A 24-member delegation from Japan is in Washington, D.C., this week
opposing the presence and new construction of U.S. military bases in
Okinawa. Participating are members of the Japanese House of Councilors,
of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly, and of city governments in
Okinawa, as well as leading protest organizers and the heads of several
important organizations opposed to the ongoing U.S. military occupation
of Okinawa.
The famously stingy U.S. tax payer, frequently seen
bitterly protesting outrageously wasteful spending of a few million
dollars, is paying billions of dollars to maintain and expand some 90
military bases in Japan (and to make those who profit from such business
filthy rich). Thirty-four of those bases, containing 74% of their
total land area, are in Okinawa, which itself contains only 0.6% of
Japanese land. Okinawa is dominated by U.S. military bases and has been
for 67 years since the U.S. forcibly appropriated much of the best
land.
The people of Okinawa tell pollsters year after year that
they oppose the bases. Year after year they elect government officials
who oppose the bases. Year after year they march, sit-in, protest, and
demand to be heard. Year after year, the national Japanese government
confronts the issue and fails to take any decisive steps to resolve it.
Year after year, the people of the United States remain blissfully
unaware that, as in so many other places around the world, our military
occupation of Okinawa is ruining people's lives.
Members of the
delegation spoke at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., Monday
night. Toshio Ikemiyagi thanked people who came to hear them and
pointed out that we all looked healthy and alert. That, he said, is
because you have all had sleep. You've been able to sleep at night
without deafening jet noise, he said. Ikemiyagi is the lead attorney on
a lawsuit challenging the Kadena Air Base's noise pollution. He played
us a video on Monday of what it is like. For the people who live
there, he said, the war that ended 67 years ago has never ended.
Keiko
Itokazu, a Member of the Japanese National Diet, depicted in this
painting, said the Okinawan people had been heartbroken since having
been unable to protect a 12-year-old girl from gang rape by U.S. troops
in 1995. The Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and
Japan gives U.S. troops immunity from Japanese prosecution. Between
1979 and 2008, U.S. forces in Okinawa caused 1,439 accidents (487 of
them airplane related), and 5,584 criminal cases (559 of them involving
violent crimes). The list includes fatal driving incidents, residential
break-ins, taxi robberies, sexual violence, and other serious crimes
against local citizens.
I spoke recently with Maria Allwine who
describes herself as "a former Marine Corps spouse." She said, "It is
common practice for military personnel to use Japanese women as
'mama-sans,' exchanging house cleaning and sexual favors for money.
Nothing new, but it's given a wink and a nod by military brass. Those
who don't cheat are considered abnormal by their peers."
The sex
police are as absent as the skinflints from their usual place of
prominence in U.S. political debate when it comes to occupying other
people's countries. Imagine, however, just for a moment, that even one
Japanese military base existed in the United States, and imagine that
even one Japanese soldier committed a single crime. Can you imagine
some things that U.S. television talking heads might say?
Our
military is trying to build yet more bases in Okinawa. Why, you ask?
Word around town is that even the Pentagon thinks it serves no purpose,
but the Marine Corps likes to hold onto anything it's got. The Marines
have even named one of their bases in Okinawa for Smedley Butler, the
author of "War Is A Racket," and a man whom the Marines once imprisoned
at Quantico for having spoken badly of Benito Mussolini. Don't look for
logic. Look for petty rivalry and power, combined with
unaccountability and we the people missing in action.
The least
popular base in Okinawa is probably Futenma Air Base, which sits in the
middle of a city, near schools, a hospital, and houses -- houses which
military helicopters have been known to crash into. The Marine Corps
plans to bring the accident-prone MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to
Futenma in 2012. Overwhelmingly, the people of Okinawa want the base
closed, and do not want it relocated to a less populated area, and do
not want it combined with another existing base. For the past 16 years,
residents of Henoko, a location under consideration for relocation of
the base, have held a continuous sit-in protest without pause. They
have also risked their lives hanging onto a floating platform in the
ocean, surrounded by supportive fishing boats, successfully preventing
the military from surveying the site for construction.
Hiroshi
Ashitomi has been a leader of the nonviolent resistance in Henoko for 16
years. "We use our own bodies," he said on Monday, "to resist
aggressive actions by the Japanese government." Pointing to the picture
of Gandhi in the collage on the wall at Busboys, Ashitomi said, "We
follow the example of Gandhi. It is not easy. We receive threats from
the police. But we are determined to use nonviolent resistance, and we
get a lot of support from all over Japan. We are trying to protect the
environment, so many young people from all over Japan come to our tent
and participate in our resistance."
In
fact, the environment and the rights of certain endangered species have
come to dominate the anti-base movement in Okinawa. Apparently the
rights of humans are far less interesting than the rights of the black
naped tern, the blue coral, or above all the dugong. The dugong is the
manatee-like creature in this photo. Osamu Makishi of the Citizens'
Network for Okinawan Biodiversity spoke movingly about these species and
their ecosystem on Monday, which he said are protected by treaty.
The
Japanese delegation is meeting with Congress Members, including Senator
Jim Webb on Wednesday, urging them to close and consolidate bases. I
once accompanied a group of Italians on almost identical visits to
Congress. The people of Vicenza, Italy, oppose the bases the U.S.
military and the national Italian government impose on them, just as the
people of Okinawa do. The congress members and staffers we met with at
that time gave not the slightest damn for human rights or the
environment or popular opinion. I don't think any of the Japanese
delegates expect to encounter such humanity this week either. Their
hope is to highlight the financial costs to the United States of the
occupation of Japan. My hope is that we can help them by telling our
misrepresentatives that we agree with the members of the delegation. If
you're inclined to help, please call your rep and two senators with
that message.
Specifically, the delegation is asking for the
closure of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station; cancellation of
plans to construct a new Marine Corps air base at Cape Henoko; reduction
of unbearable noise caused by air operations at Kadena Air Base;
withdrawal of any proposal to integrate Futenma's helicopter squadrons
into Kadena's operations; an end to the construction of six new helipads
in the Yanbaru forest in northern Okinawa; and revision of the
U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement to allow fair prosecutions of
crimes.
Ultimately, however, the members of the delegation want
the bases all to be closed. And they do not want them relocated to Guam
or Australia or anywhere else, except perhaps to the United States.
Itokazu suggested that the U.S. government could save money and produce
jobs by bringing bases home. But, of course, we don't want a military
occupation any more than Japan does, and the same money would produce
more jobs if spent on a non-military industry.
Base opponents in
Okinawa work with others in Korea, Guam, and Hawaii, and with former
residents of Diego Garcia, as well as others around the world. An
international conference called "Dialogue Under Occupation" was held in
Okinawa last summer. In fact, people are working extremely hard in
cities around the world to shut down or prevent the construction of
giant military bases that we in the United States pay for and are
endangered by but have very little awareness of.
John Feffer of the Institute for Policy Studies (see http://closethebase.org
) believes Futenma can be closed and can serve as a model for closing
more. It is very difficult, however, Feffer says, to accomplish base
closings cleanly without some sort of asterisk attached. When a base
was closed in Seoul, Korea, a new one was opened outside it. When bases
were closed in the Philippines, a Visiting Forces Agreement was drawn
up. Yet, the Navy left Vieques, and the President of Ecuador seems to
have found the magic formula in his proposal that any U.S. base in
Ecuador be matched by an Ecuadorean base in Florida.
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