Since the reversion of Okinawa from American occupation to Japanese sovereignty in 1972, these subtropical islands have become the site of a complex colonial and postcolonial relationship of resistance and dependence between Okinawa, Japan, and the United States.

Linda Isako Angst provides a glimpse behind the historical and geopolitical dimensions of the Okinawan experience by drawing attention to the diverse perspectives of women from different generational and economic backgrounds. Angst recounts the memories and experiences of these women—including farming and fishing women who survived forced mass suicides during the final battle of World War II, and their daughters in the postwar era; the elite Himeyuri student nurses and their surviving classmates; postwar feminists and other women activists in the powerful anti-base movement; and scores of “ordinary” women who worked in and around U.S. military bases in the postwar decades—to chart the development of Okinawan political subjectivity through the critical roles of women in their social, political, and economic contributions to a gender-inflected politics of identity. By foregrounding these compelling personal narratives, this coherent ethnography reveals how Okinawan women can offer a critical view of the modern Japanese nation-state from its margins.

Linda Isako Angst is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Lewis & Clark College.