The Nishimui colony provided artists with a generous income through commissions from US Navy officers and soldiers; it was also the first modern Okinawan art society to encourage the creativity and development of artists who would go on to become the vanguard of Okinawan art from 1948 to the 1960s. It was that a modern Okinawan art would first emerge, one that deconstructed colonial tropes of localism and attended to the social and political realities of the Okinawan people. As a result of its colonial history, issues of Okinawan identity, together with the resurrection over the course of the 20th century of Okinawan traditions have been fraught with complexity. The chapter argues that it is in the visual arts that Okinawans have given expression to some of the most compelling meditations on issues such as nationhood, identity and, the experience of trauma that for many would become an integral part of what it meant to be Okinawan.