Time and again throughout Japan’s history, Okinawa has drawn the short straw. The former Ryukyu Kingdom was invaded by samurai forces in the 17th century and eventually annexed in 1879. It went on to suffer appalling losses during World War II, followed by a nearly three-decade U.S. occupation.
Today, the archipelago finds itself on the frontline of another potential conflict, this time against emerging superpower China. Already home to a large U.S. presence, the islands are now at the center of the biggest military buildup in Japan’s postwar history.
Filmmaker and journalist Chie Mikami has been chronicling this process — and local efforts to resist it — across a series of features, starting with 2013’s “The Targeted Village.” In “Clouds of War,” her first film in six years, she looks not at the well-documented controversies surrounding U.S. military bases in the prefecture, but at the quiet expansion of Japan’s own Self-Defense Forces there.