Okinawa protesters dig in against U.S. base move
HENOKO, Japan — Neither snow nor cancer nor the threat of another arrest keeps Hiroji Yamashiro from protesting against the planned expansion of a U.S. Marine Corps base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Every day, he arranges anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred protesters in rows outside the gate of Camp Schwab, a base in the rural northern area of Henoko where new runways are being built out into the sea.
Under Yamashiro’s direction, about 30 people assembled before dawn on a recent day — Day 576 of the protest — outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1 by police officers from Okinawa and Tokyo, to try to stop the construction trucks from entering the base to start their work day.
“Victory is within our grasp. Don’t resist,” Yamashiro said into his microphone, wrapped in plastic against the rain, as one protester after another was carried away, some still in their camp chairs.
“Protect the people! Control illegal construction! Control illegal land reclamation!” one shouted as he was carted off.
Yamashiro, a 63-year-old Okinawan, is the face of this resistance to what many residents see as an ongoing American occupation, more than seven decades after the end of World War II. He and his fellow protesters are a thorn in the Japanese government’s side.
The postwar U.S. occupation of Japan officially ended in 1952, but it continued in Okinawa, the island prefecture about halfway between the Japanese mainland and Taiwan, for 20 more years.
Today, there are 33 U.S. military facilities and about 28,000 U.S. military personnel here.
The most contentious facility is the Marine Corps air station at Futenma, a complex roughly twice the size of Reagan National Airport on an elevated patch of prime real estate in the most developed part of an island about the same size as Los Angeles.
Two decades ago, the United States and Japanese governments agreed to replace Futenma with a new facility in the much-lesspopulated area of Henoko.
But the relocation project didn’t start until mid-2014, and with it came renewed protest.
Okinawans contend that they shoulder too much of the burden of Japan’s secu- rity alliance with the United States, saying they account for 1 percent of Japanese territory but host 73 percent of the bases.
The U.S. military disputes the latter figure, saying that only 39 percent of its “exclusive use facilities” are on Okinawa.
Okinawans like Yamashiro want Futenma moved out of their prefecture entirely, rather than to the Henoko area. The plan calls for two long runways to be built out into Henoko Bay, which local residents say would destroy coral and kill off the dugong, an endangered sea mammal similar to a manatee.
At the end of 2014, Okinawa elected a new governor, Takeshi Onaga, who promised to block the construction at Henoko, and Tokyo and Okinawa have been locked since then in a string of administrative and court battles.
Onaga has used to his authority to overturn the permit allowing the central government to reclaim land for the runways and has prohibited earth-moving on prefectural land.
But the central government, which cut its annual subsidy to Okinawa by 5 percent after Onaga’s election, is using the courts to push ahead with construction, obtaining orders to override the revocation measure and allow construction to proceed.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe scored a victory last month when he backed Atsushi Sakima’s re-election as mayor of Ginowan, the city around the Futenma base. Sakima supports Futenma’s closure but has avoided taking a stand on Henoko. There is talk of opening a Disney or Universal Studios resort on the land once it is returned.
A top aide to Abe said Sakima’s election showed “it’s obvious” that not everyone in Okinawa is against the base’s relocation.
But at the protest site, the sentiment is universal.
“The reason why everybody comes here is because everybody is worried that we will become involved if there is another war in this region,” Yamashiro said.