OCR Text |
Show j "Okinawa" a Pirates Harem The following letter has ceen received from J. Grant nubbins, sun of Mrs. Willhm T. Robbins, who left Logan with the National Home Guard at the outbreak of; the war: J I , NANSEI ISLAND I 9 April, 1943 j j "You probably are wondering ( where N; am at the present, well I ' am in the Nansei group of is- j lands on Okinawa. Nansei means I 'Southwestern' islands. There arej 116 islands in the group with a ' total of 935 square miies and ' 820,000 people, which means .an ! average of about 900 people per square mile. So you see there are a lot of people around here and I I might add there are 50.000 more i women than men on these is-I is-I lands, ia. man's paradise I must I say but they can have it all, as far as I am concerned. "The people here are called Okinawa, the ' nnme of the largest island of the group they don't seem to know who their an- cestors were, but they must have had some, probably came from the Japanese home island. Some think they are Ainus or Kumosos people. In the olden doys the Jap pirates made their headquarters here. They would capture women on the China coast and bring them to these islands for reasons you can probably imagine. The result is that the Okinawas have Chinese, Malayan and Korean ! blood in them. They are a more degraded people than the Japanese, 1 as 'Sons of Heaven' they don't j quite make the grade. They don't have much interest in civil or military affairs, yet to me they I seem to be a better class of people peo-ple than those on Siapan. They resent the high and mighty ways of the Japanese, but the majority of them nrp true t.rt .Yanan Thpv know very little about America and what they do know they have heard from Jap propaganda. The Okinawas speak a dialect known as Ryuklu, and most all of them can read and write. "In the city of Naha, the leading lead-ing city of the group, there are fine newspapers and 1200 radio sets. (This was in 1940). Most of the people are farmers with an avorage of two acres of land per family. Sugar is their chief crop, and they raise quite a lot of other stuff such as sweet potatoes, and vegetables, rice, (we have rice fields all around us) and they do considerable fishing. Many peo. have moved out to Japan, Hawaii, Brazil,, peru, the Philippines and many culier places where they could go, because it was so crowded here. "The houses are one story affairs with grass roofs. The people sit (but to them the yen has a value of that of a dollar). Then there is a Sen, a hundred Sen make a Yen, and then there is the Rin a thousand Rin make a Yen. Something like a mill at home. "The name of this island "Okinawa" "Oki-nawa" means the land of the extended rope. It is 67 miles long and from three to ten miles wide: The northern part of the island is mountainous and rough, while the southern part is low with rolling hills that are no more than 400 feet high. On this island there are 443,000 people, the capital capi-tal and chief port, Naha, has a population of 65,000 and the city of Shuri has 17,000. on the floor on mats, a lot nice the Japs do. The women wear kimonas. but in the back country the fashions call for clothing from i the waist down from the waist up, it is strictly sun tan. "The Okinawas use Japanese money which is not hard to figure out. A yen, the principal piece of money is worth about 25 cents, "I was last stationed with the Laytee and Mindoor operations and now. we are standing on the door step of Tojos house, wringing his door bell. We are really giving them hell and I'll bet they wish they had never heard of Pearl Harbor. GRANT BOBBINS." |