This video was made possible by Dashlane. Try Dashlane for free on your first device
by heading to www.dashlane.com/hai. 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
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