OKINAWA
AND GUAM - US
Military Pawns Since WWII by Bob Leonard
Peace Researcher 34 – July 2007
The small Pacific islands of Okinawa and Guam are separated by about 2000 km. But they are
inextricably linked by being pawns in the staging of US military forces since
World War II. Okinawa is the southern-most island of Japan
having been forcibly taken over back in 1879.
Guam, an island of the Marianas to the southeast of Okinawa, has been US territory
since the big war. Both islands were scenes of some of the bloodiest fighting
in the Pacific. And both islands have indigenous peoples who have been the
innocent victims of war and occupation for decades. Their suffering continues under constant
military oppression by US naval, air force and marine personnel and their
families, and political oppression from both US and Japanese governments and
their minions. The following items, taken primarily from information provided
by the international No US Bases network, illustrate the current state of some
critical affairs in Guam and Okinawa. This
article continues Peace Researcher’s coverage of the saga of Okinawa, and now
Guam, in several recent issues (e.g. see PR 33, November 2006, “North Korea
Compounds Okinawa’s Problems Of US Military Occupation”, by Bob Leonard, which
can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr33-140.html
).
Ripping Off The
Japanese People For US$6 Billion
The dominant issue uniting the peoples of
Okinawa and Guam is the planned relocation of thousands of US military
personnel from US bases in Okinawa to bases in Guam.
The US
government is trying to force the Japanese government (read Japanese taxpayers)
to pay for a majority of the relocation costs, some US$6 billion. To its credit
the Japanese government has been reluctant to agree to this unprecedented
rip-off. It would be the first time ever that a foreign nation has had to pay
such costs, and apparently with no legal basis. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro
Aso “…said that neither the Japan-US Security Treaty nor the Status of Forces
Agreement (SOFA) applies to this case…” (Okinawa-Guam Information Service on
the US
Marines Relocations [OGIS], Issue No 2, 30/4/07).
As of the time of writing the deal was not yet
final and it could actually take up to three years before the Japanese Diet
(Parliament) even begins to discuss the matter. Apparently the process depends
on completion of an Environmental Impact Statement by the US Navy. A major
element of the Statement will be the impacts of shifting thousands of personnel
to Guam. Another major issue is who will
benefit from the massive construction of housing and related infrastructure
that will be needed on Guam to accommodate the
population influx. US contractors are of course drooling over the prospects but
fear “the bulk of the contracting work may still end up with Japanese
companies” (Variety News Staff, 29/5/07, GR Partido).This will sound familiar
to readers who know of the billions of dollars pocketed by US companies engaged in the “rebuilding of Iraq” (in this
case a massive rip-off of the American taxpayers). Militarism and war are
hugely profitable for private corporations, and when the US is involved,
those corporations are almost always US-owned and intimately linked to the
political machinations behind the military.
If the Japanese do accept the costs of the
relocation to Guam, just over half the US$6 billion will be in the form of
loans to the US.
But will the US
repay the debt? There is considerable doubt since the Japanese government has
no concrete measures in mind to assure repayment. It will simply “do its best
to collect the debt”. The magnitude of the debt would be peanuts on the grand
scale of US military spending but it’s fascinating that Japan could even
contemplate saddling its people with a potentially “bad debt” to fund a scheme
with no clear benefits to Japan.
What Would It Buy For Japan?
There may well be benefits to the people of
Okinawa of getting rid of a few thousand US military folk. But given Japan’s appalling lack of concern for the
well-being of colonial Okinawa it is extremely
doubtful that spending all that relocation money is seriously intended to
address decades of abuse of Okinawans. Here is what the Assistant Secretary of
the Navy for Installations and Environment, BJ Penn, had to say recently about US motivation for the move: “US national interests and treaty
commitments require strengthening of US military capabilities in the Western Pacific….
The relocation of III Marine Expeditionary Force personnel from Okinawa to Guam
under US-Japan Alliance Transformation and Realignment is part of a broader
realignment … essential for the defence of Japan and for peace and security in
the region” (Pacific Daily News, 29 May
2007, DV Crisostomo).
Japan recently bought into this realignment by
passing a bill in its Lower House “allowing” Japan to pay the US$6 billion and
undertake various other measures, including “forcing the local governments to
cooperate with the central government in implementing the realignment
plan” (OGIS loc. cit.) It’s all rather
mysterious just how Japan
stands to benefit from all this. A cynical view would be that is motivated by
Prime Minister Abe’s desire for a major shift in defence policy which would
allow Japan
to participate in collective defence under the UN Charter. That right cannot
now be exercised without “breaking the Constitution” (OGIS ibid.). Breaking the
Constitution would have serious implications including the potential for Japan to
acquire nuclear weapons.
What Would It Buy For Guam?
The short answer is nothing. A longer answer
would include increased social disruption, crime and environmental degradation
beyond what Guam has already been suffering
for many years. No one should be fooled
into thinking a process of preparing an Environmental Impact Assessment carried
out by the US Navy or any other military body is anything other than a
diversionary tactic and a sham. Military bases within the US itself
routinely ignore environmental controls on emissions and dumping or ask the
Environmental Protection Agency (itself a bit of a joke under the thumb of the
Bush cabal) to exempt them from environmental performance standards.
Guam is an unincorporated US territory.
Its people are US citizens who have no vote and its congressional
representative has no vote in the US Congress. In other words, Guam is a colony powerless to control its own destiny.
The people of Guam, including its indigenous people, the Chamorros (37% of
Guam’s estimated total population of about 155,000), strongly oppose the
relocation of more US
military personnel to their island from Okinawa.
The Chamorro people feel their race, identity and culture are under threat of
destruction as their homeland becomes even more intensely militarised. The
American government has ignored their pleas to deal with environmental
contamination of their land and harbours with highly toxic substances including
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Agents Orange and Purple (pesticides).
Disease rates among Guam’s people are very high and include a variety of
cancers, some of which are almost certainly due to radiation exposure from US nuclear weapons testing in Micronesia in
the 1950s.
Economic dependency and instability, rather
than the boon promised by local politicians, are the inevitable consequences of
occupation by a foreign military. The experience on Okinawa has been the same
as on Guam.
In fact every small developing nation that has been subjected to the
forced establishment of foreign military bases has suffered the same fate as
Guam and Okinawa. The Philippines is another prime example of
the horrific impact of US colonisation that continues to this day with rampant
political corruption and brutal suppression of resistance movements (see the
article elsewhere in this issue about the ongoing US military presence in the
Philippines, a decade and a half after the huge US bases there were evicted as
a result of decades of a massive anti-bases campaign. Ed.).
Okinawan activists have neatly summed up the
“logic” of the relocation process: “Most importantly, we are challenging people
to ponder the critical question: ‘If the presence of the Marines is such a good
thing for Guam, then why is Japan willing to pay US$6 billion to get them out
[of Okinawa]?’” (Islands Business News,
1/5/07, Elenoa Baselala).
And What About The
Dugongs Of Henoko?
We don’t need to repeat the problems visited
upon the people of Okinawa by US bases (see
recent issues of Peace Researcher which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/prfront.html
). Resistance by the local people to the relocation of a US helicopter
base at Futenma continues unabated on a daily basis. The new location would be
further to the north in Okinawa at Henoko Bay and would involve irreversible
damage to a marine ecosystem that is home to an endangered local dugong*
species. The people of Ginowan
City, within which the
Futenma base presents a great physical danger, would surely benefit from the
closure of that base. But the problems would simply be shifted to people living
near Henoko Bay with zero net gain for Okinawans. *
Dugongs, or sea cows, are large marine mammals. Ed.
Preparations for the construction of an
airstrip located partially in Henoko
Bay are currently
entailing a bizarre environmental “pre-survey” which will then lead to an
Environmental Impact Assessment. The EIA has been labelled a façade that “will
not be a precise or open environmental assessment, since the appropriate
law-abiding procedures will not be/have not been conducted”.
“According to news reports, the Japanese
Government has dispatched the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force ship ‘Bungo’ to
Henoko, Okinawa. ‘Bungo’ is gun boat and
minesweeper equipped with divers. It is reported the members of Maritime Self
Defense Force will assist private contractors in the environmental ‘pre-survey’
for the military off-shore base at Henoko”.
The above quote is from an “Urgent Call for
Henoko” circulated by Filipino anti-bases activist Cora Fabros on the No US
Bases e-list (16/5/07) with the inspired headline: “Japanese Government points
gun at Okinawans for the first time since World War II”. Cora Fabros was a
member of the international anti-bases community who joined about 300 local
people at Henoko Beach
on May 14 to protest the US
presence and the looming destruction of the Bay ecosystems in the name of
defence (Cora was also a member of an international delegation in New Zealand
back in 1990. She participated in ABC’s Touching the Bases Tour [Tangimoana,
Waihopai, Black Birch(now closed) and Harewood], which you can read about in PR
28 [First Series], February 1991,
“Linking, Learning And Levitation: A Report On The Anti-Bases Campaign Touching
The Bases Tour”, by “a witness”).
The courage and persistence of the people of
Okinawa and Guam in their struggles against US
bases should be an inspiration to us all.