Occupied Okinawa #5: My Unused Pokemon Metaphor
The past few days have involved alot of very interesting discussion about the possibilities for Okinawa to become an independent country or seek greater autonomy from Japan. While at the conference that I attended most people were sympathetic in some ways to an independent Okinawa, some were still very resistant. If you are from Guam, then you may not think that Guam is very close to becoming independent. You may think of it as being an idea that only a few people take seriously. You would be right for the most part, but you would also be diminishing the fact that over the past 40 years Guam has come to accept the possibility of the idea being independent. The majority of people may not like it or may be afraid of it, but they can imagine it, albeit in very rudimentary and crude ways. In Okinawa people seem not to be able to accept this yet. There is an independent past, but like Guam, the present seems so intimately connected to the colonizer and so independence seems