Local Author Profile: Steve Rabson
Rabson's 2022 book "Keepers of Armageddon" is a first-hand account of nuclear weapons storage on Okinawa during the Vietnam War.
By Adele Uphaus
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In 1968, Steve Rabson was a U.S. Army draftee with one year left of his tour of duty. A nuclear weapons atomic specialist, he was transferred to Okinawa to work on Mace B missiles, which were among the some 1,000 nuclear weapons stored on the island at the time.
That one year would inspire Rabson’s lifetime career as a scholar and professor of Japanese language and literature, and give him an insider’s look at the secretive history of U.S. nuclear weapons in foreign countries.
In 2022, Rabson—who taught for 30 years at Brown University and now works as adjunct professor of Japanese literature at the University of Mary Washington—published a book compiling his own and his colleagues’ first-hand accounts of their time on Kadena Air Base.
But Keepers of Armageddon: Training and Deployment of America’s Nuclear Cold Warriors in Asia is more than an account of the past. It’s only been in the last 10 years that the presence of nuclear weapons on Okinawa—though an open secret—was acknowledged by the U.S. Government.
And right now, the former site of the 300-acre Army ordinance depot in Henoko, where the nuclear weapons were stored, is being reclaimed as the designated relocation site of Marine Corps Air Base Futenma.
In 2023, a Japanese court ordered the governor of Okinawa to approve a plan for landfill work at the planned relocation of the base.
Rabson—and residents of Henoko, who have strongly protested the move to relocate the air base—have concerns about potential environmental hazards lingering in that land.
“At least three of the people stationed with me came down with cancer associated with radiation exposure,” Rabson said.
He still has friends living in Okinawa, and said they have contacted their elected representatives about these concerns, but so far the Japanese government has refused to test the soil for radiation.
“The worry is this—[the Japanese government provides] security, they pay for the land, they pay for the workers, and now they are handling the refurbishment of that base,” Rabson said. “What about the people who live there? People in Okinawa are very concerned.”
Rabson’s book provides the historical backdrop to these current concerns, detailing the work of the 137th Ordinance Company in transporting, maintaining, repairing, and guarding these nuclear weapons, as well as their experiences of being drafted, taking leave, and returning to civilian life.
The year on Okinawa, which included leave in Tokyo, inspired Rabson’s lifelong interest in Japanese history, culture, and language. After he got out of the Army and went back to school, he returned to live in Japan for four years, and then became a professor at Brown.
He published some of the first-ever translations of Okinawan protest literature and poetry.
“Okinawa has it’s own poetry style and nothing had been translated of its fiction or novels,” Rabson said.
Because the presence of nuclear weapons on Okinawa was officially classified so long, Rabson didn’t talk about the work he’d done while in the Army. But as information became declassified, he started writing articles about the situation for the Asia-Pacific Journal, and in the early 2000s, he got a message from someone who’d been stationed with him at the ordinance depot.
That connection led to more connections, which led to the book.
Rabson moved to Fredericksburg in 2011 to care for his mother, Alice Rabson, a beloved psychology professor who taught at what was then Mary Washington College from 1969 to 1985.
His sister, Ann Rabson, was a blues musician and member of the Fredericksburg group Saffire-The Uppity Blues Women with Gaye Adegbalola and Andra Faye.
Rabson is also a musician, playing in a community jazz group, and his course in Japanese anime and film is extremely popular at UMW.
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