LiC

“Voices from Okinawa” is an awesome play. I strongly recommend you guys to watch it. Before watching the play, I only heard from my Okinawa friends that Okinawans are discriminated by other Japanese. Japanese do not always consider Okinawans Japanese. Okinawa was taken over by the USA during World War II.

This play really reflects back to what we have read and we have talked in the class. We are talking about a lot of Pacific countries were colonized by the stronger countries, like British, American. Okinawa could not escape colonization. Like other colonized nation in the Pacific, indigenous people suffered a lot and they were facing the danger of culture diminishing. However, I am really proud of people who did their very best to preserve their own culture. But inevitable, they must be other culture involved and changed young generation gradually.

What impressed me much is ritual practice. When there were disasters, like flood, Obaa—san gathered people to worship the great-grandfather. She even had ability to talk with the dead in the other side of world. When Kama was doubting what they were doing, the principal responded to him what they were worshiping the ancestor just like what American pray to God. This response made Kama in silence. Ritual practice is always the very important aspect of the culture.

In the play, the girl called Namiye suffered a lot from what GI had done on her. He raped her before her marriage. Through her story, I found out GI did a lot of bad things to Okinawans. Before I did not know what GI was, now I figured out GI is soldier of the United States. Honestly, I felt bad for Okinawan girls at that time and felt shamed on GIS. This story brought me back to Chinese history. In Nanjing slaughter, Japanese soldiers forced a lot of Chinese women to become “comfort ladies” for them. Nowadays, there are still some “comfort ladies” alive. When talking their stories, they feel miserable. There is still non-recovery pain in their heart. Why nations were always so aggressive, why did they always want to conquer each other, why don’t they want to be peaceful? If they were peaceful, there would not so many tragedies happened in the world. People will not need to suffer. Regarding to President Obama having a official visit to China, I am really appreciated what he has done to strengthen relationship between China and the USA. What he has done is trying to make a peaceful world.

What I have talked above is not to offense anybody. I just wanted to express myself.