50 Years On: Okinawa Reversion Remembered in Bolivia Settlement

Colonia Okinawa, Bolivia, April 20 (Jiji Press)--A remote area in Bolivia is the unlikely home of Okinawans who moved to the South American country during the U.S. occupation of the island region over 50 years ago. About 870 people, including Okinawans and their descendants, live in the settlement two hours away by car from the major city of Santa Cruz, called Colonia Okinawa. They arrived in the region from the other side of the globe under an emigration project launched in 1954 by the government of the Ryukyu Islands, which administered Okinawa during U.S. rule. Yukifumi Nakamura, 81, who heads an association of Japanese-Bolivians from Okinawa, said he decided to move after feeling a sense of suffocation from U.S. rule. "I couldn't stay under U.S. rule forever," he said. Nakamura, then 21, convinced his father, who was a farmer, to sell off his land and move the whole family from what is now the city of Nanjo in Okinawa Prefecture. Their destination, known as the "third settlement site," was a jungle without proper roads. Rain caused a nearby river to flood, and settlers from Okinawa suffered from unknown diseases. Nakamura said he felt a sense of despair, thinking that the Ryukyu government only wanted to send people off. The settlement received aid from the U.S. government, but the heavy machinery it sent was unfit for the local land and was sold off to obtain money for living expenses. Many settlers who suffered hardships due to floods and other challenges fled to Brazil and Argentina. The settlement was on the brink of disappearing until it was saved by the transfer of control of the settlement from the United States to Japan in 1967, ahead of Okinawa's return to Japan in 1972. "I was full of joy, feeling that I had become a full Japanese," Nakamura said. "Until then, I had nothing to prove that I was Japanese." The transfer not only helped restore the pride of settlers. It was followed by the Japanese government's generous aid that they had long sought. Infrastructure in the settlement such as roads and clinics was quickly built, which "finally created an environment in which people could live," Nakamura said. This made it possible for large-scale farming through an agricultural cooperative to flourish. The area produced mainly cotton in the past, which was replaced by soybeans, wheat and sugarcane. Each household now has an average of 200 to 300 hectares of cultivated land, making Colonia Okinawa one of the leading agricultural areas of Bolivia. "Had Okinawa not been returned to Japan, the settlement would have disappeared a long time ago," Nakamura said. Meanwhile, the passage of time seems to have eroded the area's links to Okinawa. Although communal bonds had been preserved through events such as weddings, an increase in the population of non-Japanese origin and changes in lifestyles have chipped away at such ties. "Interpersonal interactions have been cut off by the novel coronavirus, taking us back a step," said Satoshi Higa, 55, head of the association's secretariat and the son of an immigrant from Okinawa. A school run by settlers for their children have 124 students, only 49 of whom are of Japanese descent. "I know about the 50 years since Okinawa's return to Japan as part of history, but it's something far from us," Higa's son, Satoru, 27, who teaches Japanese, said. "There was education on the Okinawa dialect for a while, but it was difficult to maintain it." END