No. 113, March2000

The USCAR Project at Archives II

Seven staff members of the National Diet Library of Japan (NDL) and the Okinawa Prefectural Archives (OPA) have been working for the USCAR (the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands, RG 260) Project at the Textual Research Room of the National Archives II in College Park, MD, USA, for over two years. They catalog the records which are then filmed and sent to the NDL and the OPA. This has been a challenging, but special experience for all of the staff because these records are related to their own history and will become an important part of Japan's historical heritage. 

The Ryukyu Islands are located southwest of Japan, northeast of Taiwan and the Philippines. The chain of island is some 775 miles long and consists of 161 islands. Okinawa, the main island, is about 850 miles southwest of Tokyo. The island is sixty seven miles long and has a width ranging from three to ten miles. (maps) There are about 1.3 million people in the Ryukyu Islands, the majority living on Okinawa and the smaller surrounding islands. Before it became a prefecture of Japan, Okinawa was once an independent kingdom, the Kingdom of the Ryukyus. It prospered in the region, trading goods with Japan, China, Korea and Southeast Asia. 

After the battle of Okinawa in 1945, the U. S. military ruled the Ryukyu Islands until 1950. In December 1950, all operational functions of the military government were transferred to the USCAR. During the Cold War Okinawa became a crucial link in a chain of bases in the Pacific and Far East. It remained under control of the USCAR until its reversion to Japan in 1972. 

The NDL's Modern Japanese Political Documents Division has a microfilm collection that covers the records mainly related to WWII and the subsequent Japanese occupation period including the GHQ/SCAP(General Headquarters/Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) records (RG331), the records of the U. S. Marine Corps in the Pacific War and the Department of the State. It also contains microfilms of many documents from the Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower libraries. 

From 1978 to 1991, the NDL catalogued and microfilmed the GHQ/SCAP records. Now 30 million pages of the records are available in microfiche at the NDL and are highly valued by the public. While being engaged in the GHQ/SCAP project, the NDL also became interested in the USCAR records. But due to Executive Order No. 12356, which did not permit the National Archives to declassify records less than thirty years old, the USCAR microfilming project did not start until 1997. 

The USCAR records have also been one of the major concerns of the Okinawa Prefectural Archives since its establishment in 1995. Although the OPA holds over 150,000 folders of documents from the local government of the Ryukyu Islands under the U. S. administration, the history of Okinawa cannot be fully known without the USCAR records. Fortunately, in 1995 Executive Order No. 12958 allowed the declassification of the USCAR records. In December 1997 the NDL made an agreement with the OPA and NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) for a five-year joint project to catalog and microfilm the records. 

The USCAR records consist of 4,144 boxes, which contain about 3.2 million pages of documents, divided into 16 series. They also include the records of the U. S. Military Government. Two NARA staff, Lyman Reid and Victor Johnson, are in charge of the USCAR Project. Mr. Reid pulls the records, screens them and prepares a list of the records. The NDL/OPA staff is made up of Tomoko Kitagawa, a reference librarian from the NDL, Kazuhiko Nakamoto, an archivist from the OPA, Shinji Fujishiro, Masako Stoehrer, Michiyo F. Parker, Reiko O. Medina, and Nami Tamres. They catalogue the records and input the necessary information into the database such as title, date, type of record, subject code, and keywords in English and Japanese. The database also identifies oversized documents, illegible documents, Japanese documents, contents lists, or withdrawal notices in the folder. The staff carefully tabs duplicated copies to avoid unnecessary filming. After they are catalogued, the records are moved to room 2007, where Mr. Johnson monitors the filming. He also unfastens the records with Yuri Kubota of Nichimy Co., a Japanese microfilm company, and when he finds any documents which require special care, he contacts the preservation staff to take necessary measures. Hiroyuki Asakawa and Shigeharu Matayoshi, from Nichimy Co., film the records, which Mr. Reid then refiles in the stacks. 

By the end of February 2000, the NDL/OPA staff had catalogued 2,040 boxes of records and filmed 1,701 of them. Part of the microfilm collection and the database is already accessible at the NDL and the OPA. Based on the agreement between the NDL and NARA, the NDL provides NARA with microfilm of the records and when the project is completed, a copy of the database. So far, 489 reels of microfilm, which cover nine out of the sixteen series, have been donated to NARA. Over 2,000 boxes remain to be catalogued in the next two years. 

National Diet Library: http://www.ndl.go.jp 
Okinawa Prefectural Archives: http://www.archives.pref.okinawa.jp