NORTH
KOREA COMPOUNDS OKINAWA’S PROBLEMS OF US MILITARY OCCUPATION by Bob Leonard
Peace Researcher 33 – November 2006
The entire Pacific region is in turmoil because
of North Korea’s
flight-testing of ballistic missiles in the seas off Japan,
and most recently what was very likely an underground test of a nuclear weapon.
Okinawa bears the brunt of the American-Japanese
regional defence strategy by hosting numerous US
bases and approximately 75% of all US
military personal in Japan.
The latest US
response to North Korea’s
belligerence is shipments of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles to
be stationed in Okinawa. The wonderfully-named Patriot
missile will be well-known to most people as the missile-defence missile that
played a greatly praised (by the US
itself), but mostly undeserved, role in defending Israel
against incoming Iraqi Scud missiles during the first Gulf War in 1991. The
Patriots are now intended to defend Japan
from incoming North Korean missiles, even ones possibly tipped with nuclear
weapons. There is no shortage of US
real estate on bases within Okinawa on which to deploy
the Patriot missiles.
Not surprisingly, Okinawans have not been
consulted on this import of missiles into their territory, and they are
objecting by staging protests at US military port facilities - most recently on
October 9th at Tengan Harbour. Although an information officer at the
massive Kadena Air Base refused to confirm that Patriot missiles were in a ship
that arrived that day, about 100 Okinawans attempted to block road transport of
missiles from the port to Kadena. Missile shipments in the past few weeks have
been confirmed by US military officials as destined for Kadena. Local officials
have made official protests about the missile deployments saying nearby
residents fear the missiles endanger them. These “advanced” Patriots are likely
to be an improvement on the ones used against Iraqi missiles many years ago;
the US military
personnel themselves are a far greater danger, with a long history of raping and
murdering Okinawans.
Grannies Still
Protecting Henoko Bay
The latest report from the battle to save Henoko
Bay was in July 2006. Locals were
still managing to block the preliminary seafloor drilling by Naha Defense Facilities
Administration Bureau (NDFAB) that would mark
the beginning of filling much of the bay for a US
military air strip (see “Okinawans
Continue Massive Protests Against US Base”, by Bob Leonard, in PR No. 32, March
2006, which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr32-128.html.
Ed.).
“In all of this, it is the elderly at the
centre of the struggle. Grandmothers and grandfathers dive in front of
State-sponsored ships, driving them back. Seventy, eighty and ninety year-olds
shaming the state with a power beyond power lead the sit-ins and hunger strikes
and human blockades in and out of the water. Their courage has moved the
coastline. Down at the pier, fishermen from the north and south of Henoko have
joined them. Their determination turned back the NDFAB
thirty two times in a period of five months” (Marianas Variety, Guam, 3/7/06,
Julian Aguon).
Efforts to protect the Henoko
Bay habitat of the endangered dugong
(sea cow or saltwater manatee) are supporting the brave actions of the
grannies. None other than US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is accused of
“reckless endangerment of the rare marine mammal”. The lawsuit naming Rumsfeld was filed under the US Endangered Species
Act and National Historic Preservation Act and is still before US courts.
Readers may recall that the proposed base
development at Henoko was loudly proclaimed as an essential step in relieving
the people of Ginowan of the burden of the Futenma helicopter base to the
south. The helicopters were to be shifted to Henoko. What has been left out of
the mainstream media hype over the base relocation is the fact that Henoko was
seriously considered as a US
Marine base as early as January 1966 to support the Vietnam War. The grannies
have seen through the duplicity of the US
and Japanese governments and refuse to yield on Henoko
Bay. The net improvement for the
people of Okinawa of any shift from Futenma to Henoko
would be zilch and the grannies know it. They are a force to be reckoned with.
Tokenism For Okinawans
In addition to playing games over Henoko Bay,
the US government and military claim to be trying to relieve the basing burden
on Okinawa by relocating 8,000 US troops to Guam and giving 1,500 hectares of
land back to the local people south of Kadena Air Base (Asahi Shimbun, 26/4/6).
How much is 1,500 hectares compared to the
large area occupied by US bases in Okinawa? It’s less than 10% of the occupied 23,000
hectares, and that total is not counting the new airstrip “land” that would be
created by filling part of Henoko Bay
adjacent to Camp Schwab. The land near Kadena was productive farmland
before it was seized many years ago. Its return to local people does not mean
they can immediately take up productive farming. These people have become totally dependent on menial jobs
provided by the military bases, a tragic state of affairs repeated throughout
the developing world wherever the US military has destroyed the livelihoods of
masses of indigenous people dependent on farming and fishing. Closure of the
bases will mean massive job losses with no efforts to help the people make the
transition back to farming.
And what of the relocations of thousands of
American military and civilian personnel and their families to Guam? Is this going to help Okinawa
in any significant way? “…The personnel
being relocated are mainly in command duties.
Most of the operational units will remain in the prefecture, doing
little to help ease residents’ concerns about accident risks, noise pollution
and crime” (Asahi Shimbun, ibid.).
According to one resident of Naha City
near Henoko it’s the young marines in operational units who commit most of the
horrific crimes against Okinawans, many of them young women.
The “mainland” population of Japan
is destined to get ripped off on a grand scale in the relocation of US troops.
The US and Japanese governments have been locked in negotiations for many
months over the most significant realignment of US
defence forces in Japan
since 1946. Most of the bickering is over US
insistence that Japanese taxpayers shoulder a majority of the cost of
relocating troops which means building more bases on US
territory, namely Guam. Japan
seems likely to agree to pay around 60% of the total cost of over $US10 billion
(Japan
Times, 29/4/06).
Perhaps the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea
will make this huge burden feel just a bit lighter.
The Folks On Guam
Ain’t Happy Either
The region is sustaining a military build-up
that is not about to reverse now that North Korea
has gone nuclear for real. Some months before the Korean developments, a
three-day conference of peace activists from Guam, the Philippines,
South Korea and
Japan was held
in Okinawa in June 2006 with the rather optimistic theme
of “Send US Troops Back To The US”. Despite the wonderful economic benefits
that are said to accompany US
military occupation, Asian nations are seeing the truth of the matter, or at
least activists with their eyes wide open are seeing it.
Debbie Quinata, a Guam
activist, had this comment on shifting US troops from one Pacific island to
another: “We understand the Okinawans want to free their land and to develop
new industries. Maybe the Japanese officials will sympathise with us when they
see the social implication of the Marines’ relocation and when they see that
the size of our island (Guam) is not big enough to accommodate the troops” (Marianas Variety Online, 9/6/06).
Unfortunately, Japanese politicians are unlikely to sympathise with the people
of Guam or Okinawa or their own
taxpayers. They’ve got bigger problems coping with and accommodating the
military machine of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.
------------------------------