 They did not want to be lumped together with the Japanese colonies, as evidenced by protests against being included with six other "less developed" colonial people in the "Hall of the Peoples" in the 1903 Osaka Expo.Okinawan historian Higashionna Kanjun in 1909 warned the Ryukyuans that if they forget their historical and cultural heritage then "their native place is no different from a country built on a desert or a new colony".Shimabukuro Genichiro in the 1930s described the Okinawa's pre-war position as "colonial-esque", and in the 1920s he spearheaded a movement that supported the alteration of personal name spellings to spare Okinawans from ethnic discrimination.