On an island paradise in Japan’s remote south-west, a new military base is opening a rift in a small community still haunted by war.

Setsuko Yamazato was seven years old when her family left their home to live in the jungle. They joined the other villagers, some with food on their backs and crying children in their arms, and filed into the green hills of Ishigaki, an island at the south-west end of the Japanese archipelago. Many never returned.

It was the dying days of World War II and the Japanese Imperial Army was preparing for a last stand in the Okinawan islands. US troops were sweeping through the Pacific, and an invasion of Ishigaki looked imminent.

Fearing the islanders might help the Americans, Japanese soldiers ordered them to abandon their homes and shelter in the jungle. Officially, it was to hide from the air raids. But residents found no sanctuary there. Starvation and malaria were rife.

Now 85 years old, Setsuko sits in the swaying grass just beyond the shadow of the trees. "I don't even want to come here and think back of those days," she says. "I'd rather forget."

But memories still reach down through the decades, like how her mother had to beg for milk to feed her baby sister; and how Setsuko lay in her mother's arms, both of them trembling with a fever from malaria. "I didn't know what death meant," she says.

That soon changed as the war in the Pacific took a devastating toll on Ishigaki — and on Setsuko's own family. The horrors she witnessed in the jungle made her a lifelong pacifist. "Whoever creates or cooks up war are the ones that I really hate."

But now she fears that history is repeating itself and the spectre of war is returning to Ishigaki.

Across the island, a Japanese military base is rising up out of the sugarcane fields.

It will soon be home to hundreds of soldiers and missile batteries ready to strike targets in the East China Sea and beyond.

"The Pacific War is supposed to have ended but we don't feel like it has. We can't feel that for real," she says.

"There is no end of war for us."

With its white sandy beaches, tangled rainforests and crystal waters, Ishigaki is one of Japan's hidden tourist gems. Travellers who make the journey here can dive on coral reefs in the morning and scale the slopes of Mount Omoto, the tallest peak in the Okinawan islands, in the afternoon. It's a sleepy outpost of farmers and fishermen a world away from the bustle of Japan's mainland megacities.

But a military base taking shape on the island is stirring up divisions in this close-knit community. Some locals view the base as necessary to counter a powerful and threatening China. Others fear it's an act of provocation that could once again see Ishigaki trapped between two warring powers.

The Japanese island of Ishigaki is a tourist hotspot renowned for its subtropical climate, idyllic beaches and breathtaking views. 

Foreign Correspondent: Yumi Asada

"If we have a base, a missile base, that will be the first object that enemies would aim for," says Setsuko. "I think everyone has a sense of danger that it will become a target."

What's happening on Ishigaki is just one piece of a much larger jigsaw puzzle. As talk of conflict between the US and China over Taiwan intensifies, Japan has embarked on its biggest military expansion since World War II.

It's a change that's challenging the country's deep-rooted culture of pacifism, something that's particularly profound in the Okinawan islands due to the extreme brutality endured in the final chapters of the war.

A fence to keep China contained

To understand why Japan has chosen a far-flung tourist island to host a state-of-the-art military base, it helps to see how Ishigaki fits into the bigger strategic picture.

Ishigaki is roughly 2,000km from Tokyo but less than 300km from Taiwan.

The base here will be home to about 600 soldiers, an underground rifle range, stockpiles of ammunition and anti-air and anti-ship missiles.

It's part of a new fortified front line Japan is establishing on the East China Sea.

In 2016, a military base was built on the neighbouring island of Yonaguni.

Three years later, bases on Miyako and Amami Oshima were completed. And construction of a new base on Mageshima, closer to mainland Japan, has just begun.  

In the middle of this chain sits the Okinawa Main Island — a vital military base for the United States.

Together, these islands now form a wall that Japan could use to contain China in the East China Sea.

"These dotted islands are kind of like fences," explains security expert Yoko Iwama, from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. "It prevents [the Chinese] from getting out wherever they want to freely. We have the ability to block the Chinese. They will definitely not like us moving our military assets down there. That's the whole point."

From pacifism to preparing for war

Japan's pacifist constitution, drafted in 1947 by occupying American forces, prohibits the government from ever declaring war. Despite this, a de facto national military was established, known as the Self-Defence Forces. It adopted a strictly defensive footing intended only to stop an invading force, with annual spending capped at about 1 per cent of GDP.

But China's increasingly assertive behaviour in the region, backed by a massive military spend, has left Japan feeling exposed. Beijing has threatened to use force to "reunify" with Taiwan, a democratic self-ruled island that China claims as a renegade province.

Clashes between Chinese and Japanese coast guard vessels are already a regular occurrence around the Senkaku Islands, a disputed chain between Ishigaki and mainland China. According to Japanese government data, official Chinese vessels were once a rarity around the uninhabited islands. But in 2012, sightings suddenly shot up and the boats have kept coming.

Hitoshi Nakama registers as a fisherman so he can get close to the Senkaku Islands, where Chinese boats are making their presence felt lately.

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"This place called Okinawa was originally connected to China," says Hitoshi Nakama, a councillor from Ishigaki who has been visiting the Senkaku Islands for decades as a fisherman. "We have always said that China is wonderful, a good country, but the moment it became a superpower it began to bully weaker countries."

He's witnessed firsthand how the stand-off with China has turned increasingly hostile, often filming the confrontations between Japanese and Chinese coast guard boats and posting them to social media to create awareness in Japan. 

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Now Hitoshi wants the Japanese government to bolster its coastal defences. "The fact that [Chinese coast guard vessels] are chasing a Japanese fishing boat in Japanese territorial waters is not right," he says. "I believe that the people of Japan should firmly protect their territory and their waters. My view will not change."

After tensions erupted over the Senkakus, Japan took a few immediate steps. In 2014, under then-prime minister Shinzo Abe, the constitution was reinterpreted to allow the Self-Defence Forces to defend its ally, the United States, bringing the two countries' militaries even closer together.

Japan also developed the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade — its version of the US Marines — to defend its many remote islands. The unit trains to retake them from an invading force. 

Japan's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade is trained to launch operations from the sea to defend Japan's many remote islands and retake them from an invading force.

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"The security environment surrounding our country has become severe," says its commander, Major Shingo Nashinoki.  "I think it will continue to get more severe. We must ensure these islands are protected."

The country has now pledged to boost its military budget by almost 60 per cent over five years, catapulting the country from the world's ninth-largest defence spender to the third, based on current budgets detailed by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"Suddenly we are waking up to the potential threat that China is posing," Professor Iwama says. She argues a major conflict in the Taiwan Strait would inevitably draw in Japan. "We have to start getting ready. We don't really know how much time we have."

The exact details of how Japan's bigger defence budget will be spent are unclear. What is clear is that bolstering defences on the chain of islands stretching to Taiwan will be prioritised in the name of national security. "We are in the front line," Professor Iwama says. "I think everybody feels that."

Leaves stir in the afternoon breeze as Setsuko peers into the dense vegetation, a frail hand over the hook of an umbrella. When she first came here she as a child she had little concept of war. They stayed at this location for "not more than a week or so", she says, but those days would leave an indelible mark.

There were moments of peace under the trees, like when a native pigeon "sang for us beautiful songs". There were also moments of disorienting terror when that peace was shattered from above. "We had a bomb attack right into the river," she says. "Sand sprayed across our shelter. Everyone got covered with sand."

Setsuko stands near the place where she lived briefly with her family during the war. The remains of an old cooking stove from that era are still visible nearby.

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Setsuko remembers how a young girl just a few years older than her became a target for American bombs. The girl was making a cooking fire when the planes spotted the smoke. Setsuko doesn't say what happened to her, only that "I started slightly learning about what the war meant."

They moved to other parts of the jungle but wherever the family went, hunger followed. Her grandfather would catch snakes and feral cats for them to eat. It was never enough. She watched her six-month-old sister succumb to starvation. "My mother didn't have any breast milk," she says. "[My sister] couldn't live."

Two weeks later, tragedy struck again. "My mother, she and I caught malaria on the same night. We were just hugging each other, lying down, trembling, shaking and … couldn't stop the fever. It went on like this until May 17, when she died."

It's estimated about 2,500 Ishigaki civilians died from the mosquito-transmitted disease during this period. After the war, many came to blame the Imperial Japanese Army for knowingly leading them into the island's malaria-infested forests. "I feel those who died, they were all sacrificed by the Japanese military," Setsuko says. 

There were other black marks against the military's record. On the main Okinawan island, forced suicide was common after the Americans landed. Fortunately, a landing never transpired on Ishigaki, but if it had, local historians say many residents would have been forced to kill themselves, rather than be captured.  

The experience of war left many in the Okinawan islands with an abiding resentment and distrust towards the central Tokyo government. "I want this to not happen again," Setsuko says. "Never, never, never again."

A rift between Tokyo and the front line

National polls show there's broad and increasing support to bolster Japan's military. On Ishigaki, too, polls show a majority support the new base. In last year's mayoral election, a pro-base incumbent, Mayor Yoshitaka Nakayama, fought for a fourth term against an anti-base rival, Yoshiyuki Toita. Stationing troops on the island was a central issue. Nakayama had a convincing victory.

"I have been mayor for 13 years now and I have held four elections," he says. "In each of those four elections, the deployment of the Self-Defence Forces was an issue." If there were no forces stationed on Ishigaki, he argues, it would be "the easiest place for China to attack. I think it's necessary to build a base on Ishigaki".

Nonetheless, many on the small island are not behind the base. Local farmer Ryutaro Kinjo, a father of three, works on a family farm growing mangoes and other tropical fruits. It's a short drive from the soon-to-be-completed base. The construction site is so close you can see the towering cranes. The building noise is constant.

Nine years ago, Ryutaro left his job in corporate America to resume life on the island where he grew up. "There's still so much nature here, and the people are really relaxed," he says. But now the issue of the base is splitting the community, he says.

Ryutaro Kinjo (middle) is raising a young family on Ishigaki and one day hopes to take over the family farm. Now he fears the idyllic island lifestyle he loves is under threat.

Foreign Correspondent: Yumi Asada

"The hardest thing is seeing a situation where locals aren't getting on with each other and relationships are falling apart. People who used to be close friends may leave each other, or relatives may not see each other at all, just because of differences in opinion. It is very painful to see such a situation."

Ryutaro argues the base was approved and construction commenced without proper consultation. In 2018, he collected more than 14,000 signatures — more than a third of the island's registered voters — calling for a referendum on the issue. The petition was presented to the council but voted down.

Mayor Nakayama says a vote would endanger national security. "I think it's very dangerous to let Ishigaki locals decide issues of national defence by referendum and whether or not to have a military base here," he says.

Ryutaro has now launched legal action to try and force the matter. "I believe that a referendum is an opportunity for the residents to express their opinions and recognise the opinions of the other side," he says. "I want to reduce the division between islanders."

Missile to strike further than ever before

Those advocating for Japan's big new military spend argue it's all about preventing a war from ever starting.

Central to that strategy are the hundreds of new missiles Japan will purchase that are capable of striking further than ever before.

Japanese missiles can traditionally only strike at a distance of about 200km.

They give Japan the ability to respond to an attack that’s already underway, in line with the strictly defensive nature of the Self-Defence Forces.

But with the shift in Japanese government policy, the aim now is to be able to stop an attack before it's launched.

Japan is set to buy hundreds of Tomahawk missiles that can strike at a range of more than 1,000km.

That will mean dozens of military targets on China's mainland — ports, military bases and missile launchers — will be in range.

Professor Yoko Iwama says Japan is "not actually thinking about fighting such a war", but is aiming to deter China by ramping up the cost of any military entanglement. "By sending that signal, we want to prevent the war from happening."

But anti-war activists like Setsuko view things very differently. "I don't think we'll be safe to have a military base on this island," she says.

Every Sunday she gathers with a dozen of her elderly friends on the side of a highway a few hundred metres from the construction site to stage anti-war protests. "Hey, hey, hey," they chant in the Okinawan dialect. "What's going to happen to our island? It's serious! It's troubling!"

The women of the so-called "Society of Grannies to Protect Life and Livelihood" still hope Japan can reverse course. 

Cars driving past pay little attention beyond the odd smile and wave. But Setsuko is undeterred. "I never get tired from fighting," she says. "Looks to me it's become one of my hobbies," she adds with a laugh.

The group pack up their placards after an hour of chanting. The base is close to completion but the grannies will keep coming back to protest.

"In recent newspapers, they report as if it's a done deal that Ishigaki Island will become a battlefield," Setsuko's friend, Ruriko Tonoki, says. "It's making me so furious."

While the Okinawans have a distinct experience of World War II compared to other parts of Japan, the opposition to war is still deeply ingrained in mainstream Japanese culture. It's a hurdle the government will need to clear as it pushes for more military might.

"I do not know of any other country in which pacifism and pacifist education have had such a strong impact," Koichi Nakano, a political expert from Tokyo's Sophia University, says. "The Japanese people have come to accept a very strong belief in pacifism by narrating the second world war as if it was a natural disaster that everybody suffered. The idea that war is bad for everybody is very, very strongly ingrained."

The government also wants to raise taxes to pay for the big military spend — something polls show most people are against. "Once you start to talk about money it gets more real," he says. "People start to think, well, do we really need that much? Or is that really going to help?"

Ishigaki fishermen and councillor Hitoshi Nakama is convinced Japan needs to do more. "China is a threat to the world, not just to Japan," he says.

For Setsuko, she hopes her island can at last be free of the constant threat of war. "This next war, if it happens, everyone will be the losers I think."

Watch Japan's New Front Line on Foreign Correspondent tonight at 8pm AEDT on ABC TV, iview and YouTube.

Credits

• Reporting: James Oaten
• Producers: Lisa McGregor and Yumi Asada
• Photography: Yumi Asada
• Cinematography: Mitchell Woolnough
• Mapping and graphics: Mark Doman and Katia Shatoba
• Digital producer: Matt Henry

Map data: Natural Earth, OpenStreetMap. Chinese military facilities identified are from open source data by Joseph Wen.Missile ranges are approximate and do not account for projection-based distortion.