Over the weekend there were massive protests in Okinawa against the expansion of a U.S. military base in Henoko, Okinawa.   Below are two articles about the demonstrations. But where was Okinawa’s Governor Nakaima?

The pro-base politician was on a trip, dodging a confrontation with the protest movement.    Instead of facing his own constituency, Nakaima was in Honolulu to meet with the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command!

Since, he wasn’t in Okinawa to receive the message, the Hawai’i Okinawa Alliance (HOA) assembled a “welcoming committee” to greet the Governor at the Honolulu International Airport.   HOA members greeted a surprised Governor Nakaima with leis, signs and the message that the U.S. bases must go.  As Pete Shimazaki Doktor reports:

as soon as he heard us speak about henoko, his smiled dropped and he started to walk away!  we walked along w/ him and his crew of advisors, aides and assistants who walked around or behind, not with, the governor as we spoke to him in broken japanese and english.  when we said we didn’t want more bases in okinawa, he said, “but there are a lot of bases here!” of which we expressed we didn’t want them and that they were dangerous and problematic too.

While it probably didn’t change Nakaima’s mind, the message was unavoidable.   Bases out!  Peace for Okinawa! Peace for Hawai’i!  Peace for the world!

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Japanese protest over US base before Obama’s visit

Posted: 08 November 2009 1444 hrs

People gather at a rally against the US military base in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture on November 8.

GINOWAN, Japan : Thousands have rallied against a US military base on Japan’s Okinawa island, raising the heat in a simmering row days before President Barack Obama visits Tokyo.

Local opposition has often flared against the large US military presence on the southern island, strategically located within easy reach of China, Taiwan and North Korea and dubbed the United States’ “unsinkable aircraft carrier”.

In a new development Japan’s foreign minister has said that Tokyo’s decision on relocating the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Base could be delayed till next year.

A string of local elections next year on the island could also sway the fate of the controversial military facility, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said.

“I think the end of December can be a point of time by which we should work out a rough plan… but it may be delayed from this,” Okada told a talk show on the private Asahi network.

The government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, which swept to power in September, has said it may want the base, now located in a densely populated area, moved off the island or even out of the country.

The rise of a new centre-left government in Japan, ending decades of conservative rule, has brought the issue of the US military presence in the country back to the centre of national politics and has strained Japan’s most important security alliance.

The Futenma base, located in a densely populated urban area, has emerged as a flashpoint for local opponents who have been angered by aircraft noise, pollution, the risk of accidents and crimes committed by US service personnel.

Okinawans reacted with fury to the 1995 rape of a schoolgirl by three US servicemen, and demands to close the base on safety grounds grew when a US helicopter crashed into the front yard of a local university in 2004.

The government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, which swept to power in a landslide and has vowed a less subservient relationship with Washington, has said it may want the base moved off the island or even out of the country.

The United States has demanded Japan honour a 2006 agreement under which the Futenma base would be closed but its air operations moved to an alternative site to be built on Okinawa by 2014 in the coastal Camp Schwab area.

But activists near Camp Schwab also oppose the planned new base, which would be built on reclaimed land and would include two runways likely to affect a marine habitat home to corals and an endangered sea mammal, the dugong.

On a visit to Japan last month, Defence Secretary Robert Gates bluntly urged Tokyo to “move on” and resolve the issue before Obama’s arrival, stressing that Washington does not want to renegotiate a pact that was years in the making.

Hatoyama has said Japan will need more time to resolve the tricky question as it weighs the demands of Washington and of the people of Okinawa, a heartland of left-leaning and pacifist groups who oppose the bases.

Subtropical Okinawa, located about 1,600 kilometres south of Tokyo, saw some of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

– AFP/ir

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1016762/1/.html

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Japanese town stages anti-US base protest

Posted: 08 November 2009 0515 hrs

People stage a rally against a US military base on Japan’s Okinawa island

KADENA, Japan : Thousands of residents of Japan’s southern island of Okinawa Saturday staged a protest against the presence of the US military on the eve of a major rally against a controversial airbase.

Some 2,500 people living in Kadena town, which already hosts a large US Air Force base that frequently provokes complaints over the noise of jet planes flying day and night, protested a government proposal the city accept another US military installation.

The demonstration came a day before Okinawans were to stage a major rally against a 2006 Japan-US military agreement ahead of US President Barack Obama’s first visit to Tokyo.

Under the pact, Tokyo’s then conservative government agreed with Washington that the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Base, which Okinawa has long demanded be moved out of a residential area, be relocated to the island’s coastal Camp Schwab site.

New Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama — who swept to power in a landslide and has vowed a less subservient relationship with Washington — said during the election campaign he would review the agreement and wanted the base moved off the island or even out of the country.

But under pressure from the United States, which has demanded Japan honour the pact, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada proposed the Futenma operations be merged with the already existing air base in Kadena — a suggestion that has angered Kadena residents.

“No matter what reasons or what explanations are given, I will never accept it,” said Kadena mayor Tokujitsu Miyagi at the rally.

“Let’s get rid of this proposal with our unshaken determination!”

More than 30,000 protesters were expected to gather Sunday against the 2006 agreement in a park near the Futenma Air Base in Ginowan city, organisers said.

The Futenma base, located in a densely populated urban area, has emerged as a flashpoint for local opponents who have been angered by aircraft noise, the risk of accidents and crimes committed by US service personnel.

“The Okinawan people are ready to shoulder the burdens of hosting the US military if the rest of Japan does the same,” said Miyagi, whose town gives up about 83 percent of its land for the air base, according to town documents. “But what Okinawa has sacrificed has been just too much.”

Washington and Tokyo have been close security allies in the post-war era, with the United States guaranteeing Japan’s defence and providing nuclear deterrence during and after the Cold War.

Subtropical Okinawa, located about 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) south of Tokyo, is considered to be a strategic site near China, Taiwan and North Korea, hosting more than half of the 47,000 US troops stationed in the country.

– AFP /ls

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1016721/1/.html