A U.S. official blamed Okinawa’s poverty on laziness rather than occupation

Evidence

Despite the construction contracts, Maher said, Okinawa is still the poorest prefecture in Japan. He said it was “partially because it was occupied until 1972” by the United States and wasn’t integrated into the Japanese economy. But “you’ve got this island mentality,” he added. That mentality traditionally involved planting sugarcane and goya (a bright green cucumber-shaped bitter melon iconic in Okinawa), and then just waiting around until cutting it down. And nowadays, Maher said, “They are too lazy [even] to grow it.” Before finishing the briefing, Maher attributed Okinawans’ high rates of divorce, drunk driving, domestic violence, and childbearing to their taste for Okinawan rice liquor. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 828

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: how colonial officials pathologize the colonized’s social ills instead of their own occupation — Maher blaming rice liquor for domestic violence parallels other imperial rationalizations.