The US relocated over 3,200 Okinawans to Bolivia with broken promises

Evidence

With the part of Okinawa left for civilians growing increasingly overcrowded, between 1954 and 1964 the United States induced at least 3,218 Okinawans to resettle 11,000 miles away, in landlocked Bolivia. (This was not entirely unheard of at a time when Japan arranged with several Latin American countries to accept its migrants.) The government promised them farmland and financial assistance. Instead, most found disease, jungle-covered lands, incomplete housing and roads, and none of the promised aid. By the late 1960s, the displaced Okinawans began heading to Brazil and Argentina and back to Okinawa and Japan. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 201

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Chagossians’ expulsion from Diego Garcia in the same book and the pattern of base-driven displacement of indigenous and island peoples.