A Daughter of Uminchu by Tsuneko Imai

I try to read as much about Okinawa as possible, and while at the local library researching the history of goat fights, I came across the book A Daughter of Uminchu (ウミンチュの娘) by Tsuneko Imai, which I had never seen before. Originally written in Japanese in 2011, it was later translated into English and released in English in 2021. Most of my reading about Okinawa centers on the history, archelogy and culture of Okinawa, which, in all honesty, can be rather dry at times, so this book was a refreshing change as it was in memoir form, describing Imai’s childhood on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa and her adult life in mainland Japan.  As Imai stated in the introduction of her book, her life is the story of Okinawa’s post-World War II history. Imai tells her story and through her words, and particularly, from her discussions of her childhood memories, we can come to understand what Okinawa was like in the 1950s-1970s, which as a cultural historian myself, I find quite interesting. 

What I found most fascinating was that in discussions of her memories, I could see how the war continued to shape the lives on Okinawans during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. For example, Chapter 6 of the book entitled, “My Father was arrested” discusses how Imai’s father was arrested on charges of illegal fishing for using dynamite when fishing in 1970.  While on the surface, this doesn’t appear to have any relation to the Battle of Okinawa, there is, in fact, a strong connection. It is estimated that during the Battle of Okinawa, the U.S. Navy shot around 200,000 tons of ammunition towards Okinawa Prefecture, with about 10,000 tons of this ammunition landing on the islands unexploded. (During the 80 years following the Battle of Okinawa, over 7,000 tons of the unexploded ordinance has been removed and destroyed, but it is estimated that around 1,900 tons of it remain. While there are fewer pieces of unexploded ordinance discovered year by year, more than one piece is still discovered daily, and experts estimate that it may take up to an additional 100 years to fully clear out unexploded ordinance from the Battle of Okinawa in the islands of Okinawa Prefecture.[1]) Therefore, in the years directly after the Battle of Okinawa, unexploded ordinance was quite easy to find and many fishermen started using this unexploded ordinance to make their own handmade dynamite to fish. As Imai noted, “It’s possible that fishing with dynamite would not exist if the war had never happened. I’m not making excuses for the fishermen, but since the bombs were designed to kill and have the power to destroy nature and earth as well, it can be said that illegal fishing is just another extension of war.”[2] Before reading this book, I had learned about horrible accidents involving unexploded ordinance, but I had never considered how unexploded ordinance was, at times, actively utilized by Okinawans and that these actions, in a sense, caused the cycle of destruction started by the Battle of Okinawa, to continue in other ways.

Looking more specifically at how the unexploded ammunition was used, according to Imai, fishermen would collect it and then put these explosives in bottles and add a fuse.  They would then throw these pieces of handmade dynamite into the ocean to fish, making their job much quicker and also significantly more dangerous to themselves and the environment around them. While those who were successful in their use of explosives could quickly catch many fish and make a lot of money, those who made a mistake with their timing could cause injuries ranging from blowing off their arm to exploding the entire fishing vessel and all passengers in it.

According to Imai, the local government banned this practice in 1952 but fishermen like her father continued doing it throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. In her father’s case, he was arrested in 1970 for using explosives and had to pay a significant fine. This, in turn, unfortunately drained most of the family’s savings and forced her father to take a job as a captain of a bonito ship fishing the waters surrounding Palau for a year, leaving his wife and five children on the island of Ishigaki. His charges for possession of illegal explosive materials were pardoned in 1972 when Okinawa returned to Japanese control and he never used unexploded ordinance to fish again.

Much of my research into post-war Okinawa has focused on base towns, such as Koza (currently Okinawa City), and how Okinawans and Americans interacted when forced into close contact. Therefore, I really hadn’t considered what the war and post-war experience had looked like for those on outer islands. While there was no ground warfare on islands like Ishigaki, where Imai grew up, the island was still heavily bombed, and many people lost their lives from disease when forced to move into evacuation zones rampant with malaria by the Japanese military. The islands of Yaeyama (the group of islands which includes Ishigaki) suffered during the Battle of Okinawa and the remnants of World War II continued to shape their lives in the post-war years just as it did on Okinawa Island. This book served as an excellent reminder for me that the entire Prefecture experienced great hardships and loss during the War and that I need to be more open to and aware of all these experiences to fully understand the damages, costs and changes the Battle of Okinawa brought to Okinawa Prefecture.

If you are interested in reading a different take on Okinawa's post-war history, I recommend checking out Tsuneko Imai's A Daughter of Uminchu (Okinawa: Okinawa Kyohan, 2021).

[1] For more information about unexploded ordinance in Okinawa Prefecture, I recommend checking out these articles: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15136583, https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/features/japan-focus/20241019-217140/

[2] Imai, 36.