14: “MASTERS OF EXTORTION”

  1. NMV Consulting, “Kevin K. Maher,” biography, http://nmvconsulting.com/NMV_Consulting/Maher.html.

  2. Japan Ministry of Defense, “Defense of Japan 2013,” white paper, Tokyo, 2013, 156–57.

  3. The last sentence draws on Sayo Saruta, “The Meeting at the Department of State, December 3, 2010, 4pm, at the State Department,” notes, n.d. [2010]. All of the other quotations come from my own notes. I present quotations from Maher exactly as he spoke them and exactly as I recorded them during the briefing. I have not paraphrased or changed Maher’s words, and I use quotation marks only when I am certain that I captured his exact speech. Any discrepancies between my notes and those compiled by Saruta from other students’ notes reflect trivial differences in our recording of Maher’s remarks. See also Satoko Norimatsu, “Anger Spreads over Kevin Maher’s Derogatory Comments on Okinawans,” Peace Philosophy Centre blog, March 8, 2011, http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.com/2011/03/anger-spreads-over-kevin-mahers.html.

  4. Travis J. Tritten, “State Dept. Official in Japan Fired over Alleged Derogatory Remarks,” Stars and Stripes, March 9, 2011, http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/japan/state-dept-official-in-japan-fired-over-alleged-derogatory-remarks-1.137181; Martin Fackler, “U.S. Apologizes for Japan Remark,” New York Times, March 10, 2011, A6.

  5. Wall Street Journal, “U.S.’s Ex-Japan Head,” blog, April 14, 2011, http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/04/14/exclusive-video-u-s-s-ex-japan-head.

  6. David Vine, “Smearing Japan,” Foreign Policy in Focus, April 20, 2011. See also David Vine, “The Session Was Not Off-the-Record,” letter to the editor, Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2011.

  7. Masahide Ota, “Former Governor of Okinawa Masahide Ota: Maher’s Remarks Represent His True Feelings,” translated by T&CT, Mark Ealey, Ryukyu Shimpo, March 12, 2011, http://english.ryukyushimpo.jp/2011/03/12/99/.

  8. Peter Ennis, “The Roots of the Kevin Maher–Okinawa Commotion,” Dispatch Japan, blog, March 10, 2011, http://www.dispatchjapan.com/blog/2011/03/the-roots-of-the-kevin-maher-okinawa-commotion.html.

  9. Ibid.

10. Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012), 196–97.

11. Ibid., 197.

12. Akibayashi and Takazato, “Okinawa,” 247–48.

13. McCormack and Norimatsu, Resistant Islands, 17.

14. Ibid., 25–32, 47n60. My thanks to Satoko Norimatsu for her important help with these details and other sections about Okinawa.

15. Ibid., 17.

16. Testimonies of the Battle of Okinawa, directed by Keifuku Janamoto, 2005[?].

17. C. Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 50–53, 200; C. Johnson, Blowback, 11; Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed; Amemiya, “The Bolivian Connection,” 63.

18. Frank Gibney, “Forgotten Island,” Time, November 28, 1949, 24.

19. C. Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 201.

20. Roy H. Smith, The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement: After Mururoa (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 42.

21. My thanks to Joseph Gerson for pointing this out to me and for the expertise he generously shared in reviewing this chapter.

22. C. Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 50–53, 200; C. Johnson, Blowback, 11; Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed; Amemiya, “The Bolivian Connection,” 63.

23. See e.g. Cooley, Base Politics, 147; Okinawa Peace Network Los Angeles, “List of Main Crimes Committed and Incidents Concerning the U.S. Military on Okinawa—Excerpts,” translated from Okinawa Times, October 12, 1995, http://www.uchinanchu.org/history/list_of_crimes.htm.

24. Okinawa Peace Network Los Angeles.

25. Mercier, “Way Off Base.”

26. Cooley, Base Politics, 147–48. Japan regained control of Iwo Jima and other islands in 1968.

27. Gillem, America Town, 242, 256–58.

28. Initially, the city council voted to accept the base when the Japanese government offered $95 million in “economic aid.” Later, Nago’s mayor and other politicians announced their opposition to the new base. Ibid., 256–61.

29. Asahi Shimbun, “Sit-In Against Relocation of Air Station Futenma Marks 10th Anniversary,” April 20, 2014, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201404200012.

30. Gillem, America Town, 48.

31. Daniel J. Nelson, A History of U.S. Military Forces in Germany (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 104–8, 123.

32. Ibid., 127.

33. Floyd Whaley, “Murder Charge Is Recommended for U.S. Marine in Death of Transgender Filipino,” New York Times, December 15, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/world/asia/murder-charge-is-recommended-for-us-marine-in-death-of-transgender-filipino.html.

34. Mercier, “Way Off Base.”

35. Linda Isakao Angst, “The Rape of a Schoolgirl: Discourses of Power and Gendered National Identity in Okinawa,” in Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power, edited by Laura Heig and Mark Selden (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 137.

36. U.S. Bases in Okinawa: Takae’s Story, website, accessed January 5, 2015, http://okinawa-takae.org.

37. Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, “Postwar U.S. Military Crimes,” 23–25.

38. Associated Press, “Friction Between Japan, U.S. Military,” Los Angeles Times, February 11, 2001, http://articles.latimes.com/2001/feb/11/news/mn-24065.

39. Prior to 1972, local officials were powerless to arrest or investigate crimes. Okinawa Prefectural Government, “US Military Base Issues in Okinawa,” Regional Security Policy Division, September 2011, 4; Okinawa Prefectural Government, “US Military Base Issues in Okinawa,” Military Base Affairs Division, n.d. [2011], 15.

40. Mercier, “Way Off Base”; Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, “Postwar U.S. Military Crimes”; Akibayashi and Takazato, “Okinawa,” 252, 260.

41. C. Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 109–10.

42. New York Times, “Ospreys in Okinawa,” editorial, September 12, 2012, A22.

43. Travis J. Tritten and Matthew M. Burke, “US Military in Japan Wrestles with Curfew’s Ineffectiveness,” Stars and Stripes, November 27, 2012, stripes.com/news/pacific/japan/us-military-in-japan-wrestles-with-curfew-s-ineffectiveness-1.198539.

44. Kan, “Guam,” 2.

45. Ibid.

46. Travis J. Tritten, “US to Beef Up Marine Presence on Okinawa Before Drawdown,” Stars and Stripes, June 12, 2012, http://www.stripes.com/news/us-to-beef-up-marine-presence-on-okinawa-before-drawdown-1.180172.

47. Gillem, America Town, 247.

48. Cooley, Base Politics, 151; Emma Chanlett-Avery and Ian E. Rinehart, “The U.S. Military Presence in Okinawa and the Futenma Base Controversy,” Congressional Research Service, report, Washington, DC, August 14, 2014.

49. Cooley, Base Politics, 151.

50. Ibid., 143, 158–59.

51. Thanks to Joseph Gerson for pointing this out and for comments that were extremely helpful in drafting this chapter and avoiding error.

52. Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace (New York: Verso, 2007), 163; Statistics Japan, “Okinawa,” Prefecture Comparisons, 2014, http://stats-japan.com/t/tdfk/okinawa; “Prefectural Income,” Prefecture Comparisons, 2014, http://stats-japan.com/t/kiji/10714.

53. McCormack, Client State, 158–59.

54. Ibid., 83.

55. Lostumbo et al., “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces,” 146; Cooley, Base Politics, 195; Calder, Embattled Garrisons, 192–94.

56. Government Accountability Office, “Comprehensive Cost Information and Analysis of Alternatives Needed to Assess Military Posture in Asia,” report, GAO-11-316, Washington, DC, May 2011.

57. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “Table 3.3: The 15 Countries with the Highest Military Expenditure in 2012,” Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2012, Stockholm, April 15, 2013; Sam Perlo-Freeman and Carina Solmirano, “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2013,” fact sheet, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, April 2014.

58. Lostumbo et al., “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces,” chapter 5.

59. Quoted in Yonamine, “Economic Crisis.”

60. Ibid. See also John Feffer, “Pacific Pushback: Has the U.S. Empire Reached Its High-Water Mark?” TomDispatch, March 4, 2010, http:www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175214/.

61. Tritten, “US to Beef Up.”

62. Manabu Sato, “The Marines Will Not Defend the Senkakus,” Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 27/2 (July 8, 2013), http://japanfocus.org/-Sato-Manabu/3964.

63. According to the manufacturer, the combat radius of an Osprey with twenty-four troops is 390 nautical miles; the round-trip distance between Naha, Okinawa, and the the Senkaku/Diaoyus is 440 nautical miles. See http://www.boeing.com/boeing/rotorcraft/military/v22/.

64. Interviews with Andrew Hoehn, April 29 and July 2, 2012.

65. McCormack, Client State, 77–81.

66. Lostumbo et al., “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces,” 280–82.