#ryukyus

During our trip to Okinawa, the Gail Project’s research team has been hard at work going through the hundreds of documents available to us through the Okinawan Prefectural Archives. Located in the nearby area of Haebaru, the archives have been a fantastic source for much of the primary source material our researchers require to craft substantial historical and political papers. 

Graduate student Evan Terris, pictured above going through microfilm files previously owned by the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands, has been working on developing his master’s thesis around the topic of waste usage during American occupation of the Ryukyus. Thanks to the Prefectural Archives, he has been able to find numerous USCAR records on what the US military did with their waste and the environmental impact it had on Okinawa before the end of US administration in 1972.

Undergraduate student Kimberly Szeto, pictured above scanning images of the Ryukyus collected in the archives, has been interested in looking at photography in Okinawa from before and after the end of US administration of the islands. She has found amazing pictures of Okinawan anti-base activists, as well as numerous photographs of Ryukyuan daily life from the 1960s to 1980s.

Undergraduate student Owen Raymond, pictured researching at a desk in the archives, has been researching the US military occupation of Iejima, an island just off the coast of Okinawa. During the 1950s, the island witnessed an intense standoff between the American military seizing land there for air strips and local farmers opposed to US land grabs. Owen hopes to look more into the land situation on Iejima during this period and repercussions of these events up to the present day by accessing USCAR files and maps of the island made over the past 50 years.

While I just graduated from UC Santa Cruz, I continue to research the history of Christianity in Okinawa and could not have found better information than from the Prefectural Archives. With numerous English language files, images, and statistics on Christianity in the Ryukyu Islands, the Prefectural Archives have become a bit of a second home for me during my stay here in Okinawa. 

When I first got to UC Santa Cruz I planned on being a Global Economics major. I thought it would be interesting to learn the culture of foreign countries while studying economics. I soon realized, however, that years of studying calculus did not sound very interesting to me so I took classes across a variety of subjects until I finally decided upon the History Major at UCSC. It was the fall quarter of my sophomore year when I took Professor Dustin Wright’s course on the Empire of Japan. I became captivated by Professor Wright’s lectures, the fascinating and dense reading material, and the overall dialogue of the course. I finally realized that history was my passion and when I heard that the Gail Project served as an outlet for undergraduate research, I had to find out more about the group. 

I glanced at their pamphlets and went through their website, and soon came to the conclusion that the Gail Project was the perfect group for me. Not only did they offer great experience in historical research, but they also focused on Okinawa, the island where my grandparents lived and my mother was born. Household items from Okinawa littered my childhood home and my grandmother used to clarify that, while my mom’s passport said she was born in Japan, she was from the island of Okinawa. I learned so much more about Ryukyuan history and culture through another class with Professor Wright; the Okinawan Memories class.

It was at this point I became a member of the Project, initially helping with the social media team before developing my own research on the history of Christianity in Okinawa. Since I joined the Gail Project during spring quarter of 2017, I’ve travelled to Okinawa twice, I’ve helped organize an art exhibit, I’ve read through countless documents and have learned a lot about oral history, photography, and filmography. The Gail Project has done so much for me, and I hope that this blog may highlight the amazing work this Project does for UC Santa Cruz, the Okinawan people, and American-Okinawan dialogue.

While in Okinawa with the Gail Project (tentatively renamed the ‘Okinawa Memory Initiative’), I continued my research in the history and present-day situation of Christianity in the Ryukyus. To do so, I conducted research at the prefectural archives, interviewed numerous local Christians, and even attended a few church services. Above is a picture of the Futenma Catholic Church in Okinawa.

The Futenma church itself was average in size with a congregation of about 30 people. Notably, underneath the main hall is supposedly the first Christian crypt to be built in Okinawa, housing the remains of local Okinawan Catholics and foreigners alike. Beside the church was their hall for after service lunch and Sunday school activities (pictured above). 

Photo Credit to Julia Jen

Our team members have been trained by UCSC alumni and professional oral historian Cameron Vanderscoff, pictured above, in conducting oral histories, a way of interviewing individuals so that they may tell their life’s history. Another key element to the Gail Project, the oral history team helps us understand local history in the Ryukyus through a more personal lens and describes to us and others the general story of Okinawa in a different and more complex way. Through simple exercises on interviewing one another and having Cameron discuss how he conducts oral history interviews, the Gail Project hopes to be able to lead oral history projects of its own in the near future here in Okinawa.

For our trip this summer, the Gail Project team has been staying at the beautiful University of the Ryukyus. Housed in the International Exchange Hall, our group has great access to other buildings across campus and to the local towns of Nishihara and Urasoe. While the university once stood at the site of the old Ryukyuan capital at Shuri, the campus is now centrally located in Okinawa with close proximity to both the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma and the 15th-century castle at Nakagusuku. With so many fascinating sites in the area of the university, it has been easy for our group to travel extensively during the day and remain close to campus for our evenings.

The University of the Ryukyus has been quite welcoming to our project and they have recently given us a tour of their outstanding library. With famous Okinawan art on display, large study rooms available for our team, and accessible English and Japanese language materials on the Ryukyus, the university library could not be better of a resource for the Gail Project team. The University of the Ryukyus has proven to be a fantastic home for our summer trip!

For Picture 1: No copyright infringement is intended

For Picture 2: I have blurred out the faces of people who have not agreed/disagreed to be included in these pictures.

For more info on the Gail Project, check out https://gailproject.ucsc.edu/

Much of what I heard about Okinawa growing up came from my mother, aunt, and grandmother. The three of them spent time in Okinawa while my grandfather was stationed at Kadena Air Force base in the 1960s. They would explain to me that some of the decor of our home, such as our lacquerware platters, a porcelain vase, and a strange looking instrument on display were all Okinawan. My mother told me about the history of some household items and always noted that, while Okinawa is a part of Japan, the items we had were a part of the very unique culture of the Ryukyu Islands. On my travel to Japan with the Gail Project, I finally saw where my grandparents lived and where my mother spent her first two years at Kadena Air Force base. I saw for myself the immense US military presence in Okinawa and I learned more about the local society and traditions my family talked about, such as the Okinawan sweet potato festival and the island's subtropical weather. While in Okinawa, I learned of the long history of Okinawan lacquerware and porcelain, and that the strange looking instrument in the house was actually a traditional Okinawan guitar, or 'sanshin.' Traveling to Okinawa with the Gail Project was an amazing experience that not only allowed me to explore my family's past, but also gain a better understanding of the rich history and beautiful culture of the Ryukyus I had grown up around.

Above is a picture from the 1960s of my grandmother and aunt in front of a monument still standing at Mt. Mabuni Peace Park, Okinawa. 

UC Santa Cruz’s Gail Project is a historical research project focused on developing American-Okinawan dialogue. This group is rooted in a series of photographs of Okinawa taken by US Army serviceman Charles E. Gail from 1952-1953. These images were later donated to the university by Gail’s daughter, Geraldine, where they were quickly picked up by UCSC History Professor and Cowell Provost Alan Christy who realized the potential of studying Gail’s pictures. Thus, the Gail Project was created as a team of professors, graduate students, and undergraduates all focused on studying the history of Okinawan culture and politics in the post-WWII period when Gail’s photos were taken. The Gail Project has since developed into a substantial research initiative has travelled to Okinawa multiple times, has supported graduate and undergraduate research on the Ryukyus, has curated an art exhibit, and has built key relationships between members of the UCSC community with Okinawan people and researchers around the world. As this project continues to expand, we have gone on another trip to Okinawa this summer of 2018 and I hope to use this medium to post about what the Project is up to while we’re here and what’s happening in Okinawa presently.

The image above is a picture I took of a shrine outside a US military base at Futenma, Okinawa that was once photographed by Charles Gail in the early 1950s.