Peace Researcher 30 – March 2005
Public resistance to the presence of US military
bases on Okinawa is increasing once again. The islands of Okinawa are part of
the Ryukyu archipelago southwest of the main islands of Japan. It has a long
and turbulent history and its people yearn to regain some measure of real
control over their land and sea resources. Okinawa was invaded by American
troops during World War 2 and they are still there in a big way because of its
strategic location in the western Pacific. That is the crux of the problem for
Okinawans. Most readers will be well aware that Japan has been under the thumb
of the United States since WW2, and that there is a heavy US military presence
there in the form of bases. What may be surprising is that 75% of those bases
on are Okinawa, occupying 18% of the area of the main island (see map). For previous articles on Okinawa, and its
people’s heroic resistance to the US military, see PRs 24 (December 2001), 22 (December 2000), 15 (June 1998), 12 (March
1997), 11 (December 1996), 9 (June 1996), and 7 (December 1995). Ed.
Recent developments have revived local
resistance to the massive US presence on Okinawa. The issues are intertwined and they are not new; in fact they
have been rooted in the occupation for decades. The first issue received sharp
focus when a US Marine helicopter crashed on the campus of a university in the
city of Ginowan, unwilling host to the Marine Air Base of Futenma. The second
has to do with proposed base relocations, in part seemingly to address vigorous
and long-standing objections to particular bases on Okinawan land, but
ultimately almost certainly to do with “rationalising and strengthening” US
military occupation. This is hardly
surprising under the current American Administration policy of expanding its
global military reach by establishing new bases. It isn’t about to give up old
ones without a net gain elsewhere, and certainly not in response to local
protests. The US simply hides its true motivation under the umbrella of serving
at the wish of the Japanese government.
The island of Okinawa is densely populated. So
it is inevitable that any military base will impact heavily on the local
people. Air bases strike fear into the hearts of people nearby for very real
reasons. They are incredibly noisy, 24 hours a day, and accidents happen. Futenma Air Base surrounds the city of
Ginowan (population 90,000) and it has heavy air traffic, much of it big Marine
cargo helicopters. One crashed in August 2004 and hit a campus building of the
Okinawa International University. No one was killed, by some miracle. Even the
injured US crew survived.
What angered the local citizens more than the
crash itself was the fact that the US military immediately took charge of every
aspect of the crash site. Japanese police and other personnel, including
politicians, were totally excluded. Particularly galling was the fact that only
pizza delivery motorcycles were waved through cordons to deliver vital
sustenance to hungry US Marines. Big protests followed with as many as 30,000
people turning out on a “Sunday for the biggest anti-base protest in Okinawa
since those a decade ago protesting the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by
three American servicemen” (Ginowan
Journal “A crash, and the scent of
pizzatocracy, anger Okinawa", James Brooke, www.nytimes.com/2004/09/13/international/asia/13japan.html).
The biggest of those 1995 protests involved 85,000 people, or nearly 8%
of Okinawa’s total population. The New Zealand equivalent would be a crowd of
around 350,000. Ed.
Imagine the impact of such a protest at
Christchurch Airport, site of an emergency landing by a US Air Force C141
Starlifter cargo plane in the late 1970s. New Zealanders got their own taste of
US military arrogance when the airport, including the terminal building, was
effectively taken over by American security for many hours until the crippled
military cargo plane had been dealt with. The event made the Christchurch
newspapers of course. But thousands did not turn out to protest the American
occupation of our airport. Nobody did. Okinawans are different, perhaps because
the magnitude of the US occupation and arrogant disregard of the welfare of the
local people is so massive. There is no escaping it if you are unlucky enough
to live near a base or an outlying area being used for military exercises.
Futenma Air Base has been scheduled for closure
for nearly ten years but the process seems to be contingent on development of
an alternative site in Okinawa (nobody ever really knows exactly what the US
military intends to do). Herein lies the link to the second major issue that is
stirring up the protest movement – the alternative site off Henoko Beach, some
distance up the island to the northeast, is not on land but off-shore.
Moving the Marine heliport from Futenma to the
Henoko Sea just off the coast of Henoko village is meeting with stiff local
protest, including a lawsuit against the US Department of Defense, filed in a
US District Court. Just moving bases around Okinawa is not what Okinawans have
in mind in pressing for the closure of Futenma. And destroying some of the
richest coastal ecosystem in the world would be the inevitable result of
construction at Henoko. Just why a heliport must have a runway over a mile long
isn’t clear but that is what is proposed. It will require the blasting of coral
reefs. And the US military routinely ducks responsibility by saying the project
belongs to the Japanese government. “It’s not our problem”, say the Marines.
Okinawa has been called the “Galapagos* of the
East” because of the rich biodiversity on land and in the sea. Sea creatures
that would be seriously damaged or even destroyed by the base include the
endangered dugong (sea cows), sea turtles, coral reefs (which are already
suffering globally because of rising water temperatures and coastal pollution),
and over 1,000 species of fish and a similar number of molluscs. Marine
diversity here rivals that of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. * Galapagos – remote Pacific islands, with
unique wildlife. It was there that Charles Darwin, the 19th Century
father of the theory of evolution, found much of the inspiration for his
historic book, “The Origin Of Species”. Ed.
Two Okinawan members of Japan’s parliament, the
Diet, travelled to the US, in early 2005, to meet with US Government officials
and press their case for closure of Futenma, cancellation of the Henoko base
and the total removal of all US Marines from their islands. They were joined by
five members of the local Prefectural Assembly. The timing is important since
the US is having bilateral talks with Japan about their military relationship,
and a major report on US overseas basing is due to be presented to President
Bush in August 2005.
Sounds promising, but the chances of success in
moving any US bases off Okinawa are probably nil. And it certainly ain’t going
to happen just because the local people are protesting, and have been for
decades. The US is indeed closing some of its overseas bases (in Germany and
South Korea) and withdrawing troops and their families. But some large bases
with “permanently stationed” US troops will remain key elements of America’s
global military reach. The US air base at Kadena in Okinawa is one of those
bases, along with Ramstein in Germany and Camp Humphries in South Korea. The US
may close some bases but only for its own purposes. The Pentagon, greatly
strengthened under President Bush and the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, wants
more flexibility at what are called “forward operating sites”. Okinawa is much
more than that – it’s one of the remaining “Little Americas”, remnants of the
Cold War which are viewed as indispensable.
This is not to say that local opposition to US
bases is a fruitless exercise. There is considerable hope that the potentially
disastrous Henoko base can be stopped, especially with extensive international
support from highly organised environmental groups from Okinawa, Japan and the
United States. The spotted owl stopped the logging of its virgin forest habitat
in the Pacific Northwest of the US. Perhaps the dugong will stop a military
base in the Henoko Sea.
This just in from the Internet: Protests on
land and sea continue at the Henoko site and there are signs that the Japanese
government may be reconsidering whether the off-shore site will be used as a
replacement for the Futenma Marine Air Base. Protests have been continuous on
land, with an encampment at the fishing port of Henoko now in its ninth year.
Thousands of Okinawans have been involved. This effective blockade has delayed
the start of a “research” drilling survey that would see the coral reef damaged
at 63 sites by deep drilling. When
drilling ships gained access to the reef from another port they encountered
intense opposition by fishing boats, motor boats, sea kayaks and even swimmers.
Some local women have vowed to give their lives to stop the construction of the
base. Another serious obstacle for the base is the deliberate exclusion of the
contentious drilling survey from the project’s environmental impact assessment
process. Both the US and Japanese governments agreed to this exclusion and it
could be the final blow to the Henoko base.
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