Maki Tsuchie has been a television reporter and documentary film director in Okinawa for the past 10 years. Fully versed in the intricacies of U.S. and Japanese defense policy, she knows where the U.S. military stores depleted uranium and which U.S. troops in Okinawa have been sent to the Middle East. On a recent trip to Tokyo, she sat down with several Liberal Democratic Party members to discuss their concerns about a possible war with North Korea. Her dream post would be as a Pentagon reporter in Washington D.C.
Tsuchie received this year's Woman in Broadcasting Award from the Japanese Society of Women in Radio and Television for her documentary, "Kokuhatsu (Accusation)." The film is based on a series of interviews with a former Mainichi Shimbun reporter who obtained documents about secret treaty negotiations between the U.S. and Japan before Okinawa was officially returned to the mainland in 1972.
Tsuchie's other documentaries include "Ano hi wo Wasuretakute (Trying to Forget That Day)," an analysis of the media coverage surrounding the crash of a U.S. military airplane in Yokohama that killed two Japanese children, and "As Okinawa Goes, So Goes Okinawa," released on the 25th anniversary of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan. Her more recent work also includes documentaries about World War II from the perspective of Filipinos and North Koreans. Tsuchie is currently affiliated with the Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting Corp. in Okinawa.