My research interests have been shaped by the many contrasting stories of Okinawa I heard growing up. Some came from my Okinawan mother, born well before the devastating Battle of Okinawa. Others came from my Black American father who left the segregated US South, enlisted in the Air Force and was stationed in Okinawa before it reverted back to Japan in 1972. Other times I absorbed them from other family members in Okinawa or military families my parents befriended at some point in their non-stop circulation of “tours of duty.” What always struck me as odd and fascinating was how strikingly different the narratives of this small island peppered with US American military bases were shaped. The talk about their movement through extralegal and shadowy spaces around the borderlands of the bases especially peaked my interest: black markets, segregated spaces off base, the uncanny ways in which security is imagined, reworked and racially embodied along the fencelines.
