At the same time, the political authorities on Okinawa saw the outlying islands as useful stopping points along a maritime trade route, and gradually enhanced their influence.

In 1500, Oyake Akahachi (遠弥計赤蜂 or 於屋計赤蜂), Aji of Ishigaki, unified most of the Yaeyama Islands and rose up in resistance against the Ryukyu Kingdom by refusing to pay further tribute.

King Shō Shin of Ryukyu responded to the initial rebellion by sending troops, but they arrived at Miyako after most of the fighting had ended.

The Ryukyuan army consisted of 3,000 soldiers and 100 ships; Nakasone Tuyumya chose to surrender instead of fighting, handing over all of the Sakishima Islands to Ryukyu.

Satsuma was able to capture Shuri Castle and King Shō Nei by early May, then sent a message to the Sakishima Islands demanding their surrender, which they complied with.

Because the soil was adversely affected by salination, famines were frequent, and the population of the islands further decreased until the early Meiji period.

In 1879, after the Ryukyuan government resisted and disobeyed orders from Tokyo, Japan abolished the domain, deposed the king, and established Okinawa Prefecture.

China effectively conceded its claims to sovereignty over Ryukyu, including the Sakishima Islands, following its defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95.

[4] Twenty-five US escort carriers, five larger fast carriers with their air groups consisting of fighters and torpedo bombers along with heavy naval patrol bombers and an assortment of DD-Destroyers and DE-Destroyer Escorts along with the British Pacific Fleet bombed, rocketed and fired their guns at runways and other targets daily while the land battle raged on Okinawa 175 miles away.

The Sakishima Islands did not suffer a ground invasion during World War II, although a great deal of anti-submarine warfare and convoy battles took place in the waters immediately surrounding the archipelago in the years leading up to the Okinawa campaign.

A number of American and Japanese submarines were lost on the approaches to these islands as they formed a vital outlying defense to the Empire's shipping bottlenecks in the Formosa (Taiwan) and Luzon Straits.

[citation needed] In June 1945, the Japanese government ordered locals to evacuate to northern Ishigaki and Iriomote, where 3,647 of them lost their lives to malaria.