"Henrose"

     Those who lived on Okinawa, prior to reversion to Japan in 1972, were more than likely aware of the existence of a U.S. government installation that was located on the southern tip of the island called Camp Chinen.  Some may have visited the place as guests of school friends who lived in that camp.  It was an isolated place, on a small plateau, named after the area which was on a small peninsula called Chinen (pronounce "shee-nen").  It was a completely "self-sustaining" installation with all of the amenities one would expect from a larger government installation.  It had its own small movie theater that showed all the latest movies that were shown at larger bases like Kadena or Sukiran.  It had a small PX that carried most necessities, a nice club (Hotei) that served the needs of its residents, a large community swimming pool, golf course, tennis courts, fully equipped gymnasium, four lane bowling alley, and a dispensary to take care of its residents.  In short, it was just a smaller version of one of the larger camps/bases located on the island.
     It was a very nice place in may respects, but somewhat isolated and, therefore, a bit of a bore for a teenager.  I have blogged about some of the people that I met in Chinen previously, they were all very interesting, fascinating people.  As I explained in one of the blogs, as a teenager I couldn't always get away from Camp Chinen to go to one of the teen clubs located on the main part of the island.  In those cases, I was "stuck" in Chinen and had to find a way to entertain myself otherwise.  During fall and winter I was usually occupied with hunting in the surrounding area, but during spring and summer there wasn't much to do, so I used to hang around the bowling alley where I became good friends with its manager, Moriyama.  I had told the story of Moriyama, who was originally from Hiroshima area, who was a "boy soldier" during WWII, a kamikaze pilot, no less!  Moriyama was a very good friend and I spent many hours talking with him, since I was not much of a bowler!  The other person that I befriended was the manager of our gym, a man who went by the nick-name of "Henrose."  Moriyama the bowling alley manager and Henrose the gym manager were two of my closest friends in Camp Chinen during my five years in that place.  I befriended both of them when I first arrived in Chinen as an 8th Grader and continued my friendship with them through all the years until after I graduated from Kubasaki and left Okinawa!  So, ours was a long association and friendship, and I got to know the two men very well.
     Like Moriyama, Henrose came to work in Camp Chinen shortly after it was built during the Korean War.  His real name, Ikemiyagi, apparently was difficult to remember or pronounce for some Americans, so someone gave him the nick-name of Henrose, which stuck, and everyone called him by that name.  He didn't mind, in fact, he seemed amused by it.  I asked him once if he wasn't upset with the foreign nick-name when he had a perfectly good name, and he just waved it off and said he didn't care.  Essentially he said it didn't matter what he was called.
     Henrose was a stocky, muscular guy with a dark complexion.  He was the exact opposite of Moriyama who was slender with a very fair complexion.  Henrose told me that when he first went to work at the gym, he used to lift weights regularly out of boredom, that's how he became so muscular.  The gym usually had no customers during the day.  Perhaps someone who was not working might pop-in, or someone else might drop by during lunch to exercise a bit.  But for most of the day it was empty.  It was after work hours and weekends that the gym saw most activities such as pick-up basketball, in which case Henrose had to work those times and days.  On movie nights Henrose worked as a projectionist, so he got to see all the movies that were shown! But, most of the day Henrose was by himself or in company of another Okinawan employee who was off work that day and they would be engaged in a game of shogi (Japanese chess) or go and work regular 8 to 5 work hours.  Henrose loved to play shogi or go, and from what I understood, he was the grand champion of all Okinawan employees in Camp Chinen.
     Unlike Moriyama who lived in Naha and used to make the long commute on his motorcycle daily, Henrose lived in Oyakibaru, the small village just outside the main gate across the fire station.  Oyakibaru was a small village that was created after Camp Chinen was built.  Some of the Okinawan employees at the camp lived there, as well as one American who had an Okinawan common law wife and family!  Once, during the summer, Henrose invited me to his house after he closed the gym.  He had a nice, very typical Okinawan house and we sat in his house eating goat sashimi.  That's the first time that I had eaten goat sashimi!
     Through the years I learned some very interesting things about Henrose.  He was older than Moriyama and in 1944 he was in his final year at the Ryukyu University when he was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army.  Because he was an Okinawan, despite his university education, he was sent to a work battalion where he served as a private, mostly as an ammunition bearer on the front lines and laborer in the rear areas.  It goes without saying that he was treated brutally, not only because he was a private, but because he was not a "real" Japanese.  He was not from naichi (main islands) therefore, according to what he told me, Okinawans were treated like Koreans and Taiwanese, who were also drafted into Japanese military to serve in work battalions!  He was in Burma for a while, then got transferred to Philippines where he served most of the war years.  At the end of the war, after spending time in a POW camp in Philippines, he was repatriated back to Okinawa.
     Once when I was walking with him through the main gate (I was headed for Machinato area and was going to catch an Okinawan bus) and Henrose was headed home.  Henrose had a bag that he carried and the guard insisted on thoroughly searching the bag before allowing him to leave.  Henrose was visibly upset, and it was also obvious that there was some bad blood between him and that particular guard.  They exchanged some unkindly words before parting, Henrose calling the guard a "watch dog."  Later, when we were talking in the gym, for some reason I mentioned the Japanese Imperial Army's notorious secret police, the kempei tai.  Henrose bristled upon hearing the name kempei and practically spit out the name followed by some strong language.  He called them chiksho (animals) and some much stronger names!  I asked him why he hated the kempei tai so much and he proceeded to tell me that he hated all security services, including our own gate guards!
     It took a while, several months, before Henrose finally told me the reason for his hatred of "security personnel."  He said that when he was in the army during the war, he along with some of his companions in the work battalion complained to the higher ups about the brutal treatment.  They had written a petition requesting better treatment, saying that they were all in it together and they were willing to work hard, but the treatment was unfair and brutal, and counterproductive.  He said that shortly after they submitted the petition the kempei swooped down on them and arrested all of the involved members.  They were tortured, beaten daily, and forced to make false confessions that their protests were a part of a much bigger plot that involved all sorts of high ranking individuals.  Of course it was all made up to make the kempei look good.  He said their torture involved everything from simple beating with kendo swords to using electric shock, attaching car battery wires to genitals!  He said that eventually several of his comrades died, and those that remained alive were returned to their units, broken men!
     Henrose said that to this day, if he ever ran into any one of his former torturers, he would kill them with his bare hands, without hesitation!  He said he didn't care if he had to go to prison for the rest of his life, it would be worth it!  Although Henrose was married for over ten years at that time, he and his wife had no children.
     Few people who lived on Okinawa actually realized how badly Okinawans were treated by the Japanese before and during the war.  When talk of reversion first started to be heard in the 1960s, the older generation, especially those who had suffered through the war in the military, were strongly opposed to any kind of a return to Japan.  Moriyama, who was a Japanese, but married to an Okinawan, didn't think it would be good for Okinawa.  Henrose, when I asked him about the reversion, snickered and spit out, "Return to motherland?  What motherland!  We're not Japanese!  We are Okinawans, Ryukyuans, not Japanese!"  But apparently he and those others like him had very little to say, as Okinawa was "returned" to Japan in 1972.