Steve Rabson
Biographic Data
| ID | 247834 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steve Rabson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steve |
| FAMILY NAME | Rabson |
| SIGNATURE | RABSON S |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
A Conversation with Claudia Junghyun Kim, author of Base Towns
Rabson discusses the new book, Base Towns: Local Contestation of the U.S. Military in Korea and Japan with the author, Claudia Junghyun Kim, who traces contentious politics surrounding twenty U.S. military bases across Japan and Korea—two of the largest U.S. base hosts in the world. Kim's book focuses on the municipalities hosting these bases and differing levels of community acceptance and resistance over time. The following excerpt from the boo…
Training and Deployment of America's Nuclear Cold Warriors in Asia
The book presents personal accounts by veterans of an Army nuclear weapons storage base in Henoko Village, Okinawa during the 1960's in the context of nuclear weapons history, Cold War tensions, and the proposal to use them in Vietnam. They describe their entrances into the Army, training, leave times, re-entry into civilian life, and illnesses associated with radiation exposure three of them later suffered, one of whom died in 2015
Six Decades of US-Japanese Government Collusion in Bringing Nuclear Weapons to Japan
The Navy ship containing nuclear bombs that a junior officer saw anchored off Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station in 1959 was only the most notorious of many U.S. violations of Japan's official policy banning nuclear weapons. The Japanese government has a long history of secretly agreeing to their deployments, and feigning ignorance when they were revealed. The outrage that erupted in the press and in the Diet when former American Ambassador to Japa…
Okinawa's G.I. Brides
Okinawa Prefecture comprises more than one hundred islands with a population of about 1,400,000. The islands reach to the southernmost tip of Japan where the climate is subtropical. In 1945, after the end of the Pacific War, the U.S. placed Okinawa under military occupation and constructed an extensive network of bases there. The American military seized many privately-owned lands for this purpose, violating basic human rights and igniting widesp…
Withdrawal of U.S. Forces from South Korea is Long Overdue
On the eve of the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, the armistice of 1953 has still not led to a peace treaty, to U.S.-DPRK diplomatic relations, or to an end to the U.S. embargo on DPRK trade. Military affairs analyst Taoka Shunji makes a case for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea based on an analysis of South Korea's military superiority over the North and the ability to call on U.S. naval and air support if…
How Japanese scientists confronted the U.S. and Japanese governments to reveal the effects of Bikini H-bomb tests
The March, 1954 “Bravo Shot” H-bomb test in the Pacific dumped radioactive debris on the Marshall Islands, U.S. servicemen, and the crew of a Japanese fishing boat. The multi-megaton blast infected Marshall Islanders with radiation sickness and caused cancers in the years that followed. Their contaminated home on Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable to this day. U.S. servicemen who had been purposely transported by the Navy into the blast zone have…
Reflections on the Remaking of the Imperial Image in the Reiwa Era and Japanese Democracy
We introduce Medoruma Shun, an Akutagawa-Award winning Okinawan author, Watanabe Osamu, a constitutional scholar in Tokyo, Kihara Satoru, a freelance journalist in Fukuyama, Hiroshima, and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, an Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus editor as rare voices of dissent over the media hype concerning the changeover of the Japanese emperor and adoption of the new era name Reiwa
Amidst War's Devastation
Months before the U.S. invasion of Okinawa in April. 1945, thousands of civilians evacuated Okinawa with their families to rural areas of mainland Japan. Tamaki Rieko's father, a physician, decided to stay as his duty in the war effort. Among his family of ten only Rieko survived the battle. She writes, "even as the onslaught worsened, Okinawans believed that, if they could just endure a little longer, a huge force of support troops from mainland…
Nuclear Hawks in Tokyo Call for Stronger US Nuclear Posture in Japan and Okinawa
Donald Trump's plan for a more muscular US nuclear posture got a ringing endorsement from the increasingly right-wing government of Japan. Not long after the Trump administration released its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in early February, Foreign Minister Taro Kono said he "highly appreciates" the new approach to US nuclear weapons policy, including the emphasis on low-yield nuclear options the United States and Japan can rely on to respond to n…
Islands of Protest
Literature is an important vehicle to further knowledge of other cultures, and English translations of Okinawan literary works have had a major impact on the field of Okinawan studies. Yet the riches of Okinawa's literature have yet to be adequately mined. Islands of Protest attempts to address this lacuna with this new selection of critically acclaimed modern and contemporary works in English.The anthology includes poetry, fiction, and drama, dr…
Trump's Threat to Charge Japan More for U.S. Forces
Ever since the end of America's Vietnam catastrophe, experts on both sides of the Pacific have sounded warnings about anachronistic, wasteful, and dangerously misguided U.S. military policies, seemingly perpetuated by inertia, in East Asia. Yet their recommendations are ignored and new policy initiatives thwarted. As a candidate for president in early 1975, Jimmy Carter advocated removing U.S. forces from South Korea. Of Carter's meeting that yea…
American Literature on the Battle of Okinawa and the Continuing US Military Presence
The several works of American literature set in Okinawa or about Okinawans include travel narratives, war diaries, memoirs, biography, fiction, drama, and musical theater Perhaps the earliest, Francis L. Hawks's 1856 Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, is an account of Commodore Matthew C. Perry's gunboat diplomacy of 1853-1854 when he forced his demands on leaders of what was then the Ryukyu Kingdom, …
On Okinawa, Locals Want US Troops to Leave
In recent years the American media has covered the grossly disproportionate U.S. military presence in Okinawa mostly following such atrocities as the rape of a twelve-year-old girl by three American servicemen in 1995, and the 2016 rape and murder of a twenty-year-old woman for which a former Marine, employed by the U.S. military at the the time, is charged. However, the New York Times and Washington Post have published occasional articles about …
Perry's Black Ships in Japan and Ryukyu
On July 11, 2016, the organization Veterans for Peace issued a statement (see document below) observing the 162nd anniversary of the Lew Chew Compact, popularly known as a "friendship" or "amity" treaty. In reality, officials of the Ryukyu Kingdom were forced to sign it by Commodore Matthew C. Perry who commanded a squadron of battleships invading the Ryukyus in 1853 and 1854. The Compact permitted unlimited visitation and residence to Americans …
Hope
On June 26, 1999, the Asahi, a major Japanese newspaper, published a very short story by Okinawa's most critically acclaimed writer of recent years, Medoruma Shun. The brevity of this piece belies its impact on readers. Unsettling in both form and content, the story depicts the constraints of everyday life in Okinawa, a small island on which nearly 75 percent of Japan's United States military bases sit on less than one percent of Japanese soil. I…
Okinawans Say “No Pasarán” to the U.S. Marines
In November, 2015, with the world's eyes focused on the latest terrorist threats to Europe and Africa, two dozen activists from the Japanese island of Okinawa came to Washington to demand justice for a region that the U.S. military has dominated since World War II
U.S. Veterans Reveal 1962 Nuclear Close Call Dodged in Okinawa
Ota Masakatsu's horrifying account of an erroneous order to launch nuclear missiles in Okinawa during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 raises the possibility that, despite the U.S. military's vehement denials, a nuclear war could start by accident. While much discussion has centered on the Cuban Missile Crisis spinning out of control into nuclear war, the latest revelations link 1950s Okinawa as yet another site in which the possession of U.S. nu…
Okinawa and disaster-struck Tohoku region sacrificed for Tokyo
The work of Ōshiro Tatsuhiro often tells of people caught in dire historical circumstances of war and oppression. He was the first of four Okinawan writers to win Japan's prestigious Akutagawa literary prize for his novella "Cocktail Party" (1967, translated 1989) depicting a father who seeks justice for the rape of his daughter by an American soldier in U.S.-occupied Okinawa. "Turtleback Tombs" (1966, translated 2000) narrates the ordeal of a th…
My Story
Masako Robbins' intimate personal account of her life in pre-war, wartime, and early postwar Okinawa compels the reader to experience the history of this tumultuous era from the perspective of the daughter in an impoverished family. Sold as a child by her father to a brothel in the 1930s, and drafted by the Japanese military as a combat nurse during the Battle of Okinawa, she barely survived after being trapped in a cave collapsed by shelling. Pl…
Memories of Okinawa
Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American PowerRabson's chapter explores the experiences of Okinawans in mainland Japan, specifically the diaspora communities that developed in Osaka from the early 20th century to the present. These communities faced discrimination much like Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants in America. Rabson's likening of Okinawan experiences on the mainland to that of foreigners trying to assimilat…
Recommended Further Reading
Okinawa's Henoko was a "storage location" for nuclear weapons
According to accounts published after Okinawa's reversion to Japan in 1972, nuclear weapons were stored in the northern Okinawan village of Henoko at an Army ordnance depot adjacent to the Marines' Camp Schwab. The depot was constructed in 1959, becoming the Army's 137th Ordnance Company (Special Weapons) and was turned over to the Marines as Camp Henoko (Ordnance Ammunition Depot) following reversion in 1972. The camp is located only a few hundr…
The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan at War
When the Japanese government abolished the Ryukyu Kingdom, absorbing it into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture in 1879, most Okinawans on the mainland were merchants of locally grown and handcrafted goods. Large-scale migration began around 1900 with the development of Japan's modern textile industry, centered in Greater Osaka. Thousands came from the nation's poorest prefecture, mostly young women and teenage girls from farming villages, to work under…
Above the East China Sea
The Asia-Pacific Journal presents excerpts from Sarah Bird's newly published novel, Above the East China Sea together with her conversation with Steve Rabson, who served in the army on Okinawa in 1968 en route to becoming a leading translator of Okinawan literature. Bird's novel engages the theme of suicide and death from the Battle of Okinawa to the present, interweaving the fate of Okinawans and American occupying forces. As Robert Leleux obser…
The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan
The experiences of Okinawans in mainland Japan, like those of migrant minorities elsewhere, derive from a legacy of colonialism, war, and alien rule. Okinawans have long coped with a society in which differences are often considered “strange” or “wrong,” and with a central government that has imposed a mono-cultural standard in education, publicly priding itself on the nation's mythical “homogeneity.” They have felt strong pressures to assimilate…
No prominent works on this page.
Structure of Cartilage
Kinoshita Yuji
Okinawa
Long, Long Autumn Nights
Yosano Akiko on War
Steve Rabson, Yosano Akiko on War: To Give One's Life or Not: A Question of Which War, The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 25, No. 1, Special Issue: Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) (Apr., 1991), pp. 45-74
Shimazaki Toson on War
POET and novelist Shimazaki Toson ,W Oti, 1872-1943, depicted four wars in which Japan was involved during his long and prolific career. Unlike his friend, novelist Tayama Katai orL, 1872-1930, Toson never served in the military abroad or witnessed combat. However, he described the impact on Japan of conflicts with China, 1894-1895, and Russia, 1904-1905, and penned first-hand accounts of hardships experienced during World War I by Europeans and …
Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly
Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly
Southern Exposure
Shattering Jewels
I'm over by the gym," my friend Kinjo Minoru told me on his cell phone. I'd been standing at the entrance to Ginowan Seashore Park, site of the "Okinawa Citizens' Protest Demanding Cancellation of Textbook Revisions." The crowd was so big I got tired of looking for him. I'd arrived late, so Asai Mayumi, an editor at Labor Report magazine who had come earlier with Mr. Kinjo, made her way through the crowd to find me
Case Dismissed
On March 28, 2008, the Osaka District Court dismissed a lawsuit against Nobel Prize-winning author Oe Kenzaburo and his publisher for publishing accounts of the Japanese military ordering "group suicides" of civilians during the Battle of Okinawa. The plaintiffs, a former garrison commander and the brother of a late former commander, had claimed the descriptions in Oe's Okinawa Notes (Okinawa Noto, Iwanami Shoten, 1970) and in the late Ienaga Sab…
Okinawan Perspectives on Japan's Imperial Institution
On September 29, 2007, 110,000 people demonstrated in Okinawa to protest textbook revisions announced by Japan's Education Ministry that would delete references to the Japanese military's coercive role in so-called "group suicides" (shudan jiketsu) of civilians during the Battle of Okinawa. Speakers at the protest included Okinawan survivors of the battle who had witnessed the military rounding up civilians at "assembly points" (referred to in wa…
Revealing “Secret U.S.-Japan Nuclear Understandings”
The Democratic Party's decisive victory in the August 30, 2009 Lower House election brings a change in Japan's government. With the Liberal Democratic Party leaving power, momentum is building to illuminate the darkness surrounding secret understandings concluded between the Japanese and U.S. governments. Previous governments in Japan have persistently feigned ignorance of two secret understandings from the 1960s permitting the U.S. to bring nucl…
Secret” 1965 Memo Reveals Plans to Keep U.S. Bases and Nuclear Weapons Options in Okinawa After Reversion
Ambassador Edwin Reischauer provided the framework for the Japanese government's betrayal of Okinawan aspirations and Japan's “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” in the 1969 Reversion Agreement
The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan
The experiences of Okinawans in mainland Japan, like those of migrant minorities elsewhere, derive from a legacy of colonialism, war, and alien rule. Okinawans have long coped with a society in which differences are often considered “strange” or “wrong,” and with a central government that has imposed a mono-cultural standard in education, publicly priding itself on the nation's mythical “homogeneity.” They have felt strong pressures to assimilate…
Henoko and the U.S. Military
Attention in Japan and elsewhere has focused recently on the seaside village of Henoko (Ryukyuan: Hinuku) in northern Okinawa where a powerful protest movement has stymied the Japanese and U.S. governments from building an offshore air base. Attempting to ameliorate outrage in Okinawa after three U.S. servicemen raped a twelve-year-old schoolgirl in 1995, the governments in Tokyo and Washington announced an agreement in 1996 to close Futenma Mari…
Nago Mayor Inamine's Concise Guide to What's Wrong with the Planned Marine Air Base
Nago Mayor Inamine Susumu has visited the United States twice recently to meet with government officials and hold press conferences to convey overwhelming opposition in Okinawa to the construction of a U.S. Marine air base in his city: as shown in local referenda, elections for a new governor and on-site protests. Like former Governor Ota Masahide who visited the U.S. in the 1990s, Inamine presented hand-outs and visuals documenting the dispropor…
Being Okinawan in Japan
While much has been written recently on Okinawan emigration abroad, The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within is the first book in English on the Okinawan diaspora in Japan. It draws on a two-year study in residence, 1999-2001, with follow-up research in 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008. For the purpose of this study, I defined Okinawans living on the mainland as anyone with at least one grandparent or two great-grandparents from Okin…
Recommended Further Reading
Okinawa's Henoko was a "storage location" for nuclear weapons
According to accounts published after Okinawa's reversion to Japan in 1972, nuclear weapons were stored in the northern Okinawan village of Henoko at an Army ordnance depot adjacent to the Marines' Camp Schwab. The depot was constructed in 1959, becoming the Army's 137th Ordnance Company (Special Weapons) and was turned over to the Marines as Camp Henoko (Ordnance Ammunition Depot) following reversion in 1972. The camp is located only a few hundr…
The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan at War
When the Japanese government abolished the Ryukyu Kingdom, absorbing it into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture in 1879, most Okinawans on the mainland were merchants of locally grown and handcrafted goods. Large-scale migration began around 1900 with the development of Japan's modern textile industry, centered in Greater Osaka. Thousands came from the nation's poorest prefecture, mostly young women and teenage girls from farming villages, to work under…
Above the East China Sea
The Asia-Pacific Journal presents excerpts from Sarah Bird's newly published novel, Above the East China Sea together with her conversation with Steve Rabson, who served in the army on Okinawa in 1968 en route to becoming a leading translator of Okinawan literature. Bird's novel engages the theme of suicide and death from the Battle of Okinawa to the present, interweaving the fate of Okinawans and American occupying forces. As Robert Leleux obser…
Memories of Okinawa
Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American PowerRabson's chapter explores the experiences of Okinawans in mainland Japan, specifically the diaspora communities that developed in Osaka from the early 20th century to the present. These communities faced discrimination much like Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants in America. Rabson's likening of Okinawan experiences on the mainland to that of foreigners trying to assimilat…
Okinawans Say “No Pasarán” to the U.S. Marines
In November, 2015, with the world's eyes focused on the latest terrorist threats to Europe and Africa, two dozen activists from the Japanese island of Okinawa came to Washington to demand justice for a region that the U.S. military has dominated since World War II
U.S. Veterans Reveal 1962 Nuclear Close Call Dodged in Okinawa
Ota Masakatsu's horrifying account of an erroneous order to launch nuclear missiles in Okinawa during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 raises the possibility that, despite the U.S. military's vehement denials, a nuclear war could start by accident. While much discussion has centered on the Cuban Missile Crisis spinning out of control into nuclear war, the latest revelations link 1950s Okinawa as yet another site in which the possession of U.S. nu…
History (24 works) · Political science (20 works) · Japanese History and Culture (17 works) · Law (12 works) · Ancient history (9 works) · History (8 works) · Nuclear Issues and Defense (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies (6 works) · Battle (5 works)