obtained a divorce. Another interviewee whose marriage seemed to be going well divorced her husband after he ran off with a mutual friend. A woman returning with her fiancé to the U.S. discovered that he was already married. Though they eventually married after he obtained a divorce, her husband soon abandoned her after which she struggled to raise her two children and obtain legal residency in the U.S.

The US Military in Okinawa

The Battle of Okinawa, which began in late March and ended in late June, 1945, took the lives of 94,000 Japanese soldiers, 28,000 Okinawans in local defence corps, which included middle school boys, 12,500 Americans, and an estimated 122,000 civilians, between one-fourth and one-third of the prefecture’s wartime population. Most of the survivors ended up in refugee camps for several months. It was the only battle of the Pacific War fought in a Japanese prefecture. With the congealing of the Cold War in the late 1940’s, the U.S. government decided to hold strategically located Okinawa for the long term, stationing some 30,000 troops there. The U.S. created civilian administrative agencies, but the military maintained ultimate authority until reversion to Japanese sovereignty in 1972. The result was an economy heavily dependent on jobs and incomes generated by the bases, such as auto mechanic, janitor, maid, taxi driver, bar hostess, and prostitute. To make room for the rapidly expanding bases, the U.S. military forcibly evicted Okinawans from their land with “bayonets and bulldozers.” Massive protests led to Congressional hearings and marginally increased, though still wholly inadequate, “rental payments” to landowners. Reversion restored Japanese administration to Okinawa, but the bases remain to this day,

Introduction

After World War II, the U.S. military built vast installations and imposed occupation rule until 1972. For all the post-war years Okinawans have lived next door to American bases. As one result, large numbers of Okinawan women married American military men and immigrated to the U.S. Couples had to overcome stubborn resistance to their marriages from the U.S. military in Okinawa, and a legacy of discriminatory immigration laws in the United States, especially targeting Asians. Couples also faced racial prejudice living in the U.S., where interracial marriages were illegal in several states until 1967. Negative stereotypes about international marriages abound in American popular culture, such as James A. Michener’s 1954 novel Sayonara about an American airman and his Japanese fiancee. Yet many women interviewed in this study had successful marriages and fulfilling lives, demonstrating extraordinary courage and perseverance in adjusting to a markedly different society and culture. Many have formed local Okinawa prefectural associations throughout the U.S. for mutual support and participation with their families in Okinawan cultural events.

Living in America

Witnesses at the 2012 trial in Ohio of a former airman convicted of beating his Okinawan wife to death testified that he had often battered her. The case exemplified the isolation of wives who arrive with no acquaintances in the U.S. besides their husbands, and cannot overcome the language barrier to make other contacts. Isolation also results from the individualistic nature of American society. Interviewees accustomed to close relationships with relatives and neighbours typical in Okinawa were surprised that in the U.S. “neighbours don’t even speak to each other.” Many suffered from homesickness. However, one expressed her gratitude for the close friendship and support of an American woman next door who guided her to the supermarket and post office, teaching her the essentials for daily life. Several encountered racial discrimination in employment, marriage (before 1967), and the bullying of their children in school. Some women had been apprehensive about coming to the U.S. where Japanese Americans were interned during World War II and anti-Japanese hostility persisted afterwards. Those whose husbands were still in the military had free family health care and discount shopping, but had to endure their husbands’ long absences, and deployments to areas of conflict.

The Survey

The survey and interviews were conducted from 1995 to 1997, with follow-up interviews in 2010 and 2011. Respondents, who ranged in age from twenties to eighties, were asked about their circumstances before marriage, when they had come with their husbands to the U.S., what their lives had been like in America, what had given them the most trouble, what they enjoyed, and how they viewed their lives today. Items in the questionnaire survey included age and birthplace, number of years in the U.S, adjustments to American life, marital history, education, employment, children, and future plans. More than half listed struggles with English as their biggest problem, with cultural differences second. Younger women had higher levels of education. Most women had worked, more older women as manual labourers in factories, and more younger women as office workers and Japanese language teachers. The most common job for all was waitressing in Japanese restaurants. Contrary to what is widely believed, the rate of their divorces was not especially high compared to divorce rates in Japan, while the rate of re-marriages was much higher. The majority said they intended to remain in the U.S., but some younger women considered returning to Okinawa.