Protest comes as island plays host to G8 summitOkinawans grow weary of feeling like US colony
BARRIE McKENNA
Friday, July 21, 2000
Ginowan City, Japan -- Thousands of protesters ringed the main U.S. air base on Okinawa with a human chain yesterday in a symbolic reminder that while the United States occupies much of this beach-lined subtropical island, the land still belongs to its people.The peaceful demonstration -- which lasted less than two hours and caused no disruptions -- came on the eve of Bill Clinton's arrival today for the start of a three-day Group of Eight summit, the first visit to Okinawa by a U.S. president since the United States returned the island to Japan in 1972 after nearly three decades of postwar occupation.
Japan's decision to hold the summit on the island was to have been payback to a generation of Okinawans who say they have endured a disproportionate burden of the massive U.S. military presence.
The summit is an opportunity to make Mr. Clinton and the rest of the G8 see the world through their eyes -- if only for a few days.
"We feel we are still being colonized by the Americans," said Shiko Sakiyama, a councillor in Naha City, the capital of Okinawa. "Real freedom for Okinawans hasn't been granted yet."
A spate of ugly incidents in recent weeks involving U.S. troops -- including the arrest of a 19-year-old U.S. Marine for breaking into an apartment and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl -- has rekindled fierce anti-American feelings.
For the duration of the summit, marines have been effectively confined to base, alcohol has been banned and a midnight-to-dawn curfew has been imposed.
For Okinawans, the cost of playing host to the hub of the U.S. military beachhead in Asia will always be too high. Virtually everyone seems to have a personal story about injustices committed by U.S. troops and long tolerated by the Japanese government.
Seikoh Higa was 6 in 1945 when advancing U.S. troops levelled his family's home in the Okinawan town of Ginowan and built an air strip. Mr. Higa, 61, now Ginowan's mayor, fumes when he looks out his window toward the sprawling U.S. Marines Futenma air station, which covers 480 hectares of prime real estate in the heart of his town.
"The Americans live in spacious houses with a lot of green space around them," said Mr. Higa, who is paid roughly $20,000 a year in compensation by the Japanese government for a plot of land that would hold 10 homes. "I look across the fence and I see people living a much more comfortable life than we do."
Captain David Case, a marine pilot, has lived on the U.S. side of the fence for nearly six years. He admits he's never given much thought to those, like Mr. Higa, who lost their land.
"It's pretty standard around the world: people would just like the bases to go away," he said, watching a large transport plane taxi on a nearby runway that covers what was once Mr. Higa's home.
A relic of the Cold War and Japan's crushing Second World War defeat, Okinawa is still home to some of the largest and most strategic U.S. military installations in the world.
The American presence is overwhelming on this narrow, 1,200-square-kilometre island. There are 38 bases in all, including Futenma and nearby Katena, the largest air base in East Asia and the site of yesterday's protest.
The U.S. bases occupy 20 per cent of the land, and vast swaths of the surrounding ocean and airspace. Bases line the crowded main north-south highways on the densely populated island, occupying much of any undeveloped land.
While Okinawans make up less than 1 per cent of Japan's population, their island is home to 75 per cent of the Japanese territory used for U.S. bases. On an island of 1.3 million people, there are nearly 50,000 U.S. service personnel and families.
Not surprisingly, a majority of Okinawans want the bases closed, or at least severely cut back, a sentiment overwhelmingly confirmed in 1996 in a non-binding referendum commissioned for the nationalistic former governor.
The U.S. military expropriated nearly 24,000 hectares of land after the Second World War and during the Korean War as it built up a formidable Cold War outpost in Asia. The Japanese and U.S. governments now lease the land from roughly 31,000 small landholders at well below market rates.
In a bid to defuse rising tensions over the U.S. base controversy, Mr. Clinton plans to take a break from the G8 summit today to meet local leaders and give a speech at a new memorial to the 238,000 people who died, including nearly 150,000 Okinawans, during a bloody four-month battle for the island in 1945.
White House officials said the President will talk about the importance "of good, neighbourly relations with the people of Okinawa."
To the Japanese residents, Mr. Clinton has a lot of explaining to do. The latest incidents are part of a sad and disturbing legacy of violent crimes, environmental degradation and noise pollution dating back more than half a century, according to Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire.
The brutal 1995 rape and kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl by two U.S. Marines and a sailor, a case that focused world attention on the base issue, was not an aberration, but a symptom of a much deeper problem, Mr. Johnson said.
"This was not an isolated incident committed by undisciplined enlisted men, but part of a pattern ignored, if not condoned, at the highest levels of the American military hierarchy."
The United States has already left behind a legacy of PCBs, depleted uranium shells and various other chemical wastes. Mr. Johnson likens the U.S. presence in Okinawa to an arrogant foreign military power occupying a big chunk of Los Angeles and running amok.
"Okinawa is essentially still a colony of the Pentagon's -- a huge safe house where the Green Berets and the Defense Intelligence Agency, not to mention the Air Force and the Marine Corps, can do things they would not dare to do in the United States," Mr. Johnson said.
It has taken years for the military to even acknowledge it has made mistakes. When Marine Lieutenant-General Earl Hailston, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Okinawa, apologized to Okinawa Governor Keiichi Inamine earlier this month for the conduct of his troops, it marked the first time a U.S. officer had ever formally done so.
To fully comprehend the islanders' resentment, it's equally important to understand their relationship to the rest of Japan.
Okinawa is as distinct from the rest of Japan as Quebec is to Canada. Independent from Japan until 1879, Okinawans still have their own language and culture -- a blend of Chinese and Pacific influences. Many older Okinawans can neither read nor write Japanese.
Okinawa, a string of islands that forms the southernmost tip of Japan, is closer to Shanghai, Taipei and Manila than Tokyo, which is more than 1,500 kilometres to the north.
Okinawa is also Japan's poorest prefecture, or province, with an unemployment rate that at 8.5 per cent is more than twice the national average of just over 4 per cent. Its economy is heavily dependent on tourism, government infrastructure projects and spinoffs from the U.S. bases.
The island's struggle is as much with the Japanese government as it is with the United States. Beneath the veneer of anti-Americanism is a strong desire for greater Okinawan autonomy, even independence, in a country that prides itself on the homogeneity of its people.
Many here believe that Japan tolerated the local bases and the abuses because it allowed people in the rest of the country to be oblivious to the U.S. presence.
On the other hand, too few Okinawans recognize or even understand the vital strategic interests of the United States and Japan in maintaining the bases, said Bill Breer, a former U.S. diplomat in Japan who now holds the Japan chair at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
"Nobody in the region is aiming missiles at each other right now, and that's partly because of our presence. Okinawa has played a major role in that."
At the same time, Mr. Breer acknowledged the United States has been stubborn and "lead-footed" in not getting rid of bases it does not need any more, including the Futenma base, which is part of a rapid-deployment force for the Korean peninsula.
The United States agreed to move the base nearly five years ago. But it's still haggling with the Japanese government over a new site.
For Mr. Inamine, the Okinawa Governor who took over from the more nationalistic Masahide Ota two years ago, accepting a reduction in the bases is just being pragmatic.
"The bases have been here for 55 years and it's unrealistic to get rid of them immediately," Mr. Inamine said in an interview. "The day the bases are gone would be a dream and I will continue to believe in that dream."