Race, Memory, and Military Men’s Sexuality

This chapter analyzes Okinawan discourses on race and military men's sexuality, with a focus on how Japanese and American racial discourses have shaped local understandings of difference. It discusses how the imperial rhetoric positioned Okinawans and other Asians alongside the Japanese in unified opposition to Europeans and Americans. During the postwar occupation, the U.S. military and its personnel were introduced into the Okinawa discourses on U.S. imperialism in Asia, Jim Crow segregation, and the 1960s civil rights and black power movements. The chapter also features the personal narratives of individuals who self-consciously viewed their relationships as transgressing established racial boundaries. It narrates stories that illustrate the struggle of military international couples in order to understand and rework racial ideologies and expectations in Okinawa's postwar society.

International Marriage in Japan’s Periphery

This chapter explores military international intimacy in Okinawa in relation to military fencelines and changing community norms, especially regarding marriage, family, and community membership. It mentions Okinawan families and communities that have undergone tremendous change due to modernization and assimilation programs initiated by Japan's imperial government, displacement due to war and U.S. military land expropriations, and recent integration into global economic and communications networks since the nineteenth century. Opportunities for intimacy, notions of appropriate romantic partners, residence and household membership, and responsibilities for childcare and eldercare have shifted accordingly. The chapter situates military international marriage with other types of “marrying out” in Okinawa, as well as international marriage in mainland Japan. It investigates community perceptions of military international marriage in relation to symbolic fencelines that shape changing distinctions among insiders and outsiders and notions of appropriate marriage partners.

The Marine Corps Marriage Package

This chapter examines the complex procedures known as the “marriage package.” It explains that during the early 2000s, marriage package procedures were required by U.S. Marine Corps headquarters in Washington as the only legitimate means for marines and navy corpsmen to legalize a marriage in Japan. The process has been streamlined in recent years but it remains an instructive and relevant ethnographic example for understanding the nature of U.S. military and Japanese and U.S. government regulation of intimate relationships. The chapter focuses on institutional representations of marriage and family found in official documents and the mandatory premarital seminar. It analyzes the impact of institutional discourses on service members' expressions of military affinity and affiliation and the voices of Okinawan spouses as they articulated subject positions markedly different from their feminist counterparts in the antibase movement.