I JUST returned from a 10-day trip to Okinawa. My time there was filled with conferences, tours, great conversations, cultural exchanges and plenty of people asking me if I was 1) Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan who the government and most Japanese used to pretend don’t exist; 2) someone from Hokkaido – I don’t know much about Hokkaido, but I assume you can find Ainu people there; or 3) Okinawan.

Although during my trip throughout Okinawa I was regularly introduced as being Chamorro from Guam, people still asked and still looked at me slyly as if they could see beyond my knowledge, to the secret Okinawan deep within me. Even when I was living in the states for graduate school I would be asked by people if I was from Okinawa. I would never begrudge anyone these mistakes. Being Okinawan sounds pretty cool, and besides, when I travel it doesn’t matter where I’m going, I constantly think that everyone around me might be Chamorro.

I have read about Okinawa for years, followed politics there, especially the anti-base movement, had so many conversations about it that every time I have gone there it feels like I am going home. Obviously Guam is my home, but there is such an incredible familiarity between our islands that Okinawa feels like the place I call home. There is an academic component to this, as our experiences of colonialism, war and militarism give us strikingly similar histories, but the connection goes far beyond this.

Last week I was given a tour of Futenma Marine Corps Air Station from the outside. In order to reach the fenceline, you have to drive through the windy residential backroads of Ginowan City. The houses are packed together tightly and you marvel at how Okinawans destroy each other more on these narrow roads. When you leave these alleys and find the fence it may feel as if you have been dropped into another universe, the contrast is so stark. Through the fence the grass was so green and looked perfectly cut. The land was open, sparsely covered with trees and equipment. If you were to turn around to Ginowan too quickly you might feel as if the city was growing rapidly behind you, shoving you into the chain mesh of the fence.

At a moment like this you can see how military fences, whether they are in Guam, Okinawa, South Korea or even the U.S. proper, might create two drastically different interpretations for people. For some they may see the base, what lies beyond the fence as a breath of fresh air, a chance to escape and get away from the twisted urban labyrinth they came from. They may see the sturdiness of the fence, the apparent order of everything as a metaphor for defense and for security. But for others, the fences appear as mocking tributes to disconnection and displacement. It is a tragic fact that the majority of overseas U.S. bases were created as a result of former wars. As such, they also signify loss and oppression that doesn’t just continue up until today, but has actively been built upon and buried until their presence sometimes feels natural.

At the site we visited, several Okinawan family crypts were visible beyond the fenceline. They looked well-maintained and the families are allowed to visit once a year to pay respects. Some argue the military is taking good care of the tombs, and the land is far better off being protected behind the fence. But others reflect on the meaning of the fence between Ginowan and Futenma as if they are a character of an Okinawan Robert Frost poem. They see the graves and remains just a few hundred yards away, but they exist out of your reach. A war and strategic interests colluded to create a fence between you and your ancestors. In Okinawa, where ancestral worship is the primary religion, this is no small thing.

Naturally, the academic part of my mind made connections between Futenma and areas like Pågat, Fena or Haputo on Guam. But as I stood there I felt an even more intimate connection, and that was when I first truly felt like Okinawa was somehow “home.”

That fence in Ginowan looked so much like the fences we have around bases on Guam. The grass beneath my shoes was the exact same grass I would find on Guam. The trees nearby, the same on Guam as well. As I looked up, even the sky and the clouds looked the same. I could have been standing outside of Tiyan back in the day or Andersen Air Force Base today.