Mineo Higashi

Mineo Higashi (born May 15, 1938, in Mindanao, Philippines) is a Japanese writer from Okinawa who returned to the island after World War II, worked for the U.S. military, and later moved to Tokyo to focus on writing. He achieved major literary success by winning the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1971 (awarded 1972) for his novel An Okinawan Boy (Okinawa no shōnen), which depicts postwar life in Okinawa City amid U.S. occupation, and has other works like Oki na hato no kage (1981); a 1983 film Okinawan Boys was inspired by his writing.