Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa

At the southern end of the Japanese archipelago lies Okinawa—host to a vast complex of U.S. military bases. A legacy of World War II, these bases have been a fraught issue in Japan for decades—with tensions exacerbated by the island’s isolation, the volatile relationship between the islanders and the military, especially after the rape of a twelve-year-old girl by three servicemen in the 1990s, and memories of a war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

In Night in the American Village, journalist Akemi Johnson takes readers deep into the “border towns” surrounding the bases—a world where cultural and political fault lines compel individuals, both Japanese and American, to continually renegotiate their own identities. Focusing on the women there, she follows the complex fallout from a brutal rape and murder of a Japanese woman by a serviceman in 2016 and speaks to local protesters, to women’s groups helping Japanese women in problematic relationships with American men, and to members of the older generation who survived the brutal battles at the end of the war.

Thought-provoking and timely, Night in the American Village is a vivid look at the enduring wounds of American-Japanese history and the cultural and sexual politics of the American military empire.