5th International Conference on Okinawan On "The girl with the white flag"

In 1983, "the one-foot movement", which entailed purchasing American film footage of the Battle of Okinawa, was begun as part of a broader effort to leave a record of the war. The following year, a portion of that footage was introduced to the public and created a sensation. In particular, audiences were struck by the image of a young girl, holding a white flag of surrender and waving at the camera.
In 1985, a book was published that developed a motif based on the "powerful message" suggested by this image. Written by Arakawa Akira and illustrated by Gima Hiroshi, the book was entitled Okinawa: Ikusa monogatari—Ryuuko no shiroi hata (Okinawa: Tale of War—Ryuko's White Flag). The narrative begins with the phrase, "This story takes place forty years ago" and concludes with the reflection, "It has been forty years since the war." This narrative structure implies that the war can not be relegated to the past, but continues to live on in painful memories that refuse to disappear. Yet the book turns out to have been based on events different from "the facts." Furthermore, this departure from the facts involved the very subject of the book's title, namely the "white flag."
In 1989, Higa Tomiko published her book, Shirohata no shoujo (Girl with the White Flag). This was two years after she had caused a stir by identifying herself as the girl in the film. Higa's book not only dwells on the war but devotes attention to her family in the preceding years.
Higa chose to address her life in the prewar years because she credits her "father's words" with enabling her to survive the brutal battlefield. Her decision to address her wartime experience was prompted by a desire to correct misunderstandings about "the white flag."
Following the opening in 1984 of the film showing the girl with the white flag, many viewers appear to have been shocked by the image, but not because of the strength she exudes.
Rather, Makiminato Shouzou's essay "Ijou na senjou shibai" ("An Abnormal Wartime Play") serves as an example of why viewers were shocked. He attributes being moved by "the image of the girl walking with a white flag in her hand" to "the fact that "Japanese soldiers can be seen in the background." He was shocked by "the perverse psychology that would prompt Japanese soldiers to intentionally shield themselves with a young girl, since the enemy was unlikely to shoot at a child." Arakawa and Gima's book, Ryuko's White Flag can be said to have been written from a similar perspective.
Higa, however, claims that the Japanese soldiers in the background were there by coincidence. This is probably "true," but neither Makiminato nor the authors of Ryuko's White Flag checked with Higa, the actual person featured in the footage, to confirm the veracity of their claims. This paper explores why they didn't bother to ascertain "the truth."