Irony Pervades 50-Year Struggle Over Okinawa : Asia: After WWII battle to repel GIs, Japan is now paying to keep them. Island memorial honors both sides.

At the cost of more than 14,000 American dead, U.S. forces seized Okinawa in the bloodiest battle of World War II, one that took the lives of more than 220,000 Japanese.

Then, for 27 years--two decades longer than the United States occupied mainland Japan--U.S. military proconsuls ruled Japan’s 47th prefecture until the island chain was returned to the Tokyo government.

Yet now, in an irony of history, the nation that ordered a fight-to-the-death struggle against Americans half a century ago is not only asking Americans to stay but is paying so much for their upkeep that the U.S. military claims that it is cheaper to be here than at home.

Today, the Okinawa government brought the bitter memories of the past full circle by offering a singular honor to Americans. One hundred and fourteen stone monuments etched with the names of 234,183 people killed in the Battle of Okinawa were unveiled--and unlike other Japanese war commemorations that ignore all but Japanese victims, the names of 14,005 Americans are included.

The Cornerstone of Peace is believed to be the only memorial in the world to name all the war dead from both sides of a battle. An estimated one-third of the civilian population of Okinawa died, and their names are listed too.

U.S. Forces Japan headquarters lists 12,250 Americans killed, but the Okinawa government obtained its 14,005 names from U.S. veterans associations and cross-checked them with U.S. Defense Department records.

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The occasion for the unveiling was the 50th anniversary of the day on which Americans raised their flag on the southern tip of the island to mark the end of the battle that started April 1, 1945.

The unveiling and a ceremony honoring the dead were held at the lonely Mabuni cliff overlooking the southern sea where, 50 years ago, thousands of Japanese offered their final gesture of loyalty by jumping to their deaths.

The black granite memorial took four years of effort by Okinawa’s governor, Masahide Ota--who, ironically, ended up keeping U.S. active-duty military personnel from attending the ceremony.

Ota, a leftist who in his political campaigns calls damage from U.S. military training, accidents and crimes on Okinawa “the source of all evil,” offered to invite U.S. commanders only if they agreed not to wear uniforms, a U.S. official here said.

The U.S. commanders decided to reject the demand and, as a result, no invitations were extended, the official said.

According to Brig. Gen. William T. (Tom) Hobbins, commander of Kadena Air Base and the U.S. Air Force’s 18th Wing, the commanders believed that wearing uniforms would be essential “to honor those who fought so gallantly.”

The governor, who advocates removal of the U.S. bases, said he is sensitive to “the sentiments of the Okinawan people, who do not want to see military uniforms,” the U.S. official in Okinawa said.

Ota, who himself was drafted into the battle as a “student corps” fighter, also did not invite Japanese military commanders, prefectural officials said.

In his address, Ota recalled how tens of thousands of civilians, including babies, women and old people, had been killed in the battle that turned Okinawa into “a field of ashes.” He also recalled “enduring all possible sufferings for 27 years under the rule of an alien people,” and pledged to create “a peaceful Okinawa with no military bases.”

Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama and U.S. Ambassador Walter F. Mondale also attended the ceremony.

So too did about 600 American veterans of the 83-day battle who brought memories of battalions that lost two-thirds of their men, of banzai human-wave death charges, of kamikaze airplane attacks on U.S. ships, of hand-to-hand fighting amid rain and mud, of Americans isolated from their fellow troops, stripping Japanese bodies of rotten fish and crackers in desperation for food.

Ketchum Alexanian, 84, of Whittier was one of the veterans.

From a wheelchair after the unveiling, Alexanian took a piece of paper, placed it over the etched name of Benson Alden, and rubbed the paper with a pencil to produce a shadow of the name. “He was my major. He saved my life,” said Alden, his eyes welling with tears.

Alexanian said he and Alden were members of a joint intelligence center; Alden was 28 and he was 32 at the time. “He used to call me Pappy,” the former first sergeant said.

Mondale, calling the battle “one of the ugliest struggles in world history,” thanked the Okinawa government for creating the monument.

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The Americans had targeted Okinawa as a staging ground for what was to have been a final invasion of the mainland, and the Okinawans, seeking to rid themselves of a label as second-class citizens, were determined to show their loyalty by fighting to the death in caves and tunnels that laced the southern portion of the island.

After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the battle for Okinawa became unnecessary.

But the U.S. victory laid the groundwork for a U.S. occupation of Okinawa that continued until 1972, when Washington returned control to Tokyo.

Now, the U.S. bases, which occupy 20% of the land on Okinawa, the 29,575 U.S. troops and their 25,000 family members are here by the grace of the Japanese.

U.S. commanders insist that they pay attention to that fact.

Hobbins, whose Kadena Air Base sprawls over 5,000 acres next to a 7,000-acre munitions storage area, said he engages in a “continuous dialogue” with Japanese officials in adjoining towns about noise created by his aircraft.

“I have to maintain force readiness. I have to train. I have to be credible. In maintaining that readiness, I also have a very strong concern for being good neighbors here,” he said.

Training flights are usually grounded during the chain of holidays in late April and early May known as Golden Week, as well as between Dec. 30 and Jan. 3, the New Year’s holidays. Training also is halted during school examinations, the commander said.

In a massive central training ground in the middle of the island, the Marines, for their part, have been plagued by protests for decades over their firing of live artillery shells over a public road.

Although the road is used by few vehicles, a bypass around the line of fire was built in 1976. But the controversy refuses to die down.

Now, activists are claiming that the firing practices are destroying foliage and causing red clay to run off into the ocean, which, in turn, is disrupting fishing.

The greatest irritant to Okinawans comes from the massive stretches of land that the bases occupy. Although polls, such as one published Tuesday by the Okinawa Times, show that only about a third of the island’s 1.2 million people want to remove the bases completely.

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Trying to convince Okinawans of the need for U.S. bases “is a very hard sell,” a high-level U.S. diplomat in Tokyo said. “From their perspective, the Cold War is over but they have received no peace dividend.”

After U.S. rule ended and subsidies from Tokyo started rolling into Okinawa, residents who told pollsters that they found it “easy to live” on the island rose from 60% in 1974 to more than 90% now.

Newfound prosperity is encouraging more Okinawans to believe that their prefecture can grow without the bases, Moromizato said.

The Japanese government pays rent to more than 28,000 Okinawan owners of the base land, but there are constant disputes.

In May, the United States and Japan announced an agreement to return land that has been used as a practice area for Marine paratroopers and to move U.S. military port facilities from the prefectural capital of Naha to the city of Urasoe. Japan would foot the bill for both moves.

But, initially, officials of Urasoe have rejected the plan for their city to host the new military port.

Okinawa’s location--about an hour and a half by jet fighter to Manila, Hong Kong, Tokyo or Seoul--makes it a strategic jumping off point allowing U.S. forces to deal with any crisis in Asia.

U.S. officials and military commanders alike insist that U.S. troops are still needed here to “maintain stability,” but with the end of the Cold War, they find it harder to cite specific threats.

The one exception is the powder keg on the Korean peninsula, with 1.7 million troops from North and South Korea glaring at each other over a 42-year-old truce line.

“Within an hour and a half, airplanes can be in South Korea,” Hobbins said. “Our contribution to a crisis in Korea could be significant.”

But as one high-level U.S. diplomat in Tokyo put it: “How many divisions do you need to combat instability? It’s difficult to explain the alliance to the public” not only in Okinawa or mainland Japan but also in the United States.

Hobbins’ deputy, Col. Robert N. McEneany, said stability in the region is ensured by the presence of U.S. bases.

If the United States had left Asia, “Japan might have rearmed, might have looked for nuclear weapons and China might have thought they had to get an offensive capability to protect against that,” he said.

In addition, Japan’s payments to underwrite the cost of maintaining U.S. troops in Okinawa--more than $100,000 per soldier annually--are so generous that, McEneany said, “you couldn’t afford this kind of a force in the United States.”