For years, Japanese kayak guide Michiru Sakai has shown tourists around coral reefs off Okinawa island — and impressed on them why locals so bitterly oppose plans for a new US military base.
The two new runways the US military wants to build here by 2014 would cut a giant V through the turquoise waters off Henoko, harming a marine ecosystem that is home to tropical fish and a rare sea mammal, the dugong, she says.
Sakai, 36 — known as “Skipper” to her fellow activists who have camped out on this picturesque beach for more than 2,000 days — says she doesn’t care what sweeteners the distant superpower throws at Japanese.
PHOTO: AFP
“The United States has said it would accept a concession and move the runways a bit offshore, but we oppose the entire plan,” said Sakai during a recent visit. “I’m sick of these pointless arguments. Japan doesn’t have the capacity to accept another base.”
Many Okinawans feel the same way.
Opposition to the US military presence has simmered for decades, with locals complaining about aircraft noise, pollution, the risk of accidents and crimes committed by servicemen, especially a high-profile 2005 gang-rape.
The rise this summer of a new center-left national government in Tokyo, 1,600km away, has fueled hopes that the unpopular US military presence will finally be scaled back.
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who in September ended half a century of conservative domination, has promised to review a three-year-old pact on the US troop presence and suggested the new base at Henoko may be scrapped.
The row threatens to overshadow a visit to Japan this week by US President Barack Obama, who on Tuesday urged Tokyo to stick with the agreement, arguing that the US military presence is in the interest of officially pacifist Japan.
The biggest flashpoint in Okinawa has been the US Marine Corp Futenma Air Base, now located in the crowded urban area of Ginowan city, where more than 20,000 people staged a protest rally last Sunday.
Under the 2006 pact, the base would be closed, its air operations moved to coastal Henoko near the existing US Camp Schwab base, and 8,000 Marines shifted to the US territory of Guam in a move part-funded by Japan.
The US has insisted Japan stick to the Futenma deal, part of a wider agreement to realign its troop presence in a country where US forces have been based since the end of World War II.
Washington considers Okinawa, sometimes dubbed “America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier,” as a key strategic location, close to China, Taiwan and North Korea, and a forward base for Afghanistan and other areas.
Some on Okinawa have defended the bases for fueling the local economy and providing jobs — but sentiment swung in 1995 after three Marines gang-raped a local 12-year-old girl.
“The issue of the Futenma base started because it is too dangerous to keep it in the city,” said Ashitomi, 63, a former local government official.
“Shutting down the base must come first, before talk about where to move it,” he said.
Ashitomi said he was tired of journalists from Japan’s main islands who ask where else in Japan the Futenma operations could possibly be moved.
“Why does it have to be on Okinawa?” asked Ashitomi angrily. “It is nothing but discrimination against Okinawa when ... no other prefectures want to share the burden.”
Many Okinawans say that ‘mainland’ Japan has been too happy to allow the major US bases on their island, which has a distinct indigenous culture and language and only became part of Japan in the mid-19th century.
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