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Here’s a joke for you: what do you call a rock in the middle of the ocean?
A sea shale.
Get it?
Shale like the rock, but then… you know what, I shouldn’t explain it.
Here’s another one: What do you call two rocks in the middle of the ocean?
Well, if you’re Japan, you call it the island of Okinotorishma—emphasis on island.
Alright that one wasn’t funny, but let’s be honest, the first one wasn’t either.
The island—and I’m using the term “island” loosely here—of Okinotorishma is found here,
in the Philippine Sea, and was first discovered in the mid 16th century, possibly by this
guy in 1543, and definitely by this guy in 1565, who named the then-five rocks and surrounding
coral reef “Parece Vela” meaning “looking like a sail” in recognition of how sails,
as we all know, look exactly like five medium-sized rocks.
In 1789, it was rediscovered by the English, who in classic English fashion assumed they
were the first to find it, and named it Doug-less Reef, because nobody named Doug lived on it.
Or, after captain William Douglass, who’s to say.
The Japanese first visited in 1922 and 1925, then claimed it in 1931 and named it Okinotorishma,
which translates to “stupid tiny rocks that are in a strategically useful location that
we’re going to lie about and say we just want for nature observation.”
Sorry that’s a mistake, it means “remote bird islands.”
I mixed up Google Translate with Google Foreshadowing again.
Anyways, because of Okinotorishma’s strategic location between Taiwan and Guam, Japan wanted
to build a military base on it, but to avoid controversy they used a clever little technique
called lying, and said they were going to build a, “lighthouse and meteorological
observation site.”
They began construction in 1939, but after a few years they had to stop because of a
little conflict you probably haven’t heard of called the Second World War, or as I call
it, World War II: 2 World 2 War.
After the war, the rocks were given to the United States, adding to their rock collection,
which includes Plymoth, Fraggle, and “The,” but in 1968, the US was busy with its national
pastime of fighting wars and decided to re-gift them to Japan.
Now you might be wondering why the US would give up a valuable kind-of island for no real
reason—especially considering they’ve been holding onto useless islands like Baker,
Howland, and Rhode for centuries.
Well the thing is, Okinotorishma didn’t really become valuable until 1982, when the
nations of the UN got together and wrote a convention on the law of the sea, which they
could have called something cool like “The Treaty of Ver-Seas” or something but instead
decided to name the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Among other things, that convention laid out the rules of Exclusive Economic Zones, or
EEZs, which allow a country to claim all of the water within a radius of 200 nautical
miles, or 370.4 kilometers, or 189,385.4 “The Rocks,” of their shores as their EEZ.
To be clear, they don’t have sovereignty over that water, and it isn’t part of their
country, but they do have a number of rights over it, including rights to exploration and
dibs on valuable natural resources.
That’s why Japan really, really, really wants these two dumb rocks to be an island:
it means they get to claim this entire 154,500 square mile area as their Exclusive Economic
Zone, which means they would have exclusive access to its rich fishing grounds, rare metals,
and suspected oil reserves.
But that claim is hotly disputed, but not because people say Japan doesn’t own Okinotorishma—instead,
they agree that Japan owns it, they just say it’s not an island, and by “they”, I
basically mean China.
Why, you ask, does China care?
Well, apart from China wanting to have a monopoly on dumb fake islands, if the US ever wanted
to send military troops from Guam to Taiwan to do military stuff, China sure would love
to be able to give them a super special surprise of a bunch of submarines in their way.
But to do that, they’d need to make a map of the ocean floor, and they’d need surveys
for that map, and they can’t do those surveys in Japan’s EEZ.
Plus, there’s oil there, which people tend to get mad about because… you know, oil.
So you’re probably wondering, then, “is Okinotorishma an island or not?”
And the answer is, probably, “or not.”
You see, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea specifically distinguishes between islands,
which they define as, “a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is
above water at high tide” and rocks, which, “cannot sustain human habitation or economic
life of their own” and “shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.”
These rocks can’t really “sustain human habitation or economic life on their own,”
because, you know, they’re… rocks, but that hasn’t stopped Japan from pouring an
obscene amount of money into trying to convince people otherwise.
In 1987, they started building steel breakwaters and concrete walls around the rocks to protect
them from erosion, and in 1988, they built the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center,
which isn’t actually on either of the rocks, but it’s… near them, so, good enough,
I guess?
And finally, even though the UN convention clearly says that manmade islands don’t
count, they build an artificial third rock, because as we all know, the only thing better
than two dumb useless rocks is three dumb useless rocks, but, in Japan’s defense,
they’ve only spent $600 million dollars on the project so far.
Spending $600 million dollars trying to keep two rocks above water is dumb, but you know
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