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Democracy Betrayed: Okinawa Under U.S. Occupation, Kensei Yoshida

East Asian Studies Press

Kensei Yoshida's Democracy Betrayed: The U.S. Occupation of Okinawa is easily the best history, analysis, and commentary we have on the United States's domina­tion from 1945 to 1972 over the unlucky people of Okinawa. It is written from an Oki­nawan perspective. Yoshida is of course aware that when the United States's formal do­minion over Okinawa ended in 1972 and it condoned a pro forma "reversion" of Oki­nawa to Japanese sovereignty, the semicolonial conditions he describes did not end. In fact, they continued and persist to the present day in an often exacerbated form. For the past fifty-six years, and with …