Okinawa Quotes

• The desire to see Okinawa returned to Japan developed into a broad national consensus among our people.

  Eisaku Sato

  Japan, People, Desire

  68 Copy quote

• I didn't get to meet Hank Williams. I was in the Air Force on Okinawa when he passed away.

  Mel Tillis

  Air, Passed Away, Hank Williams

  67 Copy quote

• I asked God "Why, why, why?" I turned my face away and wished that I were imagining it all. I had tasted the bitterest essence of war, the sight of helpless comrades being slaughtered, and it filled me with disgust.

  Eugene B. Sledge

  War, Sight, Essence

  Eugene B Sledge (2010). “With the Old Breed: The World War Two Pacific Classic”, p.61, Random House

  26 Copy quote

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• Okinawa, one of the longest-lived and healthiest populations in the world, practice a principle they call hara hachi bu: Eat until you are 80 percent full.

  Michael Pollan

  Practice, Principles, Population

  Michael Pollan (2008). “In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto”, p.151, Penguin

  17 Copy quote

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• The ongoing dispute over the relocation of U.S. Marines on Okinawa should be quickly settled. This isn't just an issue for the U.S. and Japan. It has regional implications.

  Ed Royce

  Marine, Japan, Issues

  12 Copy quote

• If they can fight and die on Okinawa, Guadalcanal (and) in the South Pacific, they can play ball in America.

  Happy Chandler

  Fighting, America, Play

  19 Copy quote

• I don't think America needs 28,000 men on Okinawa. I don't think we need an army in Germany. What's it for, to protect Germans against the Russians, to protect the French against the Germans? It's just there by inertia, that's my reading of it. I don't think we need an army in South Korea because North Korea is absolutely no threat to South Korea.

  Kevin Gutzman

  Reading, Army, Men

  5 Copy quote

• I would say that my great political awakening was really born on Okinawa, reading Albert Camus: the "Neither Victims nor Executioners" essay and The Rebel. I was an eighteen-year-old kid. I hated myself. I hated my life. I thought nobody wanted me.

  Sam Hamill

  Reading, Kids, Years

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• Hoping to see karate included in the universal physical education taught in our public schools, I set about revising the kata so as to make them as simple as possible. Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change too. The karate that high school students practice today is not the same karate that was practiced even as recently as ten years ago [this book was written in 1956], and it is a long way indeed from the karate I learned when I was a child in Okinawa.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Children, Book

  21 Copy quote

• I was a runner and a soccer player living in Okinawa, Japan and I didn't have recruiters coming in to recruit me for sports. So how many kids out there and planning to go to college are super stud athletes but don't have a chance because they come from some podunk town and no one comes to watch them?

  Kristin Armstrong

  Soccer, Sports, Athlete

  4 Copy quote

• I got interested in Zen when I was a teenage beatnik on the streets of San Francisco. And it was my interest in Zen, in part, that got me into the Marine Corps, because that was a ticket to Asia. So I spent a couple of years on Okinawa and began reading and thinking about how I wanted to go about conducting my life.

  Sam Hamill

  Couple, Teenage, Reading

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

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