Two works make up Susumu Higa’s Okinawa (Fantagraphics, 2023): Sword of Sand and Mabui. They form interesting vantage points from which to consider the Battle of Okinawa, colonialism and occupation, and the rights of national and cultural self-determination. Despite the heavy themes of the work, it never feels weighed down by them, even though they are at times unrelenting.
Sword of Sand is a look at the close of World War II from a distinctly Okinawan perspective. It tells the tale of an island trapped between a rock and a hard place; namely, Japanese and Allied forces. Brought into the war at a very late stage, Higa shows the people of Okinawa pushing back against the Japanese presence on the small islands. They push back not only out of self-preservation—the island had remained generally untouched throughout the war—but as a bid to retain their Ryukyuan identity and sovereignty (despite having been a part of Japan for just under a century.)
The tension between the Japanese military and the Okinawan people plays a central role in Sword of Sand. The Japanese presence is a shadow cast across the first book, using Okinawans as human shields against the invading US forces, murdering those they deem as traitors, even killing themselves and others in last-ditch efforts against the Allies. The Allied forces are painted in a fairly sympathetic light, having a sense of generosity and care for civilians and military alike. This surprised me, knowing full-well the unrelenting character of the Allied attack on the island. This should not be taken to say that the Allies are the heroes and the Japanese the villains; the ethical implications against both militaries are not so black and white. The Japanese forces are—even in the darkness of their presence—given a great deal of grace as something between honorable men and misguided fools. As for the Allies, whenever they are not portrayed sympathetically, they persist simply as an inhuman barrage of gunfire. Higa’s message is clear: there were no winners in this campaign, least of all the people of Okinawa.
The stories in Sword of Sand are primarily taken from news stories and tales recounted by locals. The two most personal stories—by far, the best in this half of the volume—are about his mother and father’s journeys during the war. Undoubtedly heard many times over the course of Higa’s life, they tell two very different tales of resilience in the war. His mother’s story recounts moving across the island to flee and hide from the fighting and the Allies in particular. Hiding out in fields, caves, even tombs, the family was constantly in danger of death. Higa’s father was a member of the home guard, a legion of mostly untrained civilians. Narrowly escaping death himself on several occasions, he was taken as a POW to Hawai’i for a year. In a brief end-note, Higa says that his father described the POW camp as a paradise and that story could take up an entire book. It’s a shame he didn’t; it would have made a very interesting companion to Sword of Sand.
Mabui takes up the second half of this volume. Mabui is a Ryukyuan religious concept, meaning the “spirit” or essence of the self. Like Sword of Sand, Mabui is told in a series of vignettes. Unlike Sword of Sand, this book is comprised of stories collected after the war, during and after the military occupation of Okinawa by the US. Mabui is about recovery and reconciliation. At the core of each vignette is a person or persons on a path to recover their soul and, in turn, renew the soul of Okinawa at large. The title story of this book, the last in the Okinawa tome, is about a graverobber, literally pillaging the spiritual home of the Okinawan ancestors, and selling the pots and urns on the black market. He is haunted by the ghosts of Okinawa. Unlike most of the other stories, it doesn’t quite end on a hopeful note. Perhaps it is just Higa’s lament at the loss of this ancestral history, but it could also stand as a rallying cry to the Okinawan people to continue to fight for their lives, their history, their culture. And precisely because of its lamentable ending, it is the most successful story of the entire work.
The book itself is very sturdy, with color inserts and a lengthy interview with the author in the back. It even includes a glossary of indigenous Okinawan words which are left untranslated throughout the rest of the book. My one gripe about the book is that this last section is inexplicably in Western standard pagination (read from left to right.)
Okinawa is a beautiful book, and its greatest success is in humanizing the conflict. Higa says in the included interview that he hopes the reaction is on of recognition of shared humanity and empathy. I think that anyone reading this book will have that exact experience, and will witness masterful cartooning in the process. It’s a book that should be on everyone’s shelves.