Okinawa Governor at Center Stage in U.S.-Japan Drama

Masahide Ota fought for the Japanese militarists during the Pacific War and studied under American democrats after defeat--but never lost his fierce pride and identity as a member of the noble Ryukyu kingdom now known as Okinawa.

Today, the Okinawa governor has taken on both the Japanese and American governments to win what he believes is best for his beloved island chain in southern Japan: a reduction and eventual elimination of all U.S. military facilities on Okinawa, which houses a majority of the 44,500 American troops here.

More than any other single figure, Ota has commanded center stage in a drama that began with the rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl Sept. 4--allegedly by three U.S. servicemen--and appears to be approaching an end with notable changes in U.S.-Japanese security arrangements. Personifying public outrage over the rape, Ota refused to sign critical lease renewals for land that houses U.S. facilities, led the charge to demand changes in treatment of American military suspects and pushed for other concessions on base locations and training exercises. On Wednesday, the two governments announced an agreement on new procedures for handling U.S. military suspects in certain crimes.

To his legions of admirers, only a man such as Ota could have held out for Okinawan interests against tremendous pressure. The reason, they say, is simple: He is a lifelong scholar imbued with deep convictions and unshakable integrity, not a professional politician.

“Everyone is sick of politicians, but Gov. Ota isn’t like that,” said Yoji China, vice chairman of the Okinawa Management Assn., the island’s premier economic organization. “He is a university professor who will do anything for the sake of the local people.”

Ota had critical help, however, from Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama and other Socialists, who accommodated him far more than previous national governments ruled by the conservative Liberal Democrats had done.

With his white hair and freckled face, Ota, 70, cuts a figure rare in Japan’s political world today. Unlike growing numbers of politicians, who inherit their parents’ wealth and political constituencies, Ota grew up in a poor farming family as the youngest of four siblings. He was raised by his mother after his father emigrated to Brazil to earn money but never returned.

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In 1941, at age 16, Ota entered a teacher training school but was drafted into a youth military corps three years later just as Okinawa was preparing for the bloodiest battle of World War II. He was shot in the leg, lost two-thirds of his friends to war and still vividly remembers scenes of dead and bloated bodies of his fellow Okinawans filling the sea “like insects.”

“What national interest could possibly justify such a sacrifice?” he wondered.

Ota concluded that Japan’s militaristic education was at fault for a battle that killed more than 234,000 people, including scores of civilian elderly, women and children. After the victorious United States took possession of Okinawa, Ota studied at Syracuse University in New York on a U.S. scholarship in quest of the experience of academic freedom.

A fluent English speaker who also studied issues of minority identity in Hawaii, Ota worked for the Okinawa Times, taught at Ryukyu University and published such books as “The Ugly Japanese” and “The Okinawan People’s Consciousness.” But he never forgot his primary life mission: “to absolutely avoid the Okinawa tragedy from occurring a second time.”

He was elected governor in 1990 over the conservative incumbent, after campaigning against the military bases and controversial national legislation to allow the overseas dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces on peacekeeping operations.

But Ota is not alone in his vision of peace. In a gesture of singular honor to Americans, Ota ordered that stone monuments commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bloody Okinawa battle this year also be inscribed with the names of the 14,005 Americans killed. The “Cornerstone of Peace” is believed to be the only memorial in the world to name all the war dead from both sides of the battle.

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Megumi Shimizu of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.