On this day in 1970, a spontaneous uprising against U.S. military occupation broke out in Koza, Okinawa, Japan after an American drunk driver struck a local pedestrian. Approximately 60 Americans and 27 Okinawans were injured, and dozens of cars with American license plates were torched.

Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, the country was occupied by Allied forces and governed under martial law. While most of Japan regained its independence in April 1952, the Okinawa Prefecture was to remain under U.S. military occupation for another twenty years.

Prior to the events of December 20th, three Americans had been acquitted via court martial after striking and killing an Okinawa civilian. This incident fueled the growing discontent of Okinawans with the standard status of forces that exempted U.S. servicemen from Okinawan justice.

On December 20th, 1970, a drunk U.S. serviceman struck an Okinawan pedestrian in the city of Koza. A crowd quickly surrounded the car and the policemen who had arrived, demanding that this incident not also be swept under the rug.

When American MPs arrived and attempted to pull the driver away, the protest turned violent, with thousands gathering to try to prevent the driver from leaving. By the end of the night, dozens of cars with American license plates had been torched and approximately 60 Americans and 27 Okinawans had been injured.

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  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    : p

    I recently found Better Discord for PC and it’s a game changer. I can resize the stupid window, there are plugins that let you collapse menus you don’t want. It’s great. And apparently it’s easy to do but Discord doesn’t allow you to under the ToS. Fuckers.

    • blipblip [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Yeah I just set that up on my PC last week actually. Really I just wanted to theme it to match everything else, discord works well enough on PC for me to not bother fucking around with it too much.

      Managed to get into settings to find out I couldn’t opt out of the new mess of a UI, had to go install an old version manually.