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"[By 1942-3] The governments ranged against Japan began to discuss openly the problems which would arise with Japan's defeat. The Chinese hastened to announce that they intended to claim not only Manchuria and Formosa but the Ryukyu Islands as well. On July 7, 1942, Sun Fo [President of the Legislative Yuan, ex- and future Premier, and son of Sun Yat-sen] announced China's determination to recover the Ryukyus; Foreign Minister T. V. Soong repeated the claim in November; Chiang Kai-shek referred to China's 'loss of the Liu-ch'iu Islands' in the unexpurgated Chinese edition of his manifesto *China's Destiny,* published on March 10. 1943; and Chinese spokesmen in the United States found opportunity to bring the claim to the attention to the American public."--George H. Kirk, *Okinawa: The History of an Island People*, p. 464. https://books.google.com/books?id=aCfRAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT361&lpg=PT361

"*Ta-kung-pao* editorials in January 1943 asserted that the wartime coalition should see to the independence of Korea and the retrocession of Taiwan, the Ryukyus (Liuchius) and Manchuria to China."--*The Cambridge History of China, Volume 13: Republican China, 1912-1949, Part Two*, p. 532. http://books.google.com/books?id=Fxs3ROaIhPMC&pg=PA532

The Chinese claim to the Ryukyus is also discussed by Xiaoyuan Liu, *A Partnership for Disorder: China, The United States, And Their Policies For The Postwar Disposition Of The Japanese Empire, 1941-1945* (Cambridge University Press 1996). As Liu notes, (pp. 77-80) even some Chinese were aware of the questionable nature of the claim:

"Another insular possession of Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, did not occupy a primary position in wartime foreign policy planning in either China or the United States. Before the Cairo Conference, Chinese official thinking on the subject was at best confused. Publicly, the Chinese government included these islands in China's lost territories. But when the aforementioned *Time-Life Fortune* memorandum suggested that these islands should also be part of the string of international bases in the Pacific, Chonqing did not protest in any manner, as it did in the case of Taiwan. The reason was that, at the time, the Chinese government itself did not have a definite policy on these islands.

"After China's war with Japan began, within KMT circles Chiang Kai-shek tended to put the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan in the same category. Once, he suggested mistakenly that the Ryukyu Islands had come under Japan's control as a result of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Consequently, after the beginning of the Pacific war prompted the Chinese government to adopt formally the 1894-1895 war as the time line for its territorial readjustment with Japan, KMT leaders also included the Ryukyu Islands in their list of China's lost territories. Historically, however, the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan had had different relations with China, and they had been seized by Japan in different circumstances. Briefly, the Ryukyu Islands had never been a formal part of China, as Taiwan had, nor had Japan's conquest of the islands taken place during the war of 1894-1895. For more than a century and a half, before Japan made these islands into an 'Okinawa Prefecture' in 1879, the rivalry between China and Japan over the suzerainty of the Ryukyu Islands, a quasi-independent kingdom, had been growing. The government of the Qing Dynasty had eventually lost its tributary patronage over the Ryukyus through an ambiguous and gradual process. Therefore, in the war years, Chongqing's claim of sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands in reference to the war of 1894-1895 would not be able to stand careful scrutiny at international peace conferences.

"Some Chinese officials were cognizant of the confusion. In June 1942, Waijiaobu [Chinese Foreign Ministry] official Yang Yunzhu told John Service of the U.S. embassy that the overture on China's recovery of the Ryukyu Islands was one of those 'unfortunately inevitable... [and] exaggerated statements by private individuals concerning [China's] war aims.' The truth, according to Yang, was that the people living in these islands were not Chinese, and the islands themselves, though at one time existing within the tributary system of China, had been entirely separated from China for almost eighty years. Unimportant economically and strategically to China, the Ryukyu Islands were now in effect an integral part of Japan. Yang firmly stated that the Chinese government would not expect the return of these islands in the peace settlement. Although expressing what he believed proper, Yang failed to anticipate T. V. Soong's aforementioned statement on China's war aims of November 1942 and Chiang Kai-shek's book, *China's Destiny,* both asserting that China wanted to recover the Ryukyus.

"Knowledgeable officials within the Chinese government remained doubtful even after Soong and Chiang publicly committed themselves to Chinese sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands. For instance, in May 1943, Xu Shuxi, adviser to the Foreign Minister and director of the Western Asiatic Affairs Department of the Waijiaobu, pointed out in a memorandum to Soong that, in contrast to Taiwan but similar to Korea, the Ryukyu Islands had been a semisovereign state before their annexation by Japan. China's traditional 'rights' over the Ryukyus were obsolete in the twentieth century; therefore, China should not attempt to recover them. According to Xu, the only realistic course for the Chinese government was to support these islands' freedom from Japan. Yet, Xu doubted that, without its own independence movement, the formerly insular kingdom would be able to achieve self-government. Therefore, a period of international supervision and assistance was in order. Xu emphasized that no matter what type of international administration was established for the Ryukyu Islands at the end of the war, its eventual purpose must be to set these islands free from Japan. Japan must not be allowed to use them again as bases of aggression. Soon, at the Cairo Conference, the Chinese government would make an effort to redefine its postwar intention toward the Ryukyu Islands. But, as is shown in Chapter 6, the effort would not be very effective in altering the public image, fostered by Soong and Chiang, of Chongqing's postwar ambition concerning the Ryukyu Islands.

"Before the Cairo Conference, despite President Roosevelt's general interest in the Pacific islands, the Ryukyus seemed to escape his attention. During the first two years of the war, in the State Department the Ryukyu question was also considered only tentatively. In the summer of 1943, when contemplating the subject, the Territorial Subcommittee of the State Department treated it as a sequel to the Allied policy toward Taiwan. The predominant concern was that these islands' strategic location lay 'athwart the approaches to the China coast and parallel to the great circle trade route.' The Territorial Subcommittee did not think Chinese control of the Ryukyu Islands would be a proper solution. First, in view of the fact that the Chinese in the past had allowed these islands to pass to Japanese control 'by default,' Chongqing's current claim for sovereignty was at best 'tenuous.' Furthermore, should the Ryukyu populace really want to be freed from Japanese rule, they would not necessarily welcome a Chinese government, which would be even more alien to them than the Japanese. An alternative to Chinese control could be international administration if these islands had to be separated from Japan. But in the subcommittee's opinion, the prospective international agency should concern itself only with military matters, leaving civil administration to the Japanese. The inclination was, therefore, to allow Japanese control to continue. It was held that after Japan was disarmed and deprived of the Mandated Islands, Korea, and Taiwan in the postwar years, the Ryukyu Islands alone, even in Japanese hands, would no longer constitute a threat to the security of other nations. Of course, these islands must be thoroughly demilitarized as well. The principle of self-government, in the subcommittee's opinion, did not seem to have a very strong case here. Japanese efforts at assimilation of the islanders seemed to have been quite successful: 'Through education, conscription, and [a] closely supervised system of local government, the population undoubtedly has come to consider itself an integral part of the Japanese Empire'...

"The divided opinions among Chinese officials on the Ryukyu Islands typically reflected the confusion experienced by the Chinese government in trying to reestablish China's traditional influence in East Asia in a modern context. To wartime Chinese-American diplomacy, legal arguments for or against Chongqing's claim on the Ryukyu Islands eventually proved secondary. The two governments' potential disagreement was really over whether these islands should be allowed to remain under Japanese control; and China's and America's different geostrategic interests in the Pacific, not their views of the legal status of the Ryukyus, were decisive..." http://books.google.com/books?id=x8b4an0T0twC&pg=PA77

According to Liu (p. 120) in preparation for the Cairo summit, the National Military Council and the Supreme Council of National Defense prepared programs on the Chinese government's attitude toward the forthcoming peace, which would include Japan's returning to China Manchuria, Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Ryukyu Islands; however, "For the Ryukyu Islands, depending on circumstances, Chongqing could afford to be flexible to the extent of accepting international control." http://books.google.com/books?id=AtdhqyKYf1wC&pg=PA120

Anyway, what was actually discussed about the Ryukyus at Cairo? According to China's "fifth memorandum" about proposals to be submitted to President Roosevelt, Chiang was to propose the following:

"C. Territorial

1. Recovery of all Chinese territories (to be specifically defined e.f. [sic] Manchuria, Liaotung Peninsula, Formosa, *Liu Choo Islands* [emphasis added] and Hong Kong)." http://books.google.com/books?id=AtdhqyKYf1wC&pg=PA308

The Chinese "summary record" of the Conference gives a curious impression: that FDR offered China the Ryukyus, *and Chiang turned him down!*:

"The President then referred to the question of the Ryukyu Islands and enquired more than once whether China would want the Ryukyus. The Generalissimo replied that China would be agreeable to joint occupation of the Ryukyus by China and the United States and, eventually, joint administration by the two countries under the trusteeship of an international organization." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/d259

According to Liu (p. 137), this impression is misleading:

"With regard to the status of the Ryukyu Islands, the summary record conveys the wrong impression that President Roosevelt was the one who brought up the subject and was anxious to offer it to China. In concert with Chiang's original plans for the Cairo Conference, the fifth memorandum clearly indicated Chongqing's intention to regain the Ryukyu Islands along with other lost territories. Instead of being generous, Roosevelt's attitude toward the subject must have put Chiang on the defensive, for, as the record indicates, Chiang appeared flexible and indicated his willingness to participate in a joint American-Chinese administration of the Ryukyus on behalf of the postwar international peace organization. This position constituted a retreat from both the memorandum and Chiang's own earlier claim regarding the Ryukyus that had been made public in his book *China's Destiny*. But, it should be recalled, the retreat was a contingency anticipated in Chiang's original plans. After the meeting with Roosevelt, Chiang explained his stand in his diary, saying that he had proposed to the president a joint American-Chinese control of those islands to end the Americans' anxiety (about China's expansionism?). Later, within KMT circles, Chiang also admitted that the Ryukyus had been part of Japan for so long that it would be better to institute joint American-Chinese control for security purposes rather than to restore China's unilateral influence there.

"Unfortunately for Chiang, his gesture of self-denial over the Ryukyu Islands at that meeting was somehow obscured by the back-and-forth translation between the two languages. The task was performed with difficulty by Song Meiling, who in the opinion of Churchill's doctor in Cairo, 'was always tired' that day because of lost sleep over her nettle rash. Whatever the reason might be, Chiang's proposal did not get across to the president. After his meeting with Chiang, Roosevelt remembered only what he learned from the fifth memorandum and continued to believe that the Chinese government was anxious to obtain the Ryukyu Islands..." http://books.google.com/books?id=AtdhqyKYf1wC&pg=PA137

OK, let's grant that giving China the Ryukyus would be wrong from the viewpoint of self-determination (the Okinawans and other island peoples may not have been *exactly* Japanese, but they were linguistically and culturally closely related to the Japanese, and in no sense were they Chinese) and dubious from the viewpoint of history: though the Ryukyuan kings for centuries paid tribute to China, as early as the seventeenth century the southern Kyushu fief of Satsuma exercised control over the islands. China did object when Japan formally ended the Ryukyu Kingdom and established a "Prefecture of Okinawa" in 1879; but by 1891 (three years before the Sino-Japanese War) even the official *Peking Gazette* (which as late as 1890 had published occasional notices of the Ryukyus as a "tributary state") started to treat Ryukyu matters under "Foreign Affairs." Kerr, *Okinawa: The History of an Island People*, p. 392.

Still, Chiang *did* want the Ryukyus (even if he was willing to accept joint American-Chinese administration as a fallback position) and what if FDR had in fact agreed to let him have them? (Why would he do so? Well, it was wartime and Japan was the enemy. Besides, FDR was unable or unwilling to grant many of Chiang's requests--e.g., the endless appeals for more aid--and he may have figured that granting this one would be a harmless way of mollifying Chiang, especially if it is agreed that while
sovereignty on the islands will "revert" to China, the US will get to keep troops there.) We would then get the curious situation that after 1949, the Republic of China would be limited (apart from minor islands) to (a) Taiwan, whose loss had been taken for granted by China until World War II [1]; and (b) the Ryukyus, a chain of islands which had never really been part of China and which were inhabited by people who considered themselves Japanese, or at least certainly not Chinese. The Nationalist Chinese had trouble enough governing their fellow Han Chinese on Taiwan--think of the troubles the Okinawans and other Ryukyuans would give them. Meanwhile, there would still be irredentist sentiment in Japan. (After all, in OTL the Kurile Islands dispute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute remains unresolved.) And if after 1950 the Communist takeover of the Chinese mainland and the Korean War lead the US to maintain a massive military presence on the Ryukyus, the resentment, both in Japan and on the Ryukyus, will be directed not only against Chiang but especially against the US. (There was--and is--of course much resentment of the US military presence in Okinawa in OTL. But at least in OTL, the US even in the 1950's did acknowledge Japan's "residual sovereignty" over Okinawa and the other Ryukyus, and did ultimately return them to Japanese control.)

[1] "Taiwan's loss, interestingly enough, had been taken for granted. Until Japan's defeat in the war of 1937-45 seemed likely, no Republican government had challenged the legality of the Treaty of Shimonoseki by which the Qing had ceded the island to Japan; and for no major political movement, including the Communists, had it been *terra irredenta.*" William C. Kirby, "The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations At Home and Abroad in the Republican Era," p. 185, n. 25 in Frederick
Wakeman, Jr. and Richard Louis Edmonds (eds.) *Reappraising Republican China* (Oxford University Press 2000). http://books.google.com/books?id=GNLWtjV_MDwC&pg=PA185
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