Presence

A quarter of the land on Okinawa’s main island houses American military bases, 32 of them, and there are more than 30,000 US military personnel living on the island, many with migrated families.

This presence doesn’t go unnoticed. Where I‘m living, in Chatan, tacos are as commonplace as sushi, and there seem to be burgers and steaks on menus everywhere. The patrons at nearby restaurant tables are as likely to be American as Japanese. The local Irish pub screens American football matches and plenty of places play nothing but American rock music. At times it can feel like there’s a glitch in the matrix.

Yet it’s in the skies that the presence is most imposing, where fighter planes’ thunderous roars routinely echo above as pilots perform their aerial training drills, flights of raven colored helicopters make their rounds, blades thwacking insistently, and huge military transporters disappear with a low rumble behind tower blocks on their descent to land.