Hope for the Future in the Curiosities of Young People: Reflections on Field Trips

Daniel Broudy, Nishihara

Each year, first-year students interested in understanding current issues beyond what they read or hear in national and local media, have a chance to take a field trip to the northern part of Okinawa Main Island. Their own expressed interest in the Freshman Seminar (zemi) is the starting point for an organized trip. Over the years, I have noticed that new students fresh out of high school tend to fall into a few fairly distinct categories: a) their perceptions of the protest movement in Henoko and Takae are shaped by pro-base friends or family, so they believe that the protestors are probably communists or supported by China; b) their perceptions are shaped largely by local media, so they tend to have a negative attitude toward base expansion into Oura Bay; c) their perceptions are shaped by national media, so they tend to say that national security should come before anything else.

 

Those very few students who insist that local newspapers are biased against the US bases also admit, at the same time, that they themselves uncritically accept the now 72-year American military presence on their small island. After all, they suggest, they grew up with the bases and can hardly grasp any alternative reality beyond present conditions. Nevertheless, no matter what media students say they read, what stories or rumors they hear from friends or family members, or what Nettouyo (mostly anonymous Netizens who naïvely embrace and disseminate radical far-right ideology over the Internet) say about the protestors, most young people in Okinawa appear to demonstrate remarkable patience and superb skills in remaining open-minded. They are extremely well balanced, perhaps to a fault.

The impending destruction of parts of the marine environment in Oura Bay and the subtropical forest in Takae has long been a divisive issue locally. So outrageous, people perceive, is the planned assault against the environment that the battle to save it has spread to far-flung fields of conflict across the world. Of course, no one in any category wants to see their own backyard being bulldozed or buried under mountains of landfill and concrete, especially for a new military endeavor, but the young people offer larger Japanese society considerable hope that reason is still a hallmark of the intellect and will prevail at some point in the future.

What is perhaps most remarkable is the age group itself. Young people beginning college tend to be largely interested in socializing and locating the next party off campus when their studies aren’t intruding on their larger university life. Though they are also often distracted by the digital world of their handheld devices, they are also deeply concerned by the unfolding destruction in the northern part of the island. No matter what they believe is actually motivating the protest movements in Henoko and Takae, they register deep concern, unease, and mistrust about what they sense is the unfair treatment of Okinawa by powers that are remote and distant. This, they feel, is intolerable. Should the larger forces of central planning ultimately prevail upon this small island, the young people moving upward through their university training will very likely not forget the manipulations they are witnessing.