When fiery, brittle little Kamejiro Senaga was elected mayor of Naha last year, conservative Okinawan businessmen and U.S. authorities immediately went to work to unseat him. Senaga, an ex-journalist who ran a general store as a sideline to his job as mayor, had already served 18 months of a two-year jail sentence for harboring a wanted Japanese Communist, and was widely regarded as a Communist himself.
Mayor Senaga lost no time in making the U.S. occupation authorities miserable. Though the money spent by the U.S. on its base has made Okinawans rich...