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There are few psychotic persons among the civilians of Okinawa Shima in spite of the dreadful traumata to which these people were subjected and in spite of the fact that after the conscription of both younger men and women,
the residue included a very high proportion of children, seniles and invalids. Among one hundred and fifty patients seen at the Psychiatric Hospital at Jinuza, thirty proved not to be psychotic. Of the one hundred and twenty psychotics, fifty-three were induced by the impact of war. Twenty-one recovered after supportive psychotherapy by the American staff.
The excellent start the Okinawan child gets in life is Moloney's explanation of this amazing psychological stamina. The Okinawan mother does everything within her power to prevent early frustrations: the child is comforted and given a sense of security and confidence in the protective powers of the mother by being nursed whenever hungry or disturbed until he is two years of age or older, while he is at the same time carried on her back wherever she goes. There is little corporal punishment. If he breaks a valuable object the mother chides herself for lack of wisdom in leaving the object accessible to one so young. The fact that there is an absence of masturbation in infancy and childhood lends support to the contention that a child not frustrated at the oral level need not establish narcissistic means of gratification. Enuresis is treated as an illness, not a willful act. Yet among four thousand children performing collective drills and games, there was not seen a single dissenter, not a single 'problem child'. They were calm, confident and without fear. At two years of age the child is entrusted to the safekeeping of the next elder sister. At five years of age he accompanies this acceptable mother substitute to school. The Okinawans have a distinctive culture which reveals at least as many Chinese as Japanese elements. The men are mothered and waited on as if they were children