ABSTRACT
On 1 April 1974, nearly two years after Okinawa’s reversion to Japan and exactly twenty-nine years after American troops first landed on the island of Okinawa, the town of Koza merged with the village of Misato and renounced its distinctive name to become “Okinawa City.” For most of the preceding two decades, Koza had been the only township in either Okinawa or Japan where the municipal name was officially recorded in katakana. This orthographic distinction seemed particularly fitting for Koza, a military town inextricably linked-from its inception through its present incarnation-to the American troops.
