Paper short abstract:

This presentation introduces David Vine's "Base Nation," a follow-up to his own book about the base on Diego Garcia "Island of Shame." Then I will use literary texts in order to explore the situations of Okinawans and Chagossians after review how the US military bases made the islanders refugees.

Paper long abstract:

I would like to start this paper asking why 1810 was so important for the area in the Indian Ocean. If the British had not taken over Mauritius from France; that is, if Mauritius were like Reunion, a territory of France, what would be happening to the Chagos islands now?

Our world is far from being in unity, or even far from consensus on the way to achieve world peace. Out of human desires, we can re-image situations for desirable contemporary living. We may at least discover a new vocabulary or political and social concepts to resolve conflicts which should be fought in courtrooms or in election campaigns rather than on the battlefield. US military issues shared by Chagossians and Okinawans are likely to be louder and more rancorous in a few years to come. In fact, both desire to unity and tendencies toward diversity have created human history.

I would like to make a new line from Okinawa to Diego Garcia visible. Ilois, or Chagossians, have been refugees since 1965 before the independence of Mauritius. Their state as refugees seems/seemed to remain everlasting. Right before their complete removable from the Chagos Archipelago in 1973, the reversion of Okinawa to Japan was announced in 1972. These incidents occurred separately; however, they may have been interlinked in a new line drawn by the US. How did Okinawan history have had a major impact on Chagossian marginalization, and vice versa?