@mima@philippines@palestine@Philippines I had to look at what's Okinawa. Turns out that's some independent kingdom with separate language and ethnicity that Japan annexed in 1879. So it's indeed occupied, by Japan. The same way as Russian empire invaded and occupied countries in 1793, like Poland, Finland, Ukraine and Belarus
@mima@philippines@palestine@Philippines maybe the US had that plan, if Japan tries their imperialism again, they pull that trick with independent Okinawa that wants freedom and democracy, and protectionism )) it would be similar to Philippines, that was a Spanish colony once.
@Helgi If you mean that the U.S. is stationing their military in Okinawa to prevent some sort of Hong Kong incident where Japan forcefully suppresses calls for sovereignty in the prefecture, then I highly doubt that. The U.S. needs a reliable ally in East Asia a bit behind the frontlines, and Japan fits that role perfectly. I don't think they'd sacrifice their relationship with the Japanese government for (in their view) a bunch of noisy Okinawans. If Okinawa wasn't just a strategic location they would've gladly returned full sovereignty of the region back to Japan and turn a blind eye to any future human rights abuses that would be committed by Japanese authorities.
Anyway while I personally think that Okinawa and Hokkaido don't really belong to Japan in the end (the anti-Japaneseism movement within Japan comes to mind), it's a whole can of worms and I'd rather not have any Western intervention on this matter.
@mima@philippines@palestine@Philippines need to ask Japan, maybe they don't want those US bases removed. Exactly like Germany, they had US bases, then Trump decided to remove those bases. And Poland immediately proposed to pay for stationing them in their country, to protect Poland against Russia
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