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from the Japanese government to build a series of traditional agricultural and craft
cooperatives, including high-quality porcelain potting kilns and a weaving factory that
makes exquisitely expensive kimono sashes for a mainland clientele.
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The issue of missed parachute drops hasn’t gone away, but seems to have turned at least
sometimes from tragedy into farce. Indeed, because of its historical connotations, the
trope of the “missed parachute drop” is a powerful one that can be periodically invoked
with great affect. In Oct. 2002, a combined Air Force/Army team was conducting
parachute drops over the U.S. Marine base in Ie. A routine helicopter drop of three
cardboard-covered 5-gallon plastic containers, lashed together and filled with water, had
to have its parachute cord cut away for flight safety reasons, and the containers landed off
the designated course in a field on the base, just 600 meters from the main airfield, and
burst open. The soldiers conducting the exercise said that they made sure that no one was
underneath the containers before making the cut, and indeed no one was injured. But the
drop frightened a tacit farmer—someone who certainly knew his plot was on a military
base and must have observed the helicopter exercises—who was working in his field 100
meters away.
It turned out that the tacit farmer had a brother-in-law who was active in the anti-base
movement in Okinawa, and this relative called the press. The mayor of Ie (regretfully,
according to U.S. officials) lodged complaints with the U.S. military, the U.S. consulate,
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Authors’ interview with a retired Yomitan political official, May 2003. We visited both a potter and the
weaving cooperative at Yomitan Village.
Convention