Conclusion

This chapter summarizes arguments concerning the shifting and negotiated nature of military fencelines in Okinawa. It explains that due to the ongoing antibase movement, intimate everyday effects of the U.S. military presence, including military international sex, marriage, and family, attract popular scrutiny and become subject to military and community surveillance and regulation. The adeptness with which military couples circumvent official definitions and control by crossing military fencelines reveals the limits of state institutional power and U.S. military empire. The chapter also traces the historical emergence and transformation of popular imagery and stereotypes of U.S. military men, Okinawan women, and military international sex and marriage from the early years of the U.S. occupation through the postreversion era. It analyzes how racialized and sexualized stereotypes of U.S. military men exist in connection with family opposition to military marriages in the present time.

Benjamin Britten, Owen Wingrave and the politics of the closet; or, ‘He Shall Be Straightened Out at Paramore’

Benjamin Britten's television opera, Owen Wingrave, first broadcast on the BBC on 16 May 1971, is probably the least known of his sixteen operatic works. Based on an equally obscure tale of the same name by Henry James, it concerns the last scion of a military family who decides to abandon his calling and embrace pacifism. After fierce family opposition and disinheritance, Owen agrees to spend the night in a haunted room in the family mansion of Paramore – a room in which an ancestor was found dead ‘without a wound’ after accidentally killing his son while disciplining him. Several hours later, his body is discovered – dead, without a wound, like that of his forbear. Despite the compeffing nature of the story, Owen Wingrave has never found a secure place in the Britten canon, largely owing to a lingering dissatisfaction aroused by the ending. In what follows, I should like to explore this dissatisfaction and propose a context within which to approach the opera.

Discharge against Medical Advice in Some Paediatric Wards

Sixty-four cases of discharge against medical advice (DAMA) from 3 paediatric units in the University of Benin Teaching Hospital within a period of 18 months were analysed. The incidence was highest among the very young, even when they were still very ill. Financial problems accounted for 65.6% of the cases. Other reasons included difficulties related to the siblings (9.4%), the wish to try traditional methods (7.8%), family opposition (1.6%) and distance from the hospital (4.1%). It is recommended that greater attention be given to preventive health care, and placing the cost of hospital care within the reach of the poor. Improved communication is also recommended as a way of helping parents seek alternatives to DAMA.