NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Last June, M asahide Ota, former Governor of Okinawa passed away. He had been governor of the islands in 1995, when long-time resentment and culture of protest against the US military bases achieved a much greater and more widespread character after the rape of a 12 year old girl by three US servicemen. His was a powerful voice for peace and demilitarization in Okinawa. During a trip in October of 2015 Edward A. Alvarez and I (with the help of the intrepid interpreter Shinako Oyakawa) got to visit him at his Naha office one afternoon. When he learned that we were from Guam, he mentioned several Chamorros that he had met over the years and inquired about them. He told us a number of stories from his life, including as experience after being drafted into the Japanese army during the war. He shared others about the struggles to survive for average Okinawans, after the destruction of their island and displacement in order to build new US military bases. I have long written that Okinawa a

I've left Okinawa for Taiwan, but the stories I heard and learned still stay with me. The violence of war on the land and the people. So similar to Guam, a great conflagration between empires built and fed on war takes place over an island and the people are trapped, caught in between. They get erased in the process in so many ways. Their lives are obliterated. Their memories wiped away. Their claims to the land vanish beneath bases. Even their stories are cast aside. When they fit the heroic and sacrificial narratives of the two great powers, they are brought forth as moments of patriotism, loyalty and power. But if they don't, they are forgotten. I finished reading the English translation of former Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota's book on the battle of Okinawa. Even though Ota himself is Okinawan and a big critic of the way both America and Japan have treated his people, his book still follows the narrative above, focuses on the tales of the two great empires locked in