Towards the end of World War II in the Pacific, the fighting was bloody, especially when the Armed Forces began the invasion of Okinawa, taking the war directly to the Japanese. Some of the most terrible fighting was carried out in every village, beach head, and mountain areas. When the war concluded, the United States took control of Okinawa and made it into basically a heavily manned, logistically important, and militarily buildout with air, land, and sea bases. For 27 years, Okinawa was under the direct governance of the United States and was, and still is, a key forward staging area for US forces in the Indo-Asia-Pacific theater. The Korean and Vietnam wars were supplied and supported by all branches of the military who each had bases on the Island. In 1969, President Nixon and then Japan’s Prime Minister Sato agreed that Okinawa would be reverted to the Japanese government no later than 1972. In June, 2022, fifty years has elapsed, but it is an anniversary one New Boston resident will remember.
The reversion of Okinawa, or, more generally, the Ryukyu Islands, involved many changes. These included fundamental changes in the political administration of the islands, the status of U.S. military forces on Okinawa, and major aspects of the economic system. Enter New Boston’s
Enter New Boston’s Fred Milton, a civil servant logistics manager serving in the Department of the Army on Okinawa. A heavy burden fell upon him and his organization. Now it has been 50 years since the Reversion, Fred has long retired from that event, but still, since one of his children was born in Okinawa, his memories of those events are still fresh in his mind as one of the more important logistics efforts in his long career.
