Japan threatens to kick out US troops

[Okinawa]

it's always 'someone else's fault', but never that of the American oligarchs going over there, bombing the hell out of Japan (two nukes at that - show me any country other than the US that has NUKED TO HELL an entire country - I'd like to see it), setting up a US puppet regime, holding hostage the government for OVER 50 YEARS.

Sad to see the destruction of a people with a long history of unique culture(s) and intracultural systems of refinement and survival.

The Japanese have been created to be the NWO's ideal fairytale society to emulate. UNESCO has broken the will and spirit of the young and turned them into mindslaves dependent on multimedia, trivia, and Totalitarian support.

[Okinawa]

Okinawa rally could draw 100,000 people
By David Allen, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Friday, April 23, 2010

GINOWAN, Okinawa — The U.S. military on Okinawa is advising Department of Defense personnel and their families to stay away from the village of Yomitan on Sunday, where a large anti-base rally is scheduled.

Organizers said Wednesday they expect 100,000 people to gather at the village sports complex for the 3 p.m. event. Among featured speakers will be elected officials and union leaders.

If the size of the crowd turns out to be as big as predicted, it will be the largest anti-base event on Okinawa since 58,000 people gathered in Ginowan in October 1995 to protest the abduction and gang rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor.

The crime sparked an anti-base movement that resulted in the U.S. and Japan agreeing the next year to return about 20 percent of the land used by the U.S. military on Okinawa. That agreement included closing Marine Corps Air Station Futenma if an alternate location on the island could be found. Several relocation plans followed and were scrapped because of opposition by anti-base and environmental-protection groups.

Japan’s new left-center government is reviewing a 2006 agreement to close Futenma and move the Marines to a new air facility to be built at Camp Schwab on Okinawa. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said he will settle on a proposed new location for Futenma operations by the end of May.

The rally, sponsored by Okinawa’s prefectural assembly, passed a unanimous resolution in February calling for the immediate closure of Futenma and moving Marine air units off Okinawa.

The rally is expected to tie up traffic in Yomitan, especially along the main access road, Highway 58, from Kadena Town to Onna Village.

Ed Gulick, spokesman for the 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base, said personnel also are being advised to stay away "as a precaution to avoid the potential for incidents with protesters."

Stars and Stripes reporter Chiyomi Sumida contributed to this story.
allend@pstripes.osd.mil

[Okinawa]

Monday, April 26, 2010
Okinawans rally against keeping base: Anger building as Hatoyama dithers over Futenma issue
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100426a1.html

YOMITAN, Okinawa Pref. (Kyodo) An estimated 90,000 people in Okinawa joined local politicians in a massive rally here Sunday to call for the removal of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma and vent their anger against the central government for dragging the issue out.

Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima took the podium to urge the central government to move Futenma air station out of the prefecture.

"Some Cabinet ministers have indicated their tolerance for the possibility of Futenma airfield remaining as it is, but I say absolutely no to that," Nakaima said. "I want the prime minister to never give up and to honor his pledge."

Before his Democratic Party of Japan came to power in September, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama promised the people of Okinawa he would try to transfer the airfield out of the prefecture or even abroad.

Under a 2006 bilateral accord, the heliport functions of the Futenma base are to be transferred from densely populated Ginowan to a coastal zone in the U.S. Marines' Camp Schwab in Nago, also in Okinawa, by 2014.

Hatoyama has vowed to settle the issue, which has strained U.S.-Japan ties, by the end of next month.

Nakaima said the burden of hosting U.S. military bases in Okinawa has exceeded the capacity of the residents, and asked people in other parts of Japan to "lend a helping hand" to spread the responsibilities.

"This is not a problem that only concerns Okinawans. The safety of each Japanese individual is connected to Okinawa," the governor said, making a reference to the Japan-U.S. security treaty.

The island prefecture hosts about 75 percent of the total land used by U.S. military facilities in Japan and half of the 50,000 U.S. service personnel in the country.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada had indicated Japan would broadly accept the plan to transfer Futenma to Nago, although both Hatoyama and Okada immediately issued denials.

Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine blasted the government for repeatedly suggesting contradictory policies for handling the Futenma issue.

"Such an erratic and unscrupulous manner ridicules Okinawans and we can never forgive that," Inamine said, referring to the Washington Post report.

Most of the mayors of the 41 municipal governments in the prefecture, which has a population of around 1.4 million, attended the rally. All of the major political parties, including the Liberal Democratic Party, saw themselves being represented for the first time at an antibase rally in Okinawa.

The LDP, defeated by the DPJ in last year's general election, was in power when the 2006 pact was reached.

A resolution presented at the rally called for the early closure of Futenma and the return of the land it occupies. It also called for a slogan demanding the revision of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement and measures to boost the local economy.

"To save the life, property and living environment of citizens, we Okinawans urge both the Japanese and U.S. governments to give up on the relocation of Futenma airfield within the prefecture," the resolution said.

[Okinawa]

90,000 Protest U.S. Base on Okinawa
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/world/asia/26okinawa.html?ref=global-home
Kyodo News, via Associated Press
By MARTIN FACKLER
April 25, 2010

The Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, in the city of Ginowan, would be moved elsewhere on Okinawa under a 2006 deal.

The demonstrators, in one of the largest protests on Okinawa in years, demanded that Mr. Hatoyama scrap a 2006 agreement with the United States to move the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to a different site on the island. Many of the protesters wore yellow to signal they were giving Mr. Hatoyama a warning for appearing to waver on election promises to move the busy base off Okinawa altogether.

Since his party’s landmark election victory last summer, Mr. Hatoyama has promised to come up with an alternative plan that would reduce the heavy American presence on the southern Japanese island, home to nearly half of the 50,000 United States military personnel in Japan. He has given himself until the end of May to put together such a plan that would also be acceptable to Washington.

So far, his efforts to find a new location for the base have not appeased Washington; it initially demanded that Tokyo adhere to the original 2006 deal but has recently signaled greater flexibility. The 2006 deal calls for moving the base from its current location, in the center of the city of Ginowan, to Camp Schwab, an existing Marine base in less-populated northern Okinawa.

The perception that Mr. Hatoyama has mishandled the relationship with the United States, Japan’s longtime protector, has contributed to his falling approval ratings, which have dropped below 30 percent. Opposition leaders and media commentators have begun calling on him to resign if he fails to find a compromise by the end of May.

While Mr. Hatoyama has remained tight-lipped about what his plan may look like, officials from his government have made repeated visits to Okinawa to sound out local leaders. Okinawan politicians and the local news media have described the emerging plan as a modified version of the 2006 agreement.

They said the government was considering building a smaller airbase at Camp Schwab than under the 2006 agreement and moving at least part of Futenma’s functions — most likely some of its training operations, and perhaps some of its helicopters — to Tokunoshima, a smaller island about 120 miles north of Okinawa. Japanese news media have interpreted this proposal as a token gesture to appease Okinawans by moving at least some of the Marines off the island.

Okinawan leaders and local media reports have also said the government is considering constructing a new air base on an artificial island to be built off the Okinawan city of Uruma. Japanese media reports have said the island could take decades to build and would serve as a longer-term home for the Marines.

However, on Sunday, local leaders told the demonstrators that they rejected any plan that kept the air base on Okinawa. Toshio Shimabukuro, the mayor of Uruma, said he opposed the construction of the island, which he said would turn his city in “a major military site,” according to Japan’s Kyodo News.

The governor of Okinawa, Hirokazu Nakaima, who dropped his earlier support for the 2006 plan to join a rising movement against the base, called on the rest of Japan to share more of the burden of the American military presence. “This is not a problem that concerns only Okinawans,” he said, according to Kyodo.

[Okinawa]

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Okinawa mayors, residents stage Diet sit-in
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100428a3.html
Kyodo News

Okinawa mayors and residents staged a sit-in in front of Diet members' buildings on Tuesday to call for the relocation of the U.S. Futenma air base as the administration continued trying to resolve the issue by its self-imposed deadline of May 31.

The demonstrators, who were among the 90,000 at a rally Sunday in the village of Yomitan, Okinawa, repeated their call to reject any new base construction in the prefecture.

Setsuko Oshiro, head of a women's group in Okinawa, asked, "Why is the base problem in Okinawa neglected?" Why do we have to bear the possible crash of helicopters?"

Mayor Yoichi Iha of Ginowan, the city hosting U.S. Marine Corp Air Station Futenma, criticized the Japanese and U.S. governments for the lack of progress in implementing the agreed-on return of the land occupied by the U.S. facility.

"Fourteen years have passed since Japan and the United States agreed on the land return, but the airfield remains a major impediment to the city's urban planning and economic development," Iha said.

Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine said he "believes in" Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama but added, "I'd like the prime minister to clearly show a road map" toward moving the base out of the prefecture.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told representatives from Okinawa that the U.S. Marines are a "necessary deterrence" to defend the lives of Japanese and their property against threats from overseas.

Zenshin Takamine, chairman of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly, quoted Okada as saying he hasn't considered relocating the Futenma base outside Japan and that the marines' presence is indispensable because the Self-Defense Forces can't defend Japan alone.

[Okinawa]

Feud over US base could force resignation of Japanese prime minister
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/7655314/Feud-over-US-base-could-force-resignation-of-Japanese-prime-minister.html
The political fate of Yukio Hatoyama, the prime minister of Japan, is hanging in the balance over his failure to resolve a feud over the future of a US military base on Okinawa.
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
30 Apr 2010

Only eight months after being swept to power, the Democratic Party of Japan has "squandered" the goodwill it built up among the electorate, according to analysts, and is likely to see a sharp reversal of its fortunes in the upper house election, which falls on July 11.

The approval rating for the cabinet fell to 20.7 per cent in a poll this week, plummeting more than 12 points from the previous month.
 
Mr Hatoyama's "lack of leadership" was cited by more than 40 percent of respondents.

That failure to lead is nowhere more evident than in the saga over the US Marines' Futenma Air Base - which has soured relations with Japan's most important military ally.

Before being elected, Mr Hatoyama promised to relocate the base outside Okinawa. This delighted local residents but rang alarm bells in the Pentagon, which was working on a 2006 agreement to move the facilities to an expanded base in the north of the island.

No other communities in Japan will now accept the base and the Americans are standing firm on their operational needs, painting Mr Hatoyama into a corner.

"Finding a solution to the Futenma issue that is acceptable to both the people of Okinawa and the US military looks impossible at this point," said Jun Okumura, a political analyst with the Eurasia Group.

"The Futenma issue does not affect the daily lives of the public, but it threw up serious concerns over the competency of this cabinet and the prime minister in particular.

With the pressure rising on both Mr Hatoyama, who has promised a decision on the base by the end of May, and the DPJ's secretary general Ichiro Ozawa, who is resisting calls for a full explanation of his shady financial dealings, Mr Okumura believes both men may step down.

"If, by mid-May, it turns out there is no solution to the Futenma situation, Hatoyama may fall on his sword," he suggested. "He could also claim responsibility for bringing grief to the DPJ by the political financing scandals. That will in turn force Ozawa to resign.

"The party, rid of its two controversial leaders, may then receive a substantial bump at the polls."

[Okinawa]

Japan PM backtracks on Okinawa military base pledge
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/japan-okinawa-feud-us-base

Protesters gather outside city hall as Yukio Hatoyama backtracks on election pledge to relocate Futenma marine corps base

A car carrying Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama drives past protesters demonstrating against the US marine base in Okinawa. Photograph: Kimimasa Mayama/EPA

Yukio Hatoyama, the Japanese prime minister, has conceded that it will be "impossible" to completely relocate a controversial US military base outside of Okinawa, backtracking on an election pledge that could damage his prospects in forthcoming elections.

Hatoyama took office last September promising to reduce the military burden on the southern island, which hosts more than half the 47,000 US troops stationed in Japan.

He now has until a self-imposed deadline of 31 May to decide the fate of the Futenma marine corps base, which is located in a heavily populated area and has become the focus of local opposition to the US military presence.

Speaking on his first trip to Okinawa as prime minister, Hatoyama today said that removing all of the base's functions would damage Japan's deterrent capability.

"Realistically speaking, it is impossible," he said after meeting Okinawa's governor, Hirokazu Nakaima. "We're facing a situation in which it is realistically difficult to move everything out of the prefecture.

"I feel very sorry that I have to ask the Okinawan people to understand that part of the base's functions will have to stay. We must ask [them] to share the burden."

Washington has made no secret of its irritation with Hatoyama's decision to reconsider a 2006 agreement that would see Futenma moved to an offshore location in a less populated part of Okinawa and the relocation, by 2014, of 8,000 marines and their families to the US Pacific territory of Guam.

It appears that Hatoyama is prepared to accept a slightly revised version that would reduce the environmental impact of the new base.

Failure to reach a decision by the end of the month would damage his credibility ahead of upper house elections this summer, while he is unlikely to find a community anywhere in Japan that would readily accept US troops and their hardware.

Support for Hatoyama's Democratic party of Japan is weakening, and in one recent poll 60% of voters said he should resign if he does not meet the May deadline. His foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, told the Guardian in a recent interview that failure to settle the row by the end of the month would "undermine trust" between Japan and the US, by far its most important ally.

Last month about 100,000 people protested against locating the base anywhere on Okinawa, while leaders from smaller islands in the region have also voiced opposition to hosting US marines.

Simmering resentment towards the US presence on Okinawa exploded into anger in 1995 after three servicemen abducted and raped a 12-year-old girl, a crime that prompted lengthy negotiations on reducing the country's military footprint.

[Okinawa]

Japanese Leader Backtracks on Revising Base Agreement
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/world/asia/05japan.html?ref=global-home
By MARTIN FACKLER and HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: May 4, 2010

TOKYO — Backtracking on a prominent campaign pledge, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told angry residents of Okinawa on Tuesday that it was unrealistic to expect the United States to move its entire Marine Corps air base off the island.

Kimimasa Mayama/European Pressphoto Agency

In his first visit to Okinawa since he became prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, center, heard from residents of the island, home to a Marine air base.

Mr. Hatoyama’s government could hang in the balance. He has pledged to come up with a plan by the end of this month to relocate the Marine air base and resolve a stubborn problem that has created months of discord with Washington. His delays and apparent flip-flopping on the issue have fed a growing feeling of disappointment in the prime minister’s leadership, driving his approval ratings below 30 percent.

Visiting Okinawa for the first time since becoming prime minister, Mr. Hatoyama asked residents to entertain a compromise that would keep some of the functions of the base on the island while the government explored moving some facilities elsewhere.

“Realistically speaking, it is impossible” to move the entire base, called Futenma, off the island, he said. “We’re facing a situation that is realistically difficult to move everything out of the prefecture. We must ask the people of Okinawa to share the burden.”

But Okinawans seemed in no mood for burden-sharing, heckling him after he met with local officials. “Shame on you!” one man shouted.

During the campaign for last summer’s election, in which his Democratic Party dislodged the Liberal Democrats who had ruled Japan almost continuously for more than 50 years, Mr. Hatoyama called for adjusting a 2006 agreement with the United States, which stations about 50,000 troops in Japan. Under that plan, Futenma was to be moved to a less crowded part of Okinawa to address local concerns over noise, air pollution and safety.

But the Obama administration pushed back, with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates apparently refusing to entertain any thought of reopening the agreement. The standoff threatened to open the first breach in the two countries’ post-World War II security alliance. Later, during a trip to Japan, President Obama smoothed things over, reluctantly agreeing to consider Mr. Hatoyama’s proposals.

While Mr. Hatoyama has tried to accommodate the competing desires of the Americans and local residents, he finally had to admit that it could not be done. On Tuesday, Mr. Hatoyama had the unpleasant task of delivering the bad news, acknowledging that moving the base off Okinawa was unrealistic.

“When we consider the presence of North Korea and the state of the wider region, it is clear that we must maintain the Japan-U.S. alliance as a deterrent force, and that we must ask Okinawa to bear some of that burden,” he said after the meeting with local leaders.

“It has become clear from our negotiations with the Americans that we cannot ask them to relocate the base to too far-flung a location,” he said.

Mr. Hatoyama still has not divulged the specifics of his plan. But it is widely expected that it will involve the small island of Tokunoshima, where since January, when word got out, residents have marshaled their resources for a fight.

Tokunoshima, a small, semitropical island located between Okinawa and Japan’s main islands and blanketed with fields of sugar cane, was mentioned as a possible site for training activities and up to 1,000 of Futenma’s 2,500 Marines, said Takeshi Tokuda, the island’s representative in the lower house of Parliament, who was briefed on the plan.

But enraged islanders vowed that the move would never happen. “If he comes, our old people and mothers with children will sit in the street to block his way,” Seiichi Yoshitama, 65, a coffee farmer, said of Mr. Hatoyama. “We’ll even use our fighting bulls to stop him.”

They have held a series of increasingly large anti-base rallies, the largest on April 18, when more than half of the island’s 26,000 residents gathered, organizers said.

The mood on Tokunoshima is now overwhelmingly against the plan. The main road along the coast is lined with hand-painted signs saying “No Base!” The mayors of the island’s three towns agreed on Saturday to meet with the prime minister, but only to express their opposition in person, they say.

On Tokunoshima, as opposed to Okinawa, the opposition is driven by more than just a simple case of not-in-my-backyard syndrome, political experts and local residents say. The islanders say they do not want to end up like Okinawa, where there is widespread discontent over the American bases’ crime and noise. Older residents also have bitter memories of the war and its aftermath, when islanders staged hunger strikes against the American occupiers.

Residents and experts say Mr. Hatoyama’s troubles also reflect a weakening of Tokyo’s ability to impose its will on Japan’s regions. The Liberal Democratic Party relied on generous public works spending and back-room bargains to push through big projects like this one. Mr. Hatoyama, who rode to power with vows to cut wasteful spending and increase transparency in politics, may find his ability to make deals thwarted by such changes.

“It’s all more fluid now at the end of the L.D.P. era,” said Akira Okubo, mayor of Isen, one of Tokunoshima’s towns. “The center is weakening in Japan, and that gives us more freedom at the fringes.”

Not all islanders are against the base. A group of business owners led by Hidetada Maeda, an undertaker and former town council chairman in Amagi, another of Tokunoshima’s towns, released a list last week of incentives for accepting the base. They included subsidies for tourism and forgiveness of the $250 million debt of the island’s towns.

“This is a one-in-a-thousand chance to revitalize our island,” said Mr. Maeda, 62.

Most islanders, however, said they did not want economic incentives, which they said would only make their island dependent on Tokyo. “Once you start accepting that development money, it becomes addictive, like a drug,” said Koichi Tokuda, who owns a factory that makes vinegar from sugar cane. “We are not rich, but we are self-sufficient. We want to stay that way.”

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.

[Okinawa]

Japan PM under fire over US base U-turn
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100505/wl_asia_afp/japanusmilitarydiplomacypolitics
Japan PM under fire over US base U-turn AFP/File – Japan's embattled Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama faced a barrage of criticism following his U-turn …
by Shingo Ito Shingo Ito – Wed May 5, 11:17 am ET

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan's embattled Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama faced a barrage of criticism on Wednesday after his U-turn on the relocation of a US base, with calls mounting for him to quit ahead of key elections in July.

Major newspapers railed against his decision to scrap plans to move an unpopular US airbase entirely off the island of Okinawa after months of dithering over the issue that angered close ally Washington.

"The government's recent disarray appears shameful," the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun said in an editorial. "Needless to say, Prime Minister Hatoyama bears the greatest responsibility."

On his first visit to the sub-tropical island since he took office in September, Hatoyama on Tuesday apologised for his failure to meet his pledge to remove the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from Okinawa.

Hatoyama had long vowed to review an accord made in 2006 by previous governments in Tokyo and Washington under which the base should be moved from its current crowded urban location on Okinawa to a quieter coastal area.

However, a search for alternative sites in Japan has been met by more protests, leaving Hatoyama with few viable options ahead of a self-imposed May 31 deadline to resolve the matter.

"The prime minister has stated that he would stake his job on the resolution by the end of May. The words are grave," the Mainichi Shimbun said in an editorial.

"If he fails, it will be certain that his political responsibility should be rigorously examined."

The opposition camp stepped up pressure on Hatoyama to resign ahead of July elections for the upper house, where his Democratic Party of Japan does not enjoy a majority.

"It's a clear breach of promises and for people in Okinawa, it's betrayal," said Sadakazu Tanigaki, president of the largest opposition Liberal Democratic Party.

"It is natural for the prime minister to resign" if he fails to resolve the issue by May 31, Tanigaki added.

The drawn-out dispute has angered residents of Okinawa, cost the centre-left leader much domestic support and strained ties with Japan's key defence ally the United States, which wants the 2006 accord implemented.

Latest opinion polls in Japan have put support for Hatoyama and his cabinet at just over 20 percent, sharply down from 72 percent in September when he took office.

"Prime Minister Hatoyama can't help but lose his political influence further," said Shinichi Nishikawa, professor of politics at Meiji University in Tokyo.

"It would not be a surprise if calls for his resignation spread to his ruling coalition," Nishikawa said. "Even if he can survive for now, his resignation will be very likely after the election."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the United States would seek a mutually acceptable solution with Japan while waiting for Hatoyama's plans on Futenma.

"We are committed to working on a resolution that both meets our alliance requirements while also minimising the impact on Japan and its people," Crowley said Tuesday. "We will continue this process until we reach a successful conclusion."

Hatoyama is reportedly proposing to follow the original plan in general, but some 1,000 US Marines and their helicopter operations would be moved to the remote island of Tokunoshima, 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Okinawa.

Hatoyama plans to meet three mayors from Tokunoshima on Friday in Tokyo to ask them to back the proposal, but the mayors have already voiced strong opposition to hosting them.

Mizuho Fukushima, a Socialist leader in the ruling coalition, urged Hatoyama to reconsider his about-turn, saying: "He should accept Okinawa's voice firmly."

The issue has stirred passions on Okinawa, site of some of World War II's bloodiest battles, and still the host of more than half the 47,000 US troops stationed in Japan under a post-war security treaty.

[Okinawa]

Japan Can Defend Itself
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=23390
by Doug Bandow
05.12.2010

World War II ended 65 years ago. The Cold War disappeared 21 years ago. Yet America’s military deployments have little changed. Nowhere is that more evident than on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Okinawans are tired of the heavy U.S. military presence. Some 90,000—nearly 10 percent of the island’s population—gathered in protest at the end of April. It is time for Washington to lighten Okinawa’s burden.

An independent kingdom swallowed by imperial Japan, Okinawa was the site of a brutal battle as the United States closed in on Japan in early 1945. After Tokyo’s surrender, Washington filled the main prefecture island with bases and didn’t return it to Japan until 1972. America’s military presence has only been modestly reduced since.

The facilities grew out of the mutual defense treaty between America and Japan, by which the former promised to defend the latter, which was disarmed after its defeat. The island provided a convenient home for American units. Most Japanese people also preferred to keep the U.S. military presence on Japan’s most distant and poorest province, forcing Okinawans to carry a disproportionate burden of the alliance.

Whatever the justifications of this arrangement during the Cold War, the necessity of both U.S. ground forces in Japan and the larger mutual defense treaty between the two nations has disappeared. It’s time to reconsider both Tokyo’s and Washington’s regional roles. The United States imposed the so-called “peace constitution” on Japan, Article 9 of which prohibits the use of force and even creation of a military.

However, American officials soon realized that Washington could use military assistance. Today’s “Self-Defense Force” is a widely accepted verbal evasion of a clear constitutional provision.

Nevertheless, both domestic pacifism and regional opposition have discouraged reconsideration of Japan’s military role. Washington’s willingness to continue defending an increasingly wealthy Japan made a rethink unnecessary.

Fears of a more dangerous North Korea and a more assertive People’s Republic of China have recently increased support in Japan for a more robust security stance. The threat of piracy has even caused Tokyo to open its first overseas military facility in the African state of Djibouti. Nevertheless, Japan’s activities remain minimal compared to its stake in East Asia’s stability.

Thus, Tokyo remains heavily dependent on Washington for its security. The then opposition Democratic Party of Japan promised to “do away with the dependent relationship in which Japan ultimately has no alternative but to act in accordance with U.S. wishes.” The party later moderated its program, calling for a “close and equal Japan-U.S. alliance.”

However, the government promised to reconsider a previous agreement to relocate the Marines Corps Air Station at Futenma elsewhere on Okinawa. The majority of residents want to send the base elsewhere.

The Obama administration responded badly, insisting that Tokyo fulfill its past promises. Only reluctantly did Washington indicate a willingness to consider alternatives—after imposing seemingly impossible conditions.

Still, the primary problem is Japan. So long as Tokyo requests American military protection, it cannot easily reject Washington’s request for bases. Thus, Okinawan residents must do more than demand fairness. They must advocate defense independence. [What's this, an Independent Okinawa? Or, Independent Japan?]

Who should protect Japan? Japan. Tokyo’s neighbors remain uneasy in varying degrees about the prospect of a more active Japan, but World War II is over. A revived Japanese empire is about as likely as a revived Mongol empire. Both Japan and India could play a much larger role in preserving regional security.

Many Japanese citizens are equally opposed to a larger Japanese military and more expansive foreign policy. Their feelings are understandable, given the horrors of World War II. However, the most fundamental duty of any national government is defense. If the Japanese people want a minimal (or no) military, that is their right. But they should not expect other nations to fill the defense gap.

Moreover, with an expected $1.6 trillion deficit this year alone, the United States can no longer afford to protect countries which are able to protect themselves. Washington has more than enough on its military plate elsewhere in the world.

Raymond Greene, America’s consul general in Okinawa, says: “Asia is going though a period of historic strategic change in the balance of power.” True enough, which is why East Asian security and stability require greater national efforts from Japan and its neighbors. Regional defense also warrants improved multilateral cooperation—something which should minimize concerns over an increased Japanese role.

The other important question is, defend Japan from what? Today Tokyo faces few obvious security threats. For this reason, many Japanese see little cause for an enlarged Japanese military.

However, North Korea’s uncertain future and China’s ongoing growth should give the Japanese people pause for concern. East Asia might not look so friendly in coming decades. Richard Lawless, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs in the Bush administration, claimed: “observers perceive a Japan that is seemingly content to marginalize itself, a Japan that appears to almost intentionally ignore the increasingly complex and dangerous neighborhood in which it is located.” Nevertheless, only the Japanese can assess the threats which concern them rather than Washington. And only the Japanese can decide how best to respond to any perceived threats.

Moreover, so long as Japan goes hat-in-hand to the United States for protection, Washington is entitled to request—or, more accurately, insist on—bases that serve its interests. And Tokyo cannot easily say no.

Before the demonstration Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said that “It must never happen that we accept the existing plan.” Afterwards he visited Okinawa and indicated that he planned to renege on his government’s earlier promises: “we must maintain the Japan-U.S. alliance as a deterrent force, and . . . we must ask Okinawa to bear some of that burden." He added that "It has become clear from our negotiations with the Americans that we cannot ask them to relocate the base to too far-flung a location." Apparently his government intends to move some facilities elsewhere on Okinawa as well as to the small island of Tokunoshima.

With Tokyo retreating from its commitment to chart a more independent course, it is up to the United States to reorder the relationship. Washington policy makers long have enjoyed America’s quasi-imperial role. But U.S. citizens are paying for and dying in Washington’s quasi-imperial wars. An expansive American role made sense during the Cold War in the aftermath of World War II. That world disappeared two decades ago.

Promiscuous intervention in today’s world inflates the power of Washington policy makers but harms the interests of U.S. citizens. American forces and personnel are expected to be at perpetual risk guaranteeing the interests of other states, including Japan.

Thus the U.S. reliance on Okinawa. Lieutenant General Keith Stalder, the Marine Corps Pacific commander, said the island deployment is “the perfect model” for the alliance’s objectives of “deterring, defending and defeating potential adversaries.”

For years the most obvious target of the American forces was North Korea, with the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) expected to reinforce the Republic of Korea in the event of war. Yet the ROK is both financially and manpower rich. More recently some Americans have talked about deploying the MEF to seize Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons in the event of a North Korean collapse. Alas, so far the North has proved to be surprisingly resilient, so the Marines might wait a long time to undertake this mission.

Checking China is next on the potential Okinawa mission list. However, no one expects the United States to launch a ground invasion of the People’s Republic of China irrespective of the future course of events. Thus, the MEF wouldn’t be very useful in any conflict. In any case, a stronger Japanese military—which already possesses potent capabilities—would be a far better mechanism for encouraging responsible Chinese development.

There’s also the kitchen sink argument: the Marines are to maintain regional “stability.” Pentagon officials draw expanding circles around Okinawa to illustrate potential areas of operation.

The mind boggles, however. Should U.S. troops be sent to resolve, say, the long-running Burmese guerrilla war in that nation’s east, a flare-up of secessionist sentiment in Indonesia, violent opposition to Fiji’s military dictator, or border skirmishes between Cambodia and Thailand? It hard to imagine any reason for Washington to jump into any local conflict. America’s presumption should be noninvolvement rather than intervention in other nations’ wars.

Making fewer promises to intervene would allow the United States to reduce the number of military personnel and overseas bases. A good place to start in cutting international installations would be Okinawa.

America’s post-Cold War dominance is coming to an end. Michael Schuman argued in Time: “Anyone who thinks the balance of power in Asia is not changing—and with it, the strength of the U.S., even among its old allies—hasn’t been there lately.”

Many analysts nevertheless want the United States to attempt to maintain its unnatural dominance. Rather than accommodate a more powerful China, they want America to contain a wealthier and more influential Beijing. Rather than expect its allies to defend themselves and promote regional stability, they want Washington to keep its friends dependent.

To coin a phrase, it’s time for a change. U.S. intransigence over Okinawa has badly roiled the bilateral relationship. But even a more flexible basing policy would not be enough. Washington is risking the lives and wasting the money of the American people to defend other populous and prosperous states.

Washington should close Futenma—as a start to refashioning the alliance with Japan. Rather than a unilateral promise by the United States to defend Japan, the relationship should become one of equals working together on issues of mutual interest. Responsibility for protecting Japan should become that of Japan.

Both Okinawans and Americans deserve justice. It’s time for Washington to deliver.

---
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Reagan, he is the author of Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World (Cato) and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Trou

[Okinawa]

US military base impasse could topple Japan leader: Japan's government could fall on fate of Marine base essential to US, unwanted by Okinawans
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/05/13/us-military-base-impasse-could-topple-japan-leader/
ERIC TALMADGE
AP News

May 13, 2010 11:09 EDT

It is possibly the most controversial U.S. military facility in the world after the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Local residents like to call it the world's most dangerous base. An impasse over its future could bring down the government of a key U.S. ally.

But this hotspot isn't in Kyrgyzstan, or Afghanistan.

It's an airstrip on the sleepy, semitropical tourist haven of Okinawa that hasn't directly been involved in a conflict since the Japanese surrender in 1945 ended World War II. For decades, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma has instead been a political quagmire — and now D-Day appears to be looming.

Haunted by a campaign pledge to relocate the base, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has vowed to settle the issue — or at least form a coherent set of proposals — by the end of this month. Polls suggest he will be under heavy pressure to resign, after barely nine months in office, if he fails to do so.

The debate has grown so convoluted and the pressure to find a compromise so intense that Hatoyama is suggesting a replacement airstrip be built on raised pilings so as not to destroy marine life below — an expensive, high-tech option that experts doubt would work and which has so far failed to appease many Okinawans.

"It is a terrible idea," said Masaaki Gabe, a professor of international relations at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa's most prestigious college. "It's no better than the previous plan. It won't persuade Okinawans, and I don't think it will be welcomed by Washington, either."

So far, it hasn't been — working-level talks in Washington this week ended in discord.

The base, home to about 2,000 U.S. Marines, has long symbolized Okinawan concerns over safety, crime and economic development. But efforts to remove it have shaken support for America's most important alliance in Asia, a region where — with China ascending and North Korea unstable — Washington badly needs reliable partners.

All sides agree in theory that the base, a noisy helicopter and transport-plane hub located in a crowded city, should be closed.

An agreement to that effect was made in 1996, following uproar over the brutal rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The U.S. also has agreed to move about 8,600 Marines from other Okinawa units to the tiny Pacific territory of Guam by 2014.

But the devil is in the details.

Washington is demanding Futenma's replacement be built nearby. But suggested alternate sites have fiercely protested having the base moved into their backyard and, with Tokyo unwilling to rebuff its most important ally, the impasse has only festered.

Facing key elections in July, Hatoyama is scrambling to find a consensus by his self-imposed deadline of the end of the month. But his public support ratings have plummeted to the 20 percent level. Polls say many voters think he should step down if he can't demonstrate more leadership, and one of his coalition partners has said it may have to quit the government if Okinawa's concerns are not fully addressed.

Though the Obama administration has largely stayed out of the fray, the process has been a humiliating initiation for Hatoyama.

He ousted Japan's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party last September with promises to forge a more equal relationship with Washington. As part of that pledge, he said Futenma's operations should be moved off Okinawa, where more than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan are stationed.

Hatoyama recently backed down, painfully apologizing to Okinawa during a trip there for the "nuisance" the base causes. At the same time, he said there was no feasible alternative to building the new landing strip farther to the north in the town of Nago.

"The Hatoyama government is as docile a satellite of the U.S. as the LDP ever thought of being," said Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a private think tank based in San Francisco. "The U.S. is certainly the more culpable partner in simply refusing to negotiate, but the Japanese government is at fault in never standing up to us."

Johnson said Washington has stood firm because it is afraid that agreeing to close the base outright could lead to a flood of demands to close more. The U.S. has more than 100 bases and facilities — including depots and ports — across Japan.

The Pentagon operates more than 700 overseas bases worldwide.

"We had to be kicked out of the Philippines and Ecuador, and we paid through the nose to remain in Kyrgyzstan, probably including bribes to the former government there that has just been overthrown," Johnson said.

U.S. officials say a replacement for the Futenma base is essential because its air assets support the infantry units that will remain on Okinawa. They also argue that Okinawa — site of one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War II — is a key to Washington's strategy in the Pacific because of its proximity to China, Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.

"Is the Marine presence necessary in Okinawa? In terms of geostrategic location, the answer is a definite yes," said Mike Green, Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Okinawa is only a few days' sailing time and only a few hours' flight time from the major hotspots in the Western Pacific. Time matters in a crisis."

But that argument is drowned out in Japan's public debate.

Instead, a helicopter crash in 2004 just outside the base's gates on a university campus is used to justify claims the heavily populated area around Futenma is unsafe, though no one died in that accident. Japanese media frequently show images of schoolchildren playing soccer as C-130 transport planes buzz overhead, or of the razorwire fences and "keep out" signs that ring the airstrip.

Last month, 90,000 Okinawans protested the base and the relocation plan — the biggest demonstration against the base ever. This weekend, to mark the 1972 reversion of Okinawa from U.S. to Japanese administration, a human chain around Futenma is planned.

Organizers say they expect more than 10,000 people.

Weston Konishi, a Japan expert with the Washington-based Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, said Hatoyama's dithering has allowed opposition to the security alliance to swell.

"The political leadership in Tokyo has not adequately counterbalanced that sentiment," he said. "The U.S. forces are increasingly seen as both unnecessary and bothersome to local communities that host them."

[Okinawa]

Okinawans angry as Japan PM flipflops on U.S. base
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100514/wl_nm/us_japan_politics_okinawa
Reuters
By Linda Sieg Linda Sieg – Fri May 14, 6:32 am ET

OKINAWA, Japan (Reuters) – Kazufumi Ota admits he was skeptical when Japan's then-opposition Democratic Party leader promised last year to try to move a U.S. airbase off his home island of Okinawa, host to half the U.S. forces in the country.

But that doesn't make Ota any less angry at Yukio Hatoyama for backtracking on the pledge now that he is prime minister.

"No matter how much the people of Okinawa ask, in the end, nothing changes," said Ota, 31, during a break at a shopping center in the island's capital of Naha. "I voted for the Democrats but in the end, they were only paying lip service."

During the campaign that swept his party to power last year, Hatoyama had raised hopes that the U.S. Marines' Futenma airbase could be shifted off Okinawa, despite a 2006 deal with Washington to move the facility from a crowded city to a less populous site.

But with an end of May deadline for resolving the feud looming, Hatoyama shifted gears, saying he had come to realize that some Marines must stay on the island to deter threats.

Hatoyama has set himself the Herculean task of finding a solution that satisfies Washington's strategic demands while also gaining the understanding of Okinawans and local residents in any potential sites where some Futenma functions might be relocated.

On Friday he said he was sticking to the deadline, though a day earlier he vowed to keep trying after the deadline passed.

Hatoyama's perceived mishandling of the feud has eroded voter support ahead of a mid-year upper house poll that the Democrats need to win to avoid policy stalemate as Japan struggles to keep a recovery on track while reining in a massive public debt.

Attitudes toward U.S. military bases are far from simple among residents of Okinawa, a subtropical island 1,600 km (1,000 miles) south of Tokyo that was the site of a bloody World War Two battle and occupied by the United States from 1945 to 1972.

Some want the U.S. military to depart altogether from the island, an independent kingdom in the 15th and 16th centuries and now a popular resort whose culture was forged by migration from China, Southeast Asia, Polynesia and Japan.

"During the war, Okinawa became a bulwark for the defense of Japan and many people were sacrificed," said Masahide Ota, who fought as a student in the Battle of Okinawa, in which some 140,000 islanders died during almost three months of fighting.

"We don't want Okinawa to become a battlefield again," said Ota, now a spry 84, who was governor in 1996 when Tokyo and Washington agreed to close Futenma -- but only if a replacement site could be found elsewhere on the island.

"If you speak of deterrence, who is defending whom and from what?" added Ota. "They say it is for the sake of Japan's national interests, but if so the burden should be shared among all the people. Instead only Okinawa is being sacrificed."

LEADERSHIP DEFICIT?

Hatoyama's campaign pledge has breathed new life into the anti-base movement. Last month, tens of thousands of Okinawans rallied to demand the premier keep his promise and activists plan to form a human chain around Futenma airbase on Sunday.

"I live near Futenma and my parents live near Kadena (U.S. Air Force base) ... There is nothing good about the bases," said Saneaki Tsuha, 24, who works for an insurance firm in Naha.

The rekindled anger has both anti-base activists and supporters of a U.S. presence worried what will happen if an accident or crime occurs, such as the rape of a schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen that inflamed Okinawan outrage in 1995.

Still, some Okinawans back the U.S. bases, either because of the jobs they provide or from concern about strategic threats from a rising China and unpredictable North Korea.

"It all depends on how you view China," said one Okinawan businessman who declined to be identified.

"If you think China is a threat, you need the bases."

Forty-three percent of Okinawans would like to see U.S. forces withdraw from the island altogether, but 42 percent merely want to see the U.S. military presence reduced, according to a survey by the daily Asahi newspaper published on Friday.

Relocating Futenma is a prerequisite for implementing a plan to shift up to 8,000 Marines to the U.S. territory of Guam.

But Hatoyama's proposal to build a runway on piles in the pristine waters off Nago City in northern Okinawa rather than on a landfill as proposed in the 2006 deal, while shifting some functions elsewhere in Japan, has scant support locally.

Seventy-six percent of Okinawans oppose the new plan, the Asahi survey showed. Even Nago residents who backed the 2006 plan in hopes of profits from the construction work dislike the new scheme, said to be technologically too tough for local firms.

Whatever their position on the bases, many Okinawans are fed up with Hatoyama's handling of the touchy topic, with the Asahi poll showing almost two out of three respondents disapproved.

"If the bases are necessary, he should explain clearly why they have to be on Okinawa," said Naomi Taira, a 43-year-old healthcare worker waiting for a bus in Naha.

"He is not showing leadership."

(Editing by Krittivas Mukherjee)

[Okinawa]

101 East - Okinawa: The future of US military bases
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEnglish#p/search/3/HLLcw3P-Kao
AlJazeeraEnglish May 13, 2010

Almost 50,000 US military personnel are stationed in Japan, more than half on the island of Okinawa. But their presence has often been controversial. The Okinawa base is vital to the US in protecting its interests in Asia. But protests against the base are increasing. On this edition of 101 East, we look at the future of US military bases in Japan.

[Okinawa]

PM wants all 47 governors to help reduce U.S. forces in Okinawa
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/pm-wants-all-47-governors-to-help-reduce-us-forces-in-okinawa
Friday 21st May, 10:49 AM JST
TOKYO —

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will seek cooperation from prefectural governors to reduce the heavy presence of U.S. military forces in Okinawa when he meets them next week, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Friday.
   
Hatoyama will attend a meeting of Japan’s 47 prefectural governors in Tokyo next Thursday, as his self-imposed deadline for choosing a relocation site for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture by the end of May draws near.
   
Hirano, speaking at a news conference, said the main purpose of the meeting is to discuss how to lessen the burden on Okinawa residents from hosting the bulk of U.S. forces in Japan under a security pact.
   
The top government spokesman said national security matters are relevant to the entire country but refused to elaborate on whether Hatoyama will present his idea of transferring some of the military operations from Okinawa to other prefectures at the meeting.
   
‘‘We are making final adjustments,’’ he said.
   
In an attempt to meet the campaign pledge of reducing the Okinawa burden, Hatoyama, according to government sources, is desperately trying to transfer part of the Marines’ drills to bases for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces in the Kyushu region.
   
Hatoyama, who is planning to visit Okinawa on Sunday, is trying to unveil the government’s relocation plan for the airfield on May 28, a day after the meeting with the governors, according to the sources.
   
The government is expected to give up on moving the airfield out of Okinawa and instead it will propose relocating the heliport functions of Futenma to the coast of Nago’s Henoko area near U.S. Marine Corps’ Camp Schwab, which will be on par with a plan already agreed on by Japan and the United States in 2006.
   
Okinawa Gov Hirokazu Nakaima said Friday he will tell Hatoyama that the prefecture will not accept the transfer to the Henoko area, even if he asks for it.
   
‘‘The situation does not allow us to accept the transfer. That’s how I really feel,’’ Nakaima said, as there is now growing opinion in Okinawa that the airfield must be moved outside the prefecture.

[Okinawa]

From Japan to Guam to Hawai’i, Activists Resist Expansion of US Military Presence in the Pacific
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/24/from_japan_to_guam_to_hawaii

In Japan, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama sparked outrage this weekend when he announced he has decided to keep an American air base on the island of Okinawa. Before last year’s historic election victory, Hatoyama had vowed to move the base off of Okinawa or even out of Japan. On Sunday, he said he had decided to relocate the base to the north side of the island, as originally agreed upon with the US. Hatoyama’s decision was met with anger on Okinawa, where 90,000 residents rallied last month to oppose the base. A number of activists opposed to US military bases were recently here in New York for the International Conference for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World. Anjali Kamat and I spoke to three activists from Japan, Guam and Hawai’i.

Guests:
Kyle Kajihiro, Program Director for the American Friends Service Committee in Hawai’i. He helps to coordinate the DMZ-Hawai’i / Aloha ’Aina network that opposes military expansion in Hawai’i.
Kozue Akibayashi, professor and activist in Japan and with the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom and the Women’s International Network Against Militarism.
Melvin Won Pat-Borja, educator and poet from Guam and part of the We Are Guahan network opposed to the military base buildup in Guam.

AMY GOODMAN: In Japan, the Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama sparked outrage this weekend when he announced he has decided to keep an American air base on the island of Okinawa. Before last year’s historic election victory, Hatoyama had vowed to move the base off of Okinawa or even out of Japan. On Sunday, he said he decided to relocate the base to the north side of the island, as originally agreed upon with the US. The Japanese prime minister’s decision was met with anger on Okinawa, where 90,000 residents rallied last month to oppose the base.

Hatoyama explained his decision by saying, since taking office, he had learned to appreciate the role that the Marines play as a deterrent in the region, that Okinawa was the most strategic location for them. Half the estimated 47,000 US troops in Japan are stationed on the island.

Well, a number of activists opposed to US military bases were recently here in New York for the International Conference for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World. Democracy Now!'s Anjali Kamat and I spoke to three of them. They were from Japan, from Guam and Hawai'i.

Kyle Kajihiro is the program director for the American Friends Service Committee in Hawai’i. He helps to coordinate the DMZ-Hawai’i/Aloha 'Aina network that opposes military expansion in Hawai'i.

Kozue Akibayashi is a professor and activist in Japan and with the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom and the Women’s International Network Against Militarism.

And Melvin Won Pat-Borja is an educator and poet from Guam and part of the "We Are Guahan" network opposed to the military base buildup on Guam.

We began by asking Kyle Kajihiro to explain the broader context of US military bases in East Asia and the Pacific.

      KYLE KAJIHIRO: I think it’s important to consider how important the Pacific has been for the expansion of American empire. And Hawai’i was one of the first casualties in 1893, when US troops invaded and occupied the sovereign kingdom of Hawai’i to establish a forward base that enabled the US to defeat Spain in the Spanish-American War and then acquire its colonies, in the Philippines and Guam and also Puerto Rico and Cuba. And that sets up another conflict with Japan during World War II, in which the United States emerges as a global power with nuclear capabilities and acquires new colonies in the Marianas, Marshall Islands and Okinawa. So we see the legacy of that history played out.

      And America has always considered the Pacific, similar to Latin America, as its—you know, its own domain, its special domain. They call it the American Lake. And, you know, that’s what we’re struggling against, is that idea that, you know, the US has this dominion and without consideration for the peoples and the human rights of people in that area.

      So, right now, we are seeing that the Asia Pacific is even, you know, becoming more important with the rise of China, and the US sees China as its main strategic competitor. And that, I think, is a lot of what’s driving the military realignment in Korea, in Japan, Okinawa and Guam to encircle China and basically neutralize its capabilities.

      ANJALI KAMAT: Kozue, can you talk about what happened in Japan last week? There was a major protest, 100,000 people in Okinawa protesting the construction of a new US military base. Explain what’s going on with Japan-US relations and with US military bases in Japan.

      KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: Okinawa is a part of Japan. It’s the southernmost part of Japan. It’s a small prefecture, out of forty-seven, where US military—75 percent of US military facilities, exclusively used by the US military, is located. So there is this high concentration of US military in Okinawa, and that is why we are highlighting the problem in Okinawa.

      There has been a proposal of building a new base in Okinawa, a completely new one and state-of-the-art military facility in Okinawa, which was protested by people in the community for ten years, by now. We had this regime change last year, and the new administration promised that there will be no buildup in Okinawa. However, what is going on now is that they are negotiating with the US government and saying that we cannot help building this new one.

      So that is when—and this has been disclosed in the past month or so, and that is why the Okinawan people are raging against and they felt the need to express their protest against this newly built—buildup of base in Okinawa. And that is how this 90,000 people gathered at this rally. And the population of Okinawa is 1.3 million. That’s a lot of people who gathered. And there are many people who cannot express their protest or against their—their protest, because the US military has been there for a long time. The military economy is part of their life. It’s very difficult for them to publicly say no. But this 90,000 peoples rally was—showed how strong they felt.

      AMY GOODMAN: Why are Japanese in Okinawa so opposed to the base there?

      KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: The live very close—in Okinawa, they live very, very close to the military base. It’s not an isolated location. The military base is here, and they have to find places where they could build their houses. It affects in many ways of their lives. Noise pollution is one of them. Environmental pollution is one of them.

      AMY GOODMAN: The issue of rape?

      KOZUE AKIBAYASHI: Yes, yes. That’s more pervasive, but deep-rooted problem that women and children, girls, face in the vicinity. Not only the close vicinity, but the entire island of Okinawa face danger of sexual violence by US soldiers.

      AMY GOODMAN: And Melvin, if you can talk about what’s happening on Guam.

      MELVIN WON PAT-BORJA: Well, basically, you know, with this proposed base closure in Okinawa, the remedy to this solution is really seen as transferring the bulk of these soldiers from Okinawa to Guam. And that’s kind of where we come in. You know, there’s been a lot of debate about where these Marines should go. And, you know, the United States’ attitude toward this is that, you know, Guam is their territory. You know, they see Guam as sovereign US soil, and it allows them freedom of action, which is one of the major pieces of—or major factors in why they chose Guam, because it allows them to basically operate without having to deal with a foreign government.

      And so, they plan to move 8,600 Marines from Okinawa to Guam, plus their 9,000 dependents. They also include an Army ballistic missile defense system, which will bring an additional 600 Army soldiers. And they plan to dredge a—they plan to dredge 71 acres of coral reef in Apra Harbor in order to make room for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. They also have plans to acquire 2,200 additional acres of land, and they already own about a third of the island. And keep in mind, Guam is only about thirty-one miles long and seven miles wide in the narrowest point. Our population is a little bit over 170,000 people. And the military predicts that, at the peak year of the buildup, we will expect a population boom of about additional 80,000 people.

      AMY GOODMAN: So a 50 percent increase almost.

      MELVIN WON PAT-BORJA: Basically.

      ANJALI KAMAT: Melvin, talk about what it was like to grow up in the shadow of these US military bases in Guam. What is everyday life like? How does it impact you?

      MELVIN WON PAT-BORJA: Well, you know, the interesting thing about the base presence in Guam is that, you know, we are a United States unincorporated territory. And so, you know, we are US citizens, and I think that’s one of the major—it’s seen as one of the major differences between Guam and Okinawa. But the reality is that, you know, we essentially are second-class citizens. As a, you know, unincorporated US territory, you know, we don’t have representation in the Senate. We have a non-voting representative in Congress. We don’t vote for president. But we still fall under all US federal laws and regulations.

      AMY GOODMAN: Were you ever concerned that they were going to move Guantánamo to Guam?

      MELVIN WON PAT-BORJA: I mean, you know, it’s definite—really, when it comes to Guam and, you know, military strategy, you really don’t know what’s going happen. And there’s no—we really have no control over what happens. You know, in the military’s plan, in their DEIS, their Draft Environmental Impact Statement, they basically said that, you know, other alternatives for the base relocation from Okinawa included the Philippines, Korea and Hawai’i. And all three of those places said no. But nowhere in the document does it say that we ever had the opportunity to say no. And that’s kind of—you know, that’s pretty much the climate in Guam, is that, you know, we just—we basically are forced to accept whatever it is that the United States federal government and the military decides to do.

      AMY GOODMAN: How did the United States come to incorporate Guam as a territory of the United States?

      MELVIN WON PAT-BORJA: Guam was purchased by the United States from Spain through the Treaty of Paris. So Guam actually was technically owned by the United States before World War II. Now, during World War II, we were—when the Americans got word that Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and that they were invading, you know, they basically left. They abandoned Guam, and we were occupied then by Japan for two years. And then the United States came back to reclaim Guam, and they basically carpet-bombed the entire island.

      And more people—you know, a lot of people kind of look at the personal struggle, you know, in Guam during the Japanese occupation, you know, where we were victimized and killed brutally. You know, a lot of—even my family, my grandfather’s brother was executed for smuggling food into prison to feed their families who were starving. They made him dig his own grave and killed him. And so—

      AMY GOODMAN: This was World War II?

      MELVIN WON PAT-BORJA: Right, and this is during the Japanese occupation. And so, you know, a lot of folks look at this occupation as a very—it’s a very sensitive issue. And so, in a lot of ways, you know, the Americans were seen as the liberators. But what a lot of people don’t know is that more people died in the reclaiming of Guam than in the entire two-year occupation of Guam by the Japanese. And so, you know, we have this kind of a dual identity, this sense of, you know, being an indigenous person from Guam, being an indigenous Chamorro, and having loyalty to the United States, you know? And that generation is still alive and well, you know, and there’s still a lot of folks who really feel loyal to the United States.

      You know, but in a lot of ways, we don’t have the same rights as other Americans. And that’s something that’s really important in the discussion between Guam and Okinawa. You know, a lot of folks kind of see Guam as being America. You know, when they look at the bases in Okinawa, they think, you know, this is an American problem, and these bases should be sent back to America. And so, they look then at Guam and Hawai’i as being America. And so, you know, this is the alternative. But, you know, a lot of folks don’t realize what our political status is and the struggles that we face within the political system. And so, you know, this is not just a simple thing of saying, "OK, this is America. Let’s moves them there. You know, the people of Guam want them." You know, the reality is that there is a lot of resistance to this buildup, and it is going to impact us in so many different ways—socially, culturally, environmentally, financially. And, you know, it’s not just a simple transfer.

      ANJALI KAMAT: And Kyle Kajihiro, I want to bring you back into the discussion. Talk about how this political realignment works in Hawai’i? What does it look like from there? And also, talk about the environmental impact of these bases.

      KYLE KAJIHIRO: Right. Well, since September 11, we’ve had the largest military expansion since World War II. The military seized about 25,000 acres of land in order to station their Stryker brigade in Hawai’i. And these troops are being trained to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. So we have, you know, this dual role in Hawai’i of being a victim of the American empire and also an accomplice in the building of that empire. And so, we’re addressing both problems.

      The environmental impacts of the military are enormous in Hawai’i. We have—we would argue that the military is the largest polluter, with over 828 contamination sites identified. In Ke Awalau o Pu’uloa, which is the original name of Pearl Harbor, once the food basket for Oahu, with thirty-six fish ponds, is now a toxic Superfund site. More than 750 contamination sites. And we can’t eat from this life-giving treasure that’s there. And so, these are some of the manifestations that are not apparent on the surface. And even economically, with the economic influx that comes in, of course, certain people get paid, but others pay the price. And it’s usually the Native peoples who lose land, who are forced out of their housing, because of the rising cost of living. And we have a growing homeless population on the beaches, mostly Native Hawaiians living in tents. Meanwhile, thousands of acres of military land are just across the street.


AMY GOODMAN: Kyle Kajihiro is the program director for the American Friends Service Committee in Hawai’i. Kozue Akibayashi is a professor and activist in Japan. She’s with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. And Melvin Won Pat-Borja is an educator and poet from Guam. He’s part of the We Are Guahan network opposed to the military base buildup in Guam.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. You can go to our website at democracynow.org to see the entire conversation with the three anti-militarization activists.

[Okinawa]

Saturday, May 29, 2010
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100529a4.html
New accord stokes Okinawan ire

NAHA, Okinawa Pref. (Kyodo) Okinawa residents expressed anger Friday at a new agreement reached between Japan and the United States to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within the prefecture, while local politicians raised doubts about whether the accord will actually be implemented.

Susumu Inamine, mayor of Nago, whose Henoko coastal area is cited in the agreement as Futenma's relocation site, said the probability that the marine base will be relocated there is "zero."

"I will not engage in negotiations," the mayor said.

"Implementing it (the agreement) is extremely difficult," Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima also told reporters in Tokyo, noting there has been a lack of communication between the central government and Okinawa.

"I get the impression that (the agreement was reached) over our heads," he said.

Among people in Okinawa, anger and disappointment spread as a joint statement released by the two countries confirmed that the contentious base will remain in Okinawa despite Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's earlier vow to seek to move it "at least outside the prefecture."

"The ancestor of the Hatoyama family will cry, saying, 'Grandson the liar,' " said Muneyoshi Kayo, referring to Hatoyama's grandfather, Ichiro, who was also a prime minister. Kayo, who has done sit-ins in Henoko for years to protest Futenma's planned relocation there, added, "Go ahead and do it, and I will resist it by putting my life on the line."

Hiroji Yamashiro, who heads the secretariat of a local group that has helped organize demonstrations over the Futenma relocation, also expressed anger at the latest move, saying, "This kind of scam can't pass."

[Okinawa]

Saturday, May 29, 2010

ANALYSIS
Futenma blame game in full swing
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100529a3.html
By ERIC JOHNSTON
Staff writer

OSAKA — In the end, the only thing Friday's agreement between the United States and Japan on relocating the Futenma air base does is to yet again avoid fundamental questions and problems that both sides have long ignored in favor of a face-saving political agreement for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

That's the opinion of U.S. government officials involved with Japan, who, citing U.S. policy, agreed to speak off the record on the negotiations. While some were more optimistic than others about the next steps, there was a general sense that Friday's agreement represents no tangible progress and, in fact, makes finding a solution acceptable to Tokyo, Washington and Okinawa all the more difficult.

U.S. negotiators watched with frustration and disbelief these past six months as potential relocation sites for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, located in Ginowan, Okinawa, were tossed out by national and local political leaders.

Numerous suggestions made headlines, including an idea to consolidate with nearby Kadena Air Force base, build a new base on filled in land off the east coast of Okinawa, transfer to either civilian airports or Self-Defense Forces bases in Kyushu, transfer to Guam or Tinian, or even accept Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto's invitation to discuss Kansai International Airport as a possible relocation site.

Hatoyama received much of the blame in Washington, as he did in Japan, for not controlling the debate.

But U.S. military brass familiar with Japan are also critical of the way the State Department handled negotiations. They say department negotiators ignored, downplayed or brushed aside the specific technical and operational challenges that will have to be solved for a Futenma replacement facility to be built in Henoko or elsewhere, in favor of a general agreement that would allow Hatoyama and Japan to save face now but one that will come back to haunt both sides later.

In response, one State Department official involved with Japan said as the issue was threatening to jeopardize bilateral cooperation in other areas, it was important to come to some sort of an agreement now. He hinted that without that, other problems between the two countries, including U.S. pressure on Japan to sign The Hague convention on child abductions, could be harder to solve.

As tensions among U.S. negotiators over the Hatoyama administration's approach to Futenma grew from the beginning of the year, they spilled over into the media, with Washington Post columnist Al Kamen calling Hatoyama "loopy."

Officials under former President George W. Bush, including ex-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former National Security Council Asia adviser Michael Green, also criticized Hatoyama for damaging Japan's credibility with Washington, most recently in a Financial Times article.

But ex-officials like Armitage and Green are seen by some on the U.S. side as part of a deeper reason why Futenma remains unresolved despite nearly 14 years of effort by eight prime ministers and three U.S. presidents.

That is the overreliance of Washington politicians, policymakers and pundits in both countries on the advice of a small band of influential Japan experts, in and out of the U.S. government, who were responsible for working out, or still actively support, the current agreement to relocate the base to Henoko and lack the personal and professional connections with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan that they enjoyed with the long-in-control Liberal Democratic Party.

The problem is not limited to former officials, either. Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and the top U.S. negotiator on Futenma, was deputy assistant secretary for Asia and the Pacific under ex-President Bill Clinton, and heavily involved in the 1996 agreement to return Futenma.

This doesn't sit well with U.S. officials or policy experts who believe a new approach, with new people, on the U.S. side is now needed to break the stalemate and find a solution acceptable to Washington, Tokyo and Okinawa.

Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on the Okinawa base issue, says too much energy has been expended playing a blame game over the lack of progress, although she shared U.S. concerns about reaching an agreement that does not reduce military effectiveness.

"The bilateral alliance is too important to have it grind to a halt over the Futenma problem. We ought not to waste that opportunity squabbling about who is to blame for not solving a problem that both of our governments ought to have addressed head-on a decade ago. On the other hand, the lack of a resolution of the task of Futenma relocation suggests we have not yet found a good solution," she said. "Operational needs and political needs both need to be met, and one cannot be at the exclusion of the other."

Smith also called for the Japanese to see the change in government last September, and the questions about Futenma and the U.S. military presence in Japan raised since, as an opportunity for a fundamental review of the base issue.

"What has not happened (these past nine months) is a full Japanese deliberation of the domestic burden-sharing that is required. The U.S. and Japan have asked too much of Okinawa, and too little of other parts of Japan," she said.

Whether or not that discussion picks up steam in the months ahead, the immediate outlook for relocating Futenma remains as problematic as before. While agreement on construction plans for the new facility is expected by late August or early September, both sides see November as the key month politically.

In early November, the U.S. has congressional elections that come just before U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Yokohama for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting. And in Okinawa, the gubernatorial election takes place sometime that month.

The stance of the winning candidate on hosting Futenma, U.S. experts on Okinawa agree, will play a very large role, perhaps the largest role, in determining whether all of the promises, plans and agreements Tokyo and Washington have signed over the years, including Friday's accord, are eventually realized.

[Okinawa]

Saturday, May 29, 2010

ANALYSIS
Hatoyama's tenure in doubt as poll looms
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100529a2.html
By JUN HONGO and ALEX MARTIN
Staff writers

With the Futenma debacle just the latest of the Democratic Party of Japan's broken pledges, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is increasingly being seen as a liability as his party faces July's Upper House election.

"The outcome of the Futenma issue is an indication of how Hatoyama is merely a greenhorn," Keio University professor Fukashi Horie said.

The expert on politics, who criticized the prime minister for his lack of knowledge during political negotiations, said Hatoyama must take much of the blame for the administration's disappointing performance.

Hatoyama has become a politician who lacks a core, Horie said, adding the prime minister's lack of leadership is shackling his DPJ.

Friday's announcement by Hatoyama that U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in the end will be relocated within Okinawa became the latest piece of backpedaling by the DPJ-led government, which has already racked up a long list of broken promises since taking power last September.

The DPJ has already been forced to keep a provisional gas tax it had pledged to end. A promise to make expressways toll-free also seems unfeasible, with the government struggling to make ends meet with snowballing debt. And the key vow to get Futenma out of Okinawa is now history.

Such failures have caused Hatoyama's approval rate to nose dive, with the latest media polls showing only about 20 percent of the public favor the administration.

DPJ members have begun expressing doubts about their leader over the quick loss of popularity.

"(Hatoyama) is a good man, but lacks reliability," DPJ veteran Kozo Watanabe said during a speech in Chiba Prefecture earlier this month.

Yukio Ubukata, DPJ deputy secretary general, was more direct in criticizing Hatoyama, saying during a TV interview last week that "quitting is an option" for the prime minister.

Hatoyama seems out of ideas about how to turn the situation around.

Asked how he is handling criticism from within his party, he only told reporters Wednesday that "Cabinet members must work together to overcome such difficult circumstances."

Hatoyama's DPJ won last summer's general election in a landslide, and launched its Cabinet in September with an approval rate above 70 percent.

Critics say lack of experience and flexibility was what caused Hatoyama to fall from grace so quickly.

"Hatoyama feared being labeled a liar, and attempted to materialize every single detail of the DPJ's manifesto," Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano said.

Pledging to relocate Futenma out of Okinawa during the election campaign was acceptable, although many had doubts over the feasibility, Nakano said. But what was more damaging was how Hatoyama ineptly set an end-of-May deadline and stuck to his plan despite lacking concrete ideas about how to carry it out.

"This may have to do with Hatoyama's personality, but in the end, it seems he didn't give much thought" about the consequences, Nakano said.

Finding a relocation site for Futenma was never feasible in such a short span of time, considering the required negotiations with Washington, local governments and the DPJ's coalition partners.

But Hatoyama was too inexperienced to forecast the turmoil, after his many years in opposition to the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Nakano said.

If Hatoyama steps down in the next few months, he will become the fourth consecutive prime minister to leave his post after about a year in office.

The last prime minister to survive a longer stint was the LDP's popular Junichiro Koizumi, known for his powerful communication skills. Koizumi utilized the power of television, at times justifying his drastic policies with catchy sound-bites, and kept the public amused.

But Keio University's Horie said Hatoyama lacks such ability.

"Koizumi took care of issues in a way that appeared reckless at times, but he was aware of how to pull the strings. He was a seasoned lawmaker who had experienced hardships and had the necessary instincts," the expert said.

Hatoyama meanwhile talked big and presented his ideas as if they were political pledges, which ultimately ended up as self-inflicted wounds, Horie said.

However, Sophia University's Nakano warned that for Hatoyama, quitting as prime minister will be just as difficult as staying on due to the circumstances.

"The Diet is still in session and there are many bills that the DPJ needs to pass. Holding an election for party president at this crucial timing will only give more reasons for criticism," Nakano said. "Meanwhile, stepping down at the end of the Diet session (on June 16) will cause confusion, since it will be only weeks away from the Upper House election."

Critics have speculated that the DPJ could stick with Hatoyama until after the Upper Hose poll to make him take the blame for the party's loss and provide a fresh start for the next DPJ president.

"Considering such issues, there is actually a high possibility that Hatoyama may remain in his position for the time being," Nakano said.

Keio's Horie gave another reason why Hatoyama might stay on despite his lame-duck status.

"The problem is that changing the face of the DPJ doesn't automatically secure a boost for the party at this point," he said, explaining there are no obvious successors, including DPJ veteran Naoto Kan, who can revive the struggling party.

"Will having Kan as prime minister get things going? Probably not. The voters won't be so receptive," Horie said.

[Okinawa]

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Fukushima fired from Cabinet over Futenma: Ouster follows accord to move U.S. Marines air base to Henoko
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100529a1.html
By MASAMI ITO and ALEX MARTIN
Staff writers

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Friday booted consumer affairs minister Mizuho Fukushima out of his Cabinet after she opposed a bilateral agreement between Japan and the United States to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa.

Fukushima said the Social Democratic Party, which she heads, will discuss whether to quit the ruling bloc in an executive meeting Sunday. Its departure would deal another blow to Hatoyama's struggling Democratic Party of Japan ahead of the July Upper House election.

Hatoyama told reporters Friday evening, "We will continue to try our best to obtain Okinawans' understanding" and unveil specifics of the base relocation.

While Hatoyama expressed his disappointment for having to dismiss Fukushima, he added that he intended to continue the coalition partnership with the SDP and Kokumin Shinto (People's New Party).

He also said he would be willing to include another SDP member in the Cabinet if the party so desired.

"I had to dismiss Minister Fukushima because I had the responsibility to stick to today's Japan-U.S. agreement when considering Japan's security and the Japanese people's safety," Hatoyama said.

He said his government looked into about 40 possible relocation sites in and out of Okinawa but they were crossed off due to operational reasons of the U.S. Marine Corps. He also apologized to the people of Okinawa for not being able to follow through with his promise to move Futenma out of the prefecture.

"Having reached the conclusion that it was impossible to move Futenma out of the prefecture or out of the country, I had to consider Okinawa's Henoko area," Hatoyama said. "I apologize from my heart for not being able to keep my promise, and . . . for ending up hurting the people of Okinawa."

Fukushima had insisted the government move the U.S. base out of Okinawa to lighten the prefecture's burden.

"Dismissing me from the Cabinet is tantamount to cutting off ties with Okinawa and betraying the public," she told reporters after her ouster.

Japan and the U.S. released a joint statement Friday on the contentious relocation of the Futenma base to Henoko, basically in line with a 2006 bilateral agreement, triggering strong anger and disappointment among locals.

After the government spent months reviewing the 2006 accord as well as holding discussions with U.S. officials, Hatoyama abandoned his plan to move Futenma out of Okinawa and agreed to ensure the environmental impact assessment procedures and construction of the replacement facility would be "completed without significant delay."

The government held an extraordinary Cabinet meeting Friday evening to approve the Futenma decision. Fukushima refused to endorse it.

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told reporters the government "has no choice but to ask the Okinawan people to continue shouldering the burden" of the Futenma base, but said the state would "wholeheartedly" continue to seek their acceptance.

[Okinawa]

Fukushima to propose pulling SDP out of gov't coalition
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/fukushima-to-propose-pulling-sdp-out-of-govt-coalition
Saturday 29th May, 02:52 PM JST
TOKYO —

Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima said Saturday she intends to propose to other members of her party that the SDP leave the tripartite government coalition led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan.
   
A day after being kicked out of the cabinet for refusing to accept the government’s latest policy on relocating a U.S. military base in Okinawa Prefecture, Fukushima said on a TV program that the SDP may have to make a ‘‘grave decision.’‘
   
‘‘I was not dismissed personally,’’ the former consumer affairs minister said of Hatoyama’s decision to let her go, while emphasizing that any decision on whether the party will leave the coalition will be discussed Sunday at a meeting of the SDP’s regional chapter chiefs.
   
Fukushima also told reporters in Tokyo that she believes her dismissal amounted to the government’s discarding of the SDP, adding that the party’s executives will ‘‘certainly take a definite direction’’ on the matter during Sunday’s meeting.
   
Hatoyama, for his part, told reporters in South Korea that he hopes the SDP will remain in the coalition.
   
‘‘I have worked on a range of issues with the SDP and hopefully they will continue to cooperate with us within the coalition,’’ said Hatoyama, who was on Jeju Island to attend an annual trilateral summit that also involves South Korean President Lee Myung Bak and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
 
Following a landslide victory in last summer’s House of Representatives election that ousted the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party from power, the DPJ formed the ruling coalition with the SDP and the People’s New Party because of the need for their cooperation to ensure the smooth passage of legislation in the upper house.
   
SDP deputy chief Seiji Mataichi said on a separate TV program that it ‘‘seems natural’’ for the SDP to leave the coalition, adding that this would lead to fellow SDP lawmaker Kiyomi Tsujimoto’s resignation from his post of senior vice minister for land, infrastructure, transport and tourism.
   
Hatoyama, who doubles as DPJ president, dismissed Fukushima from the post of consumer affairs minister on Friday over her opposition to the government’s plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station within Okinawa Prefecture.
   
Fukushima, who has insisted that Futenma should be moved outside of the southwestern prefecture or abroad to reduce the heavy burden of hosting bases on the people of Okinawa, reiterated her criticism of the latest relocation plan, saying, ‘‘It tramples on the feelings of the people of Okinawa and breaks a promise.’‘
   
She said the SDP cannot have a part in such a move.
 
Hatoyama, after spending eight months reviewing a 2006 Japan-U.S. accord on the transfer of Futenma based on his promise to move it out of Okinawa, decided on a new deal with the United States that is almost identical to the earlier agreement.
   
The new accord says the heliport functions of the Futenma airstrip located in a crowded residential area of Ginowan are to be transferred to the less densely populated Henoko district of Nago at the Marines’ Camp Schwab by 2014.
   
Meanwhile, Mataichi predicted that Hatoyama will likely be forced to resign before the House of Councillors election this summer as there are calls from within the DPJ for him to step down in relation to his dismissal of Fukushima.
   
‘‘The Hatoyama cabinet will collapse,’’ Mataichi said in a speech in Miyazaki, adding that while the calls have still not surfaced, they would soon develop into a ‘‘larger movement.’’

[Okinawa]

Locals outraged at new accord to move Futenma within Okinawa
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/locals-outraged-at-new-accord-to-move-futenma-within-okinawa
Saturday 29th May, 07:08 AM JST
NAHA —

People in Okinawa expressed outrage and disappointment Friday at a new agreement reached between Japan and the United States on moving the U.S. Marines’ Futenma Air Station within the prefecture, with local leaders doubting the accord can be implemented and angry residents staging mass protests.
   
Susumu Inamine, the mayor of Nago whose coastal area Henoko has been mentioned in the agreement as Futenma’s relocation site, said the probability of the controversial base being relocated there is ‘‘zero.’‘
   
‘‘I will not engage in negotiations,’’ he told reporters in the city.
   
The agreement, released in the form of a joint statement between the two countries, confirmed that the base will remain in Okinawa despite Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s earlier vow to seek to move it ‘‘at least outside the prefecture.’‘
 
‘‘Returning to Henoko after raising expectations so much among the people of the prefecture (of Futenma’s relocation outside Okinawa) amounts to a betrayal of them and can’t be accepted,’’ Inamine said.
   
Of Hatoyama’s dismissal of Social Democratic Party chief Mizuho Fukushima as a cabinet minister over her opposition to endorse the cabinet’s position, the mayor told reporters in the evening, ‘‘Proceeding with matters with no concern for the means can’t be allowed. That will definitely cause future trouble (for both Hatoyama and his cabinet).’’
   
Okinawa Gov Hirokazu Nakaima, who has called for the central government to present a relocation plan acceptable to his electorate, said there has been a lack of communication between the central government and those in Okinawa.
   
‘‘Implementing it (the agreement) will be extremely difficult,’’ he told reporters in Tokyo, adding, ‘‘I get the impression it was reached over our heads.’‘
   
The governor has authority over land reclamation that might be needed to build a runway facility at Cape Henoko and adjacent waters as stipulated in the agreement.
   
But he avoided clarifying whether he would grant a permit for such reclamation if the facility is indeed to be built with it, saying, ‘‘I’m not at the point where I should say it yet.’‘
   
Meanwhile, about 1,200 people protested at the new bilateral agreement at the Nago city hall and 1,500 people in front of the main prefectural government building in Naha, where participants expressed their rage while holding pieces of paper plastered with the word ‘‘anger’’ in Japanese.
   
Nago mayor Inamine told the people in front of the city hall, ‘‘Today we again had a day of humiliation. Okinawa has been cut off again.’‘

‘‘The day of humiliation’’ had been used for April 28, 1952, when Okinawa had come under the administration of the U.S. military after World War II.

‘‘It became clear today that (Hatoyama’s) promise with the electorate was a lie and fake,’’ Seijun Higa, a Nago farmer, said at the city hall, referring to Hatoyama’s pre-election vow to seek Futenma’s relocation outside Okinawa.
   
Muneyoshi Kayo, who has participated in sit-ins in Henoko for years to protest at Futenma’s planned relocation there, criticized the prime minister and expressed his determination to fight against the central government’s plan.
   
‘‘The ancestor of the Hatoyama family will be crying, saying, ‘The grandson is a liar’,’’ Kayo said, referring to Hatoyama’s grandfather, former Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama. ‘‘Go ahead and do it, and I will resist it by putting my life on the line.’‘
   
Hiroji Yamashiro, who heads the secretariat of a local group that has helped organize demonstrations over the Futenma relocation, also expressed anger at the latest move, saying, ‘‘This kind of scam can’t pass.’‘
   
‘‘If this government were to do the same thing as the government run by the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party did, there would have been no need for a change of government (last year),’’ Yamashiro said.
   
On Tokunoshima Island, a Kagoshima Prefecture island to which the agreement said relocating some U.S. military training from Okinawa will be considered, residents gathered at a park in the town of Tokunoshima to protest at the bilateral accord. Organizers said they numbered roughly 1,200.

[Okinawa]

US, Japan agree to keep contentious Marine air base in Okinawa
US, Japan agree to keep contentious Marine air base in Okinawa amid Korean tension
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/05/28/us-japan-agree-to-keep-marine-air-base-on-okinawa-2/
MALCOLM FOSTER
AP News

May 28, 2010 10:48 EDT

Washington and Tokyo agreed Friday to keep a contentious U.S. Marine base in Okinawa, with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama highlighting the importance of the Japanese-American security alliance amid rising tension on the nearby Korean peninsula.

In a joint statement, the two allies agreed to move the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko, in a less crowded, northern part of the island.

The decision is broadly in line with a 2006 deal forged with the previous Tokyo government, but it breaks Hatoyama's campaign promise and has infuriated Okinawa residents who have complained about pollution, noise and possible danger from the bases across the island.

In a news conference broadcast nationwide, Hatoyama repeatedly apologized for failing to keep his pledge to move the base off the island, which hosts more than half the 47,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan under a 50-year-old joint security pact.

"I am sincerely sorry for not being able to keep my word, and what is more, having hurt Okinawans in the end," he said.

Hatoyama said that the government had investigated 40 sites as alternatives for Futenma, including options off the island, but none worked. He said Futenma's helicopter and air assets were needed for nearby Marine infantry units based on the island in times of emergency — reminding listeners that recent events on the Korean peninsula had made the region "extremely tense."

"In Asia, there still remain unstable and uncertain factors, including the sinking of a South Korean warship by North Korea," he said.

"I had to give the Japan-U.S. agreement the priority because maintaining the trust between Japan and the U.S. serves the best deterrence," Hatoyama added.

In Okinawa, around 1,000 people gathered in front of the city hall in Nago, the nearest city to Henoko, to voice their anger at the agreement, with some holding up banners emblazoned with the Japanese character for "rage."

The decision also rattled Hatoyama's Cabinet. He dismissed Gender Equality and Consumer Affairs Minister Mizuho Fukushima, head of the Social Democratic Party, because she refused to accept the agreement.

"I couldn't betray the Okinawans," she said. "I cannot be a part of an agreement that imposes a burden on Okinawans."

Her party, a junior member in the ruling coalition, will hold an executive meeting Sunday to decide whether to stay in the coalition.

Because of the party's small size, its possible withdrawal from the coalition most likely would not cause Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan-led government to fall. But his poor handling of the Futenma issue could hurt the Democrats' performance in upper house elections, to be held around July.

Under a 1960 security pact, American armed forces are allowed broad use of Japanese land and facilities. In return, the U.S. is obliged to respond to attacks on Japan and protect the country under its nuclear umbrella.

The U.S. and Japan "recognized that a robust forward presence of U.S. military forces in japan, including in Okinawa, provides the deterrence and capabilities necessary for the defense of Japan and for the maintenance of regional stability," said the joint statement, which was issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa.

The Futenma move is part of a broader plan to reorganize American troops in Japan that includes moving 8,000 Marines to the U.S. territory of Guam by 2014. But U.S. officials had said that the other pieces cannot move forward until the Futenma issue was resolved.

The two countries said an environmental impact assessment and construction of the replacement facility should proceed "without significant delay." The statement called for a logistical study to be completed by the end of August.

The base, whose plans call for a 1,800-meter (5,900-feet) runway built partly on reclaimed land off the coast of Henoko, faces intense opposition from residents and environmentalists.

Hatoyama said Okinawa makes up only 0.6 percent of Japan's land mass but hosts 75 percent of the U.S. troops in the country.

"I am keenly aware that Okinawans ... are angry about the agreement, but I had no choice but to ask them to shoulder a burden," he said.

The joint statement said the two countries would consider moving military training facilities off of Okinawa, possibly to nearby Tokunoshima, or out of Japan completely. The accord called for more environmental stewardship, through which U.S. bases in Japan might incorporate renewable energy technology.

"The ministers recognized the importance of responding to the concerns of the people of Okinawa that they bear a disproportionate burden related to the presence of U.S. forces, and also recognized that the more equitable distribution of shared alliance responsibilities is essential for sustainable development of the alliance," they said.

___

Associated Press writers Tomoko A. Hosaka, Shino Yuasa and Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report.

[Damascus]

NWO provocation arrives just in time, all as planned. North Korea rattles its saber and Japaneses officials cave. Send thanks to Henry Kissinger, this was his birthday present.

[Dok]

Voters Want Hatoyama to Quit After He Broke U.S. Base Pledge, Nikkei Says



Sixty-three percent of Japanese voters want Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to resign after he abandoned a campaign pledge to move a U.S. military base outside the southern prefecture of Okinawa, Nikkei English News said.

The approval rating for Hatoyama’s Cabinet fell 2 percentage points to 22 percent, according to the Nikkei survey. The disapproval rating rose 1 point to 69 percent from April.

Nineteen percent of voters named the opposition Liberal Democratic Party as their party of choice in the upper house election set for July, compared with 18 percent for Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan.

The May 28-30 poll received valid responses from 59.7 percent of 1,579 surveyed households. The Nikkei didn’t provide a margin of error.

http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-30/voters-want-hatoyama-to-quit-after-he-broke-u-s-base-pledge-nikkei-says.html

[Okinawa]

NWO provocation arrives just in time, all as planned. North Korea rattles its saber and Japaneses officials cave. Send thanks to Henry Kissinger, this was his birthday present.

“Attack against South Korean ship looks like false flag operation”
http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-05-29/chonan-attack-us-china.html
Published 29 May, 2010, 10:16
Edited 31 May, 2010, 07:44

While international investigators have accused North Korea of sinking a South Korean patrol corvette in March, China has taken a more cautious position.

Investigative journalist and RT contributor Wayne Madsen says it is because Beijing suspects there was greater deception at work.

“The Cheonan [navy corvette] was sunk by this torpedo that was later to be discovered to have been of German manufacture. Germany said it sells no military weapons to North Korea. This thing is starting to look like a classic false flag operation,” Wayne Madsen says.

“Kim Jong-Il who very rarely travels – and when he does, he only travels by train – went to Beijing. My sources in Beijing say that he went to Beijing, that Chinese authorities said that North Korea did this, he denied it. They were satisfied with his response,” Madsen adds. “Now the Chinese are very suspicious of the US’ intentions in richening things up in the Korean peninsula.”

Video report also available at link.

[Okinawa]

Hatoyama quits as prime minister: Futenma fiasco, funds scandals proved undoing; Ozawa also out
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100602x1.html
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer

Ending a turbulent eight months in office, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Wednesday he will step down to take the blame for his Cabinet's plunging approval rate, brought on by funds scandals and the row over relocating a U.S. base in Okinawa.

Hatoyama also said Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa, embroiled in a shady transfer of political funds, will step down from the party's No. 2 post.

"I apologize for the amount of confusion caused," Hatoyama told a general meeting of DPJ lawmakers held at the Diet. "I thank you all for letting me lead (the administration) for the duration of eight months. I hope you will be able to create a new DPJ and a new government," he said.

DPJ members from both chambers of the Diet are scheduled to choose the party's new leader at a meeting Friday. The DPJ's new head will be elected prime minister the same day at the Diet, where the party holds a comfortable majority in the Lower House.

Ozawa reportedly said the new Cabinet will probably be formed Monday and he "regrets" he couldn't fulfill his duty to support Hatoyama.

Despite the slide in the opinion polls to less than 20 percent, Hatoyama was widely expected to remain in his post with only two weeks left in the ongoing Diet session and about a month until a crucial Upper House election.

But during the surprising farewell speech Wednesday, Hatoyama pointed to two blunders that continued to cloud his administration.

"First is the issue over Futenma's relocation," Hatoyama said, apologizing for his unsuccessful bid to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa despite months of searching for an alternative.

Hatoyama's decision to keep the base in Okinawa resulted in the departure of the Social Democratic Party from the ruling coalition, after SDP chief Mizuho Fukushima was sacked as consumer affairs minister for refusing to sign the Cabinet resolution on the base deal.

The prime minister reiterated the importance of keeping Futenma in Okinawa for regional security, but said he hoped Japan "will be able to provide protection for itself" in the future and free Okinawa from the burden of hosting the bases.

Hatoyama also pointed to the continued political funds scandals that dogged his party as a reason for leaving office.

"I never imagined myself" being embroiled in such a scandal, he said, touching on the unregistered donations from his mother to his political funds management body that led to the indictment of his former secretaries.

Ozawa's case, involving irregularities related to the purchase of a plot of Tokyo land in 2004, also resulted in his aides being indicted. Ozawa quit the DPJ presidency last spring over a separate funds scandal.

In addition to Ozawa resigning his post, Hatoyama urged DPJ Lower House member Chiyomi Kobayashi, also involved in a scandal involving illegal donations, to step down as a lawmaker.

While Hatoyama in his speech highlighted the new child allowance and tuition-free high schools as his Cabinet's achievements, DPJ members were quick to move on and look toward the party's future.

DPJ Lower House member Hajime Ishii indicated that Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan is a strong contender to succeed Hatoyama, saying his party doesn't "have much time" to look around. "There is no question that he is a candidate, since we need to make a quick decision," the veteran lawmaker said.

But Ishii, who also serves as the DPJ's election campaign chief, expressed concern over how Hatoyama's resignation will affect July's Upper House election. "I've always said that changing the cover of a book doesn't have much effect" on voters, he said.

DPJ Upper House member Koji Matsui, who serves as deputy chief Cabinet secretary, said the time is now right for his party to "regain what it once had, change from within and reform itself."

Meanwhile, other DPJ members were left in shock about Wednesday's abrupt announcement by Hatoyama.

"I saw the breaking news alert on television, but it could be a false report," one DPJ lawmaker said heading into the general meeting of party members. "But a plenary session of the Upper House was canceled, which is a sign that there will be a big announcement."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Hatoyama's decision was "extremely regrettable," but added that the government will remain composed and fulfill its duties until a successor administration is installed.

Hirano, who served as a key figure in negotiating the relocation of the Futenma base, said he "felt a sense of responsibility" over Hatoyama's exit.

Health minister Akira Nagatsuma also expressed regret over the development, saying any prime minister should remain on the job for a certain period to properly govern the state.

"It's regrettable, but the party must build a strong structure," Nagatsuma said.

Opposition parties meanwhile were swift to criticize Hatoyama's move.

"The resignation of the prime minister is merely like changing the costumes in order to trick the public," Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tadamori Oshima told reporters. Opposition parties were already moving forward to submit a no-confidence motion and a nonbinding censure motion at the Diet.

"We will seek to have the Lower House dissolved now," Oshima said.

But following his speech at the party meeting, Hatoyama looked like a big weight had been removed from his shoulders.

[Okinawa]

Opposition calls for general election as Hatoyama decides to resign
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/hatoyama-reportedly-ready-to-step-down-as-prime-minister
Wednesday 02nd June, 01:00 PM JST
TOKYO —

The Liberal Democratic Party demanded that a general election be called as opposition parties intensified their attacks on the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the government Wednesday after Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama announced his decision to resign.
   
‘‘Not one problem has been solved’’ with Hatoyama’s decision, LDP Secretary General Tadamori Oshima said, adding that the DPJ ‘‘should seek a public mandate by dissolving the House of Representatives and calling a general election.’‘
   
Hatoyama’s televised announcement of his impending resignation ‘‘sounded only aimed at winning the House of Councillors election’’ likely to be held July 11, Oshima said. ‘‘They are just trying to change their dress to deceive the public.’‘
   
Hatoyama said he has decided to step down to take responsibility for his failure to resolve a dispute over relocating a U.S. military base in the way he promised, as well as scandals over political funds involving himself and other DPJ members.
   
The pressure on the DPJ, however, is not expected to let up.
   
New Komeito leader Natsuo Yamaguchi told fellow party members that it was natural for Hatoyama to resign as he has failed to manage the government adequately.
   
But ‘‘just changing the cover page would not change’’ the DPJ’s natural tendencies, Yamaguchi said. ‘‘The public has seen with their own eyes the gimmick of reviving support ratings for the sake of the (upper house) election.’‘
   
Meanwhile, the LDP, New Komeito and two other opposition parties submitted to the lower house speaker on Wednesday morning a draft resolution calling for the resignation of the DPJ’s Chiyomi Kobayashi as a lower house member, shortly after Hatoyama himself asked her to quit in his televised remarks.
   
The Sapporo High Court on Tuesday upheld a guilty verdict handed down by a lower court to a key member of her staff in relation to campaign activities for last summer’s general election.
   
The defense for Hirokazu Yamamoto said it intends to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Kobayashi said she will watch the developments.

Hatoyama is the fourth straight Japanese prime minister who did not stay in power longer than a year.
   
‘‘The public has gradually refused to hear me,’’ Hatoyama told an urgent general assembly of Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers. ‘‘I will resign from my job.’‘
   
Hatoyama said the public had turned their backs on him mainly for two reasons—the fiasco over the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station, which cost his ruling coalition the loss of the Social Democratic Party, and ‘‘money and politics’’ scandals involving himself and DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa.
   
Ozawa, who is widely regarded as the most powerful figure within the DPJ, is also stepping down, Hatoyama said at the general assembly, televised nationally live.
   
Hatoyama said he has asked Ozawa to resign from the party’s No. 2 post ‘‘for the sake of establishing a new and cleaner Democratic Party of Japan,’’ and that Ozawa has agreed to do so.

Ozawa said he is ‘‘very sorry’’ that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has announced his resignation before his term as the DPJ leader expires. ‘‘I regret that I couldn’t fully fulfill my duty to support the prime minister who doubles as the party leader,’’ Ozawa said at the Diet building.
   
He also expressed his resolve to launch new DPJ leadership soon, saying, ‘‘We cannot create a political vacuum.’‘
   
But he declined to comment on who he thinks is desirable for the post of the next premier and DPJ leader.
   
The DPJ will pick Hatoyama’s successor Friday, party members said.
   
Finance Minister Naoto Kan, who is also deputy prime minister, is viewed as the front-runner to succeed Hatoyama.
   
Hatoyama’s resignation comes amid plunging public support for his cabinet, which stood at over 70% immediately after the Sept 16 launch of the coalition government but has now fallen below 20%.
   
It also comes after the SDP left his ruling coalition on Sunday in opposing an accord with the United States to relocate the Futenma air base within Okinawa. The pacifist party had demanded that the base be moved out of the island prefecture to lessen the heavy U.S. military presence there.
   
Hatoyama had said he would resolve the base dispute by the end of May by coming up with a relocation plan that can win approval from people in Okinawa, the DPJ’s coalition partners and the United States. But his government announced the relocation policy on Friday after striking a deal only with Washington.
   
The DPJ formed a new government in partnership with the SDP and the People’s New Party after its landslide victory in last summer’s general election.
   
Many DPJ lawmakers in the upper house, whose current six-year terms expire in July, had been pressuring Hatoyama to quit.
   
They have insisted that Hatoyama give the party a better chance in the House of Councillors election widely expected to be held on July 11 by stepping down. The DPJ holds a comfortable majority in the lower house but lacks a majority in the upper house.

[Okinawa]

U.S. exploring policy stances of possible Hatoyama successors
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/us-prods-japan-to-abide-by-base-accord-regardless-of-politics
Wednesday 02nd June, 09:19 AM JST
WASHINGTON —

The U.S. government is exploring possible changes to Tokyo’s policies after the resignation of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, particularly on the relocation of a U.S. Marine base in Okinawa.
  
Japan and the United States released a joint statement Friday stating a fresh agreement to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station to the Henoko area in Okinawa, largely in line with an accord struck in 2006.
  
A senior Pentagon official told reporters Tuesday before Hatoyama’s resignation announcement that the U.S. government expects the agreement ‘‘will be respected’’ by ‘‘whoever is in power’’ in Japan.
  
His remarks indicate that Washington wants Hatoyama’s successor to inherit the policy regarding the base relocation.
  
‘‘This is an agreement between governments, not between politicians,’’ the official said.
  
A pundit close to the U.S. government said that Washington saw it as a matter of time before Hatoyama stepped down after his public support rate plunged to around 20 percent.
  
Noting that recent surveys show both the Japanese and U.S. publics back the bilateral alliance, a senior U.S. official said that Hatoyama’s departure is not likely to affect relations in the medium term.
  
Still, some people are concerned about possible repercussions, given that the Democratic Party of Japan’s landslide victory and rise to power last year led to the wrangling over the relocation of the Futenma air field.
  
With the DPJ soon to begin choosing a successor to Hatoyama, some U.S. officials who are familiar with Japanese politics are wary about the leftist background of Finance Minister Naoto Kan, a strong candidate for the prime minister’s job.
  
But others expect Kan, who is also deputy prime minister, to handle relations effectively by learning lessons from Hatoyama’s difficulties.
  
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently has strong faith in Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and the pair helped enhance ties between Washington and the DPJ-led government through a series of discussions about the base relocation in Okinawa.
  
Seiji Maehara, minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, is seen by many as a politician who would take a more pro-U.S. stance.
  
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said he was informed by Hatoyama of the premier’s decision to step down on Wednesday morning, shortly before Hatoyama formally announced the decision during a general assembly of lawmakers of the DPJ.
  
DPJ members said the party will likely pick Hatoyama’s successor Friday.

Meanwhile, a senior Pentagon official pressed Japan to abide by a fresh bilateral accord reached last week on the relocation of a U.S. Marine Corps base in Okinawa, regardless of who takes the helm of Japanese politics. The United States expects the agreement ‘‘will be respected’’ by the Japanese leader, ‘‘whoever is in power,’’ the official told reporters at the Pentagon.
  
‘‘This is an agreement between governments, not between politicians,’’ the official said.

[citizenx]

Okinawa,

Great thread.  Do you think the sinking of South Korean anti-submarine corvette, the Cheonan, was an intentional false flag?  Do you think it was initiated by the U.S. with the cooperation of the present government in South Korea?  Do you think the main intention was keeping the base at Okinawa open, or do you thing there were other or more compelling motivations?

I am still not sure what I think about the whole incident here in South Korea, but I and many of my friends, Koreans and Westerners, question the official version of events which we do not find credble or reliable at all, though many of us differ on what might have happened.

I would be very much interested to hear your opinions on this or what you think the relevant facts of the matter would be.

CX

[Okinawa]

Okinawa,

Do you think the main intention was keeping the base at Okinawa open, or do you thing there were other or more compelling motivations?

CX

Thanks for asking. I am surprised that Okinawa has gotten so much attention.

I started this thread with some background:

Comment: The crimes started when the Global Elites decided to make The Ryukyu Kingdom an independent region of the world. Documentation goes back over a hundred years. Genocide/Democide was condoned by the United Nations Organization, Bankers, a.k.a The Rockefeller Network, and the Japanese council on foreign relations.

The following were my first posts on PP:
Pearl Harbor:

What happened at the end of WWII?:

Publications related to Okinawa and the creation of a World Region:

[Okinawa]

U.S. Arrogance Claims the Japanese Prime Minister
http://www.progressive.org/ap060310.html
By Amitabh Pal, June 3, 2010

U.S. arrogance has claimed a high-profile victim: the prime minister of Japan.

Yukio Hatoyama has had to tender his resignation after he was caught in a bind between the intransigence of the Obama Administration and the wishes of his own people. Many Japanese have become fed up with a huge U.S. base on the island of Okinawa and want it moved off.

“Nearly 100,000 people staged a protest [in April] on the southern island, demanding that the base be removed,” reports the BBC.

Hell no, we won’t go, replied the Obama Administration, publicly humiliating a longstanding Asian ally and forcing Hatoyama to tearfully exit days after he issued a heartfelt public apology to Okinawans.

The United States refuses to leave Okinawa because it’s a key link in an astonishing chain of 700-plus bases the U.S. possesses in 130 countries around the world. Chalmers Johnson, one of the leading American scholars on this issue, recently published a concise account of the history of Okinawa in the Los Angeles Times. He underlined that the United States occupied Okinawa outright till 1972 and even after that has had sovereignty over the bases and the island’s airspace.

Japanese resentment at the Americans has festered due to a number of reasons.

“Islanders have been angered by incidents involving U.S. troops based there, including the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Japanese girl and a helicopter crash in 2004,” the BBC reports. “Other complaints have focused on noise levels and objections to the U.S. military use of Japanese land.”

In a lame attempt to show that it isn’t averse to compromise, the United States offered in a 2006 agreement to move the base to the northeast shore of Okinawa, oblivious to the fact that this would potentially destroy a marine-rich coral reef there. The Okinawans weren’t amused, and poor Hatoyama, who had come to office pledging to reevaluate the U.S.-Japan alliance, was left to twist in the wind by the United States. A less militarized Japan, you would think, would be welcomed by the Obama Administration. Apparently not.

The New York Times coverage of the episode has been astoundingly bad. It traces Hatoyama’s downfall to the claim that the Japanese population wasn’t eager for a shift in the country’s approach toward the United States.

But that is quite at variance with what is being reported elsewhere.

“Hatoyama’s fate was in effect sealed by his decision last week to renege on a campaign promise to move a U.S. marine airbase off Okinawa—a move he hoped would demonstrate his determination to end Japan's subservience to Washington's foreign policy,” the London Guardian states. “His change of heart enraged politicians and residents on Okinawa, who accused him of betrayal, and sent his public support ratings below 17 percent, compared with over 70 percent when he took office last September.”

Even NPR, as tepid as it is, has a very different analysis from the Times.

“However inept Hatoyama's performance as prime minister, many observers say his administration was needlessly undercut by Washington,” it says. “They criticize the U.S. for taking a hard line with Japan, a country that recently celebrated a 50-year security alliance with the U.S., and which hosts the largest American military base in Asia.”

Unfortunately, Hatoyama’s resignation won’t cause any softening on part of the United States. “The U.S. has become obsessed with maintaining our empire of military bases, which we cannot afford and which an increasing number of so-called host countries no longer want,” Johnson notes.

The United States needs to engage in a major rethinking, not only of its relationship with allies such as Japan, but also of its global military presence.

Amitabh Pal is the Managing Editor of The Progressive.

[Okinawa]

Japan threatens to kick out US troops

Japan is threatening to ask US troops based on the island of Okinawa to leave the country amid growing resentment over crime.

Comment: The crimes started when the Global Elites decided to make The Ryukyu Kingdom an independent region of the world. Documentation goes back over a hundred years. Genocide/Democide was condoned by the United Nations Organization, Bankers, a.k.a The Rockefeller Network, and the Japanese council on foreign relations.

Kan said Okinawa should become independent state?
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100616x2.html
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer

Remarks last year by Naoto Kan on Okinawa made waves Wednesday after a book by an Upper House member from the prefecture said the new prime minister recently recommended it should become independent from Japan.

In "Okinawa no Jikoketteiken" ("Okinawa's Right to Autonomy"), written by Democratic Party of Japan member Shokichi Kina and published May 31, Kan is quoted as saying in a conversation with Kina that issues surrounding Okinawa "are too heavy" and he would "rather not touch it."

Kina, who heads up the Okinawa chapter of the DPJ, also claimed that Kan told him Okinawa " should just become independent" and that negotiations to remove the U.S. bases in the prefecture "aren't resolvable." [Wow... I'm rather speechless... Unbelievable statement. Are they just trying to get a reaction from the people? Do the people know this has always been the globalists plan to separate Okinawa from Japan?]

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku refused Wednesday to comment on the matter, saying he hadn't read the passages in question. He added that he couldn't immediately confirm the circumstances in which Kan made the comments or how accurate they might have been recorded.

Relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma has been a cause of distress since the DPJ took power, with locals criticizing the ruling coalition for backpedaling on its pledge to move the base out of Okinawa.

Kan, who met with Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima on Tuesday, promised to alleviate the military burden on the prefecture. But he also reiterated his intention to follow through on the deal reached with Washington last month to keep the Futenma base in Okinawa.

According to the book, Kina and Kan exchanged their opinions shortly after the DPJ came to power last September. The Okinawa native wrote in the book that such comments by the party's key figure carries great weight, "whether he made it half-jokingly or not."

Sengoku said he has no intention of discussing the topic with Kan, who is scheduled to make his first visit to the prefecture as prime minister on June 23 to attend a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa.

[Okinawa]

Ginowan mayor, a base foe, may run for governor
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100617a4.html
Thursday, June 17, 2010
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer

The mayor of Ginowan, the site of Okinawa's contentious U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, hinted Wednesday he may run in the gubernatorial election scheduled for November and threatened to throw a spanner in the process of relocating the base within the prefecture.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, Yoichi Iha said the upcoming poll is a crucial opportunity for the people of Okinawa to voice their opposition to relocating the base to the Henoko coast in Nago, farther north on Okinawa Island.

"I myself believe that there is a great possibility that I will be one of the candidates" in the election, Iha said. "We must express how absolutely ridiculous it is that another base is about to be built 65 years after World War II."

If elected, Iha said, he wouldn't grant permission to fill in shallows off Henoko to build a new airstrip. By law, such land-fill must be approved by a prefecture's governor.

"Hypothetically, I would definitely not allow the reclamation if I were governor," Iha said.

While admitting that there were economic benefits from having U.S. bases in Okinawa, Iha said he believes the land for the bases has greater business potential.

"It is true that because of the presence of the U.S. military in Okinawa, the government has provided various financial aid," Iha said. "But I think that (the financial support) is just to make up for the negative factor, the bases, and it's not a big deal. Realistically, I think there will be much greater benefit for Okinawa if the bases are closed down and (their sites are) used for private-sector businesses."

Calling the U.S. military the "No. 1 threat to Okinawa," Iha also called for more steps to curb local crimes committed by U.S. service members.

[Damascus]

I have to ask this, Japan being resource dependent, would an embargo threat change their minds(happened in WWII)? I mean where else would they go, China? Not even considering the North Korea FF threat It really seem that the NWO has Japan over a barrel.

[Okinawa]

Japanese ex-marine strives to debunk deterrence 'myth'
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100619f1.html
By SHINSAKU YOKOTA
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Kyodo News

NAHA, Okinawa Pref. — A Japanese man with the unusual background of having served in the U.S. Marine Corps is using his experience to vigorously campaign against the U.S. military presence in Okinawa.

Kimitoshi Takanashi, 38, joined the marines in his 20s and once served in Okinawa during his four-year career in the U.S. military.

The sharp-eyed man, sporting a Mohawk hairdo, has a muscular build that hardly looks like the body of a man nearing 40. On his right arm are tattooed the words, "KILL 'EM ALL."

After he began publicly speaking on the issue of U.S. forces in Okinawa, the fearless ex-marine gained a following among activists and members of university faculties in the prefecture. At their request, he is giving talks about what he perceives to be the injustices of keeping U.S. military installations in Okinawa.

He delivered his first speech as a former marine at Okinawa University in Naha on May 23, the very day then Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama paid a visit to the prefecture.

Hatoyama traveled to Okinawa to report on his decision to strike a deal with the United States by agreeing to move the Futenma air base from the residential area of Ginowan to the Henoko coast at U.S. Marine Corps Camp Schwab in Nago, also in the prefecture.

Okinawa residents were predictably outraged, due to Hatoyama having initially promised to move the Futenma facility out of the prefecture, which houses about 75 percent of the land area used for U.S. military facilities in Japan and half of the roughly 50,000 U.S. service members in the country, including well over 10,000 marines.

After failing to find any other prefectures that were willing to host a replacement facility for Futenma and bowing to pressure from the United States, Hatoyama gave up and chose Henoko as the relocation site, as demanded by Washington.

In defending his decision, Hatoyama argued Japan had to host the U.S. military as a deterrent against military threats from outside.

When he spoke at Okinawa University during Hatoyama's visit, Takanashi compared a deterrent to a police officer guarding a safe to prevent possible theft.

"U.S. Marines are stationed all over the world and they are fighting at this very moment," said Takanashi. "There would be no conflicts if the marines were serving as an effective deterrent." Takanashi argues that the word "deterrent" is a fictitious mantra the government uses to pull the wool over people's eyes.

When asked whether the world would face any difficulty if the marines were not in Okinawa, he said the marines can operate effectively in any place in East Asia, meaning their presence in Okinawa is not indispensable.

"The Marine Corps is still in Okinawa because the United States built its military bases here after Japan's defeat in World War II and the situation has gone unchanged ever since," Takanashi said.

Takanashi grew up in the city of Hiroshima, where his great-grandparents died from the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945. As a child, he often saw off-duty U.S. soldiers come to his city from U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture.

He grew resentful of the Americans who visited the city to have fun, even though it was a site of intense suffering during the final days of the war. He also felt that Caucasians looked down on Asians.

After serving in the Ground Self-Defense Force for two years, he obtained his U.S. green card and joined the Marine Corps at age 23, partly to prove he could do as well at work as any white American.

Still, he commends the U.S. military, saying, "Compared with the thorough training at a Marine Corps boot camp, what the Japanese SDF recruits go through is like boy scouts' assignments."

He was shipped out to some of the world's hot spots, including Africa and the Korean Peninsula. "The good thing about the marines is that they can be dispatched to their destination from anywhere."

He was posted to Camp Schwab in June 1995. Three months later three U.S. servicemen gang-raped a 12-year-old local girl and Okinawa exploded in fury.

The gravity of the matter prompted Tokyo and Washington to agree the following year on the return of the Futenma base to Japan on condition that Tokyo provides a replacement facility elsewhere.

Amid the vigorous protests by the enraged Okinawans, the U.S. service members in general, according to Takanashi, were apathetic. Marines around him were annoyed by the incident because they were afraid they might get banned from going out when they were off duty, he said.

Okinawans began calling for a full revision of the Status of Forces Agreement between Japan and the United States, which pertains to the handling of U.S. service members who commit crimes in Japan. Of particular concern for both countries was defining the specific circumstances under which U.S. military suspects should be handed over to Japanese law enforcement authorities.

No major progress has been made on the overhaul of the accord while the planned relocation of the Futenma base went nowhere.

"U.S. soldiers tend to think they won't face criminal charges whatever they do here and also know that it is unfair," Takanashi said. "They don't talk about this because the inequities (inherent in the SOFA) are advantageous for them."

Takanashi argues that their attitude reflects their disregard for human rights and racism. "Japan is like a colony of the United States and the most important issue facing Okinawa is neither military nor political but ethnic," he added.

He is also critical of the way Japan pays money for the U.S. armed forces as host-nation support is squandered.

"Facilities where no one works are air-conditioned to excess and almost nobody goes to movie theaters the Japanese government has built," he said. "Japan should stop playing the role of a sugar daddy."

[Okinawa]

Islanders prepare for second battle of Okinawa
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/islanders-prepare-for-second-battle-of-okinawa-2021163.html
Thursday, 8 July 2010

American bases seized from Japan in 1945 have been a cause of bitterness since the Second World War. David McNeill meets the locals and the US Marines they want out

The U.S. Marines' Camp Schwab, which dominates the coral reef headland in Nago on the Japanese island of Okinawa

There can be few prettier prime ministerial graveyards: waves from a coral-rich, emerald-green sea lick the sandy shore of a pristine white beach. A sleepy fishing village pokes through the humming tropical green in the background. Dolphins and the endangered dugong sea cow swim in the local waters. Only a razor-wire fence and signs warning of the threat of arrest by US troops hint at the smell of political cordite.

For over a decade, Henoko beach on Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa has been the site of a battle that has pitted pensioners against government surveyors, corroded relations between Tokyo and Washington and arguably claimed the scalp of Japan's last Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama. Locals warn that his successor, Naoto Kan, will follow him to the political gallows if he makes good on a promise to build a US Marine heliport on this picture-postcard beach.

"I think 100,000 people or more will come to stop it," predicts Michio Sakima, who curates a local museum dedicated to remembering the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. "He'll have to send in the army and the riot police and there would be war. There's no way that's going to happen."

Okinawa Prefecture, occupying just 0.6 per cent of Japan's territory, is home to one of the planet's largest concentrations of US military bases. The Americans invaded in 1945, mounting an attack that left 223,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians dead – roughly a quarter of the local population – and 50,000 US troops killed or injured. In 1972, the islands reverted to Japanese rule but most of the bases stayed. Today they occupy nearly a fifth of the main island and include Kadena, the biggest and most active US Air Force facility in East Asia and Futenma, which occupies the centre of Ginowan city. Many of the soldiers train for combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Local people like Mr. Sakima call these bases war spoils and want them returned. "It makes me very angry when I think what we could do with all that land," he says from the roof of the museum, which overlooks Futenma. His voice is occasionally drowned out by the drone of the giant transport planes that fly in and out of the base.

As he admits, however, while "most" Okinawans are against the US presence, many are financially tied to it. The bases reportedly employ over 8,000 local people and the central Tokyo government has pumped an estimated 200-340 billion yen a year for the last three decades mostly into island construction projects in an attempt to smooth the friction that comes with living beside over 20,000 often battle-scared young soldiers. In 1995 that friction climaxed with the gang rape of a 12-year-old girl that sparked the largest protests in the prefecture's history.

After years of promises to scale down the military presence, the protests finally extracted a promise from Tokyo and Washington to close Futenma. But the plan eventually hatched by the two sides – largely shutting out Okinawa – simply shifted the functions of the aging facility to the coast off Camp Schwab base near Henoko in the sleepier northern half of the main island. In 2006, the deal was inked: a giant seaport, with an 1800-meter runway, would be built off Okinawa's pristine coastline – all paid for with Japanese taxes.

For many Okinawans, the deal compounded an epic sense of unfairness. The prefecture, which wasn't even historically part of the nation until 1872,[NOT True] hosts 75 per cent of all US military facilities in the country. That arrangement on an island hundreds of miles from the mainland means that about 99 per cent of Japanese never need to face the consequences of the country's half-century military alliance with Washington, or its central conundrum – a war-renouncing nation sheltering under the world's largest nuclear umbrella.

Tackling that contradiction would mean debating much of Japan's postwar defence architecture, including its 1947 "pacifist" constitution, a huge can of worms that few politicians have ever shown the stomach for – on the issue of cost alone, one estimate is that Japan's five thousand billion yen defence budget would need to increase by 10 per cent annually for a decade. It would also mean confronting Washington over its claims that the bases are needed to defend Japan, claims that many on Okinawa reject.

"We were told that the bases were protecting us, but few here believe that now," says Mao Ishikawa, an Okinawa-based photographer. "Soviet Russia is gone, we're friendlier with China and North Korea is a powerless country. Everybody knows the bases are for America's convenience. The soldiers train here for war in Iraq and Afghanistan – that has nothing to do with us."

Last September, the prefecture thought they finally had a leader in Tokyo who might recalibrate the military scales when Yukio Hatoyama was elected Prime Minister, ending over half a century of rule by Washington's staunch Cold War allies the Liberal Democrats. Before taking office, Mr. Hatoyama had openly called for the US bases to be ejected from Japan. He promised to reject the 2006 deal and shift Futenma out of the prefecture.

Instead, under pressure from President Barack Obama himself, he embarked on a long tortured journey back to square one. When he finally told Okinawa in May that the 2006 deal would stand after all, they were furious, recalls Doug Lummis, a former US marine and now political scientist who lives on the island. "He had got their hopes up," he says, pointing out that last April the islanders staged an even bigger protest than they did after the 1995 gang rape. "Hatoyama should have learned from Machiavelli: 'If you're going to do something very unpopular you ought to do it straight away.'"

Hatoyama's bungling on Futenma lost him his government's coalition partner and a huge store of political credibility. He resigned in June, leaving Futenma in the hands of his wilier successor Naoto Kan. "This is only the second time in postwar Japan that a popular grassroots movement has brought down a government," says Lummis, alluding to the fierce protests over the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty that precipitated the resignation of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. "Something has changed here."

Kan – who, as a citizen's activist, once protested against the American bases himself – inherits this hornet's nest but has been careful so far not to stir it up. Last month he visited the island to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa, apologising "as a representative of all Japanese people" and promising to "ease the burden" of hosting the bases. Okinawa's contribution has helped secure the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region, he added. He faces an election this weekend that will show how badly damaged his Democratic Party has been by the Okinawa affair and determine if he can go ahead with the base. But nobody can see how his dilemma can be resolved. Voters in Nago, the nearest administrative city to Henoko, this year elected the virulently anti-base politician Susumu Inamine as mayor. Newspaper polls put opposition to the base as high as 80 – 90 per cent. But in a Henoko shop where the prices are in dollars and yen and young Jarheads from Camp Schwab shop for cigarettes and beer, owner Masayoshi Kyoda says the town needs the US money: "Emotionally, everyone is against the bases but the reality is a bit different."

Doctors blame the influx of Americans – and the roughly 100 fast-food outlets that cater to them on Okinawa – for bringing chips, burgers and fatty food to the local diet, which was historically rich in fishNOT True, soybeans, vegetables and pork. Okinawans have one of the longest life expectancies in the world at 86 for women and 78 for men, but younger's islanders are growing unhealthier under the US influence.

A marine from Kansas, who wishes to remain anonymous, says: "People here have been real nice – I don't want to go home," he laughs. "I've heard the protesters are here not because they don't want the Henoko base but because they don't want us here at all. But if the North Koreans came here they'd destroy this place. That's why we're needed."

On the beach nearby, a small group of mainly elderly activists and students stand guard over a permanent protest outpost, marking the time since their watch began: 2253 days.

"People here are furious that the Hatoyama government let them down," says Tomohiro Inafuku. "It seems whoever is in government the result is the same."

[citizenx]

"If the North Koreasn came here..."

That $hit is wack.  That would never happen in like one million years.

They brainwash the American military so hard.

What the hell are we protecting Okinawa from -- nothing at all.

Simply another launching pad for our operations in East Asia and (more importantly) the Middle East and Central Asia.

Keep on with the great reports, Okinawa.

Some of us Americans (real ones) are with you 100%,

It is well time we shut down our overseas empire for our own sakes -- our own freedom, prosperity, and even survival are at stake.

[Okinawa]

Keep on with the great reports, Okinawa.

Some of us Americans (real ones) are with you 100%

Thanks.

It's an amazing world isn't it?

The first big step is uncovering the lies in search for the truth.

It looks like Okinawa has a lot more fight in her...

[Okinawa]

U.S. military’s new Okinawa strategy: Manga propaganda
http://www.japantoday.com/category/commentary/view/us-military%E2%80%99s-new-okinawa-strategy-manga-propaganda
By Kaz Morran

The U.S. military is set to release 20,000 copies of its newest weapon aimed at winning over the hearts of Japan’s youth. Last week, the U.S. force’s “public affairs” office in Japan called up the American Free Press (AFP) and gave them a handful of quotes promoting the event, which coincided with the American diplomatic attendance at the 65th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima as well as the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan security treaty.

The U.S. military has produced a four-part manga series in Japanese titled, “Our Alliance – A Lasting Partnership.” The BBC, Yahoo news and various other sources picked up the AFP story without any mention of the obvious – this is pure propaganda concocted for the sole purpose of brainwashing Japan’s youth into accepting the massive American military presence right in their backyard.

At a time where opposition to the 47,000 U.S. troops stationed in Okinawa and other parts of Japan has reach a tipping point, it seems the new U.S. strategy may be to simply outwait the more vocal older generations and instead focus on the younger generations who are already largely apathetic to such issues.

In the first issue of the comic (which can be seen at http://www.usfj.mil/manga), an American boy, Usa-kun (U.S.A.-kun), comes to Japan and befriends a Japanese girl called Arai Anzu (sounds like “Alliance when spoken by Japanese). He tells her he has come to defend her home because they
are “important friends.”

“It’s good to have a friend you can rely on to go with you,” the little girl concludes.

Typical of modern reporting, the media articles merely regurgitate the press release given to them without adding any neutrality to the story, submitting obediently and serving as mouthpiece to the story’s “source” – which in this case was just a phone call with no apparent follow-up or questions challenging the motives of the manga.

Some gems spewed by U.S. forces’ propaganda office rep, Neil Fisher, include explanations on how the cute bunny-like characters “explore and learn about the U.S. military in Japan and its role in the U.S.-Japan alliance.” He nearly gives away his hand when he admits the U.S. chose manga because it’s “a very common way of communicating in Japan,” or “It is read as much if not more than newspapers” and “A lot of people love manga… Manga is a very light-hearted way to carry information.”

This isn’t the first time the U.S. has used comics to infiltrate the minds of Japanese children. In 2008, amid heavy opposition to an American nuclear powered aircraft carrier being permanently stationed at Yokosuka just south of Tokyo, the U.S. handed out 26,000 copies to children and young residents of a 200-page comic staring an American navy hero. The comic depicted the U.S. navy servicemen as ideal neighbors at a time when safety concerns over nuclear energy and crimes committed by Americans stationed in the area were in the spotlight.

[Damascus]

would expect this to be a big hit in the comic anti-America section. The Japanese manga consumers are not as stupid as their American counterparts by a long shot. This will backfire, hopefully(I might be wrong).