Bunyo Ishikawa scrambled to get from one place to another capturing scenes across Okinawa’s main island on the historic day on May 15, 1972, from the early hours until late in the evening.

What stuck with him most on that day, when the southernmost prefecture was reverted to Japanese sovereignty after its 27-year postwar U.S. administration, was how quiet it was everywhere he went, as locals had learned it was not all they had hoped for.

In the morning, the photojournalist visited Ueta Elementary School in Tomigusuku in the southern part of the island, where fifth-graders were discussing what the return would mean.

Written on the classroom blackboard are such comments as “Bases will remain as they are,” “6,800 members of the Self-Defense Forces will come to Okinawa" and “Americans won’t be put in jail even if they run down and kill people.”

One year prior, a pupil at the elementary school died after being hit by a car driven by a U.S. military personnel.

“It should have been a day for citizens to celebrate the reversion and share joy with each other,” Ishikawa, 84, said in a recent interview at his home in Suwa, Nagano Prefecture. “But they had come to realize that U.S. bases would remain and the SDF would be deployed (in Okinawa Prefecture). Their expectations for the reversion to their homeland had quickly faded.”

A native of Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, Ishikawa covered the Vietnam War as a freelance reporter between 1965 and 1968, partly embedded with U.S. troops. He lived in Saigon, present-day Ho Chi Minh City, in South Vietnam.

After he returned to Japan in 1969, he started working at the photography department of The Asahi Shimbun’s publishing bureau.

The same year, Japan and the United States agreed on the return of Okinawa Prefecture to Japanese sovereignty, feeding growing expectations among Okinawans.

Ishikawa wanted to know what would become of his hometown and planned to cover stories in the prefecture on the day of its reversion.

At midnight on May 15, 1972, the moment the handover took place, Ishikawa was on a footbridge overlooking Naha’s Kokusai-dori main street in front of the Okinawa Mitsukoshi department store.

It was raining, and taxis were driving from time to time. But few people were walking.

After he visited Ueta Elementary School, Ishikawa met with two people whose family members were killed by U.S. service members the previous year.

A man living in Ginowan, whose daughter was killed, said the reversion would not bring her back.

A woman in Koza, present-day Okinawa city, who lost her taxi driver husband, asked in front of the family altar whether crimes committed by U.S. soldiers would decrease after the reversion.

Ishikawa scurried from place to place, including a currency exchange converting dollars into yen, a saltworks and a tobacco farm.

He visited Himeyuri no To, a monument that commemorates a unit of female students mobilized by the Imperial Japanese Army to provide nursing care to wounded soldiers and bury the dead.

He went to a bullfighting arena where matches were held to celebrate the reversion and a bar district in Koza bustling with U.S. soldiers.

When he returned to the Kokusai-dori in the evening, the street was filled with demonstrators opposing the reversion with U.S. bases remaining in the prefecture.

Despite the commotion, Ishikawa felt it was all “very quiet” after traveling around the island all day long, he recalled.

While his grandfather was killed in action during the Battle of Okinawa, his grandmother survived one of the bloodiest combat zones in the Pacific War.

Ishikawa did not experience the Battle of Okinawa because he moved to Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, with his family in 1942 when he was 4.

After he left The Asahi Shimbun, he visited Okinawa Prefecture and traveled around the world as a photojournalist to cover stories about conflict zones and people living around military bases.

A special exhibition themed on the 50th anniversary of Okinawa’s reversion is running at the Japan Newspaper Museum in Yokohama until Sept. 4, featuring photos that include the one Ishikawa took at Ueta Elementary School.