Barely ten years after the Battle of Okinawa, the US military threatened residents’ livelihoods yet again with bulldozers, tanks, and soldiers. Their forceful confiscation of privately owned properties for military base construction and training was added to the Okinawan historical narrative of marginalization. Local residents started to organize protest actions against the US military, and this gave rise to what Arasaki describes as the first-wave ‘Okinawa Struggle’. This cycle of protest is popularly known as the ‘all-island struggle’ (shimagurumi to¯so¯). It has been constantly recalled as the earliest, and perhaps the most powerful, evidence of the locals’ ability to wage collective action against the authorities. The ‘first-wave’ postwar Okinawa Struggle has been a source of inspiration and pride for the local tradition of grassroots political activism.