Okinawans sick and tired of occupational hazard
'Look at the marines, with their big houses and fancy cars,' said Keiko Mihara, standing outside Kadena air force base in Okinawa. 'They come to our shops and bars but we cannot go to theirs. They are waiting to be sent to die in Iraq and can do anything.'
Ms Mihara was pointing through the barbed wire fence of the biggest US Air Force base in East Asia, where the wide streets and manicured lawns contrast sharply with the busy lanes and crowded apartment blocks outside. 'Sixty years is long enough. It's time for them to move to somewhere else in Japan [or] go home. We'd be safer.'
Ms Mihara, 40, an office worker and mother of two, was speaking for a majority of the 1.2 million inhabitants of Okinawa who want a sharp reduction in the US military, which occupies almost one-fifth of the main island, with more than 50,000 US military personnel and dependants, including 18,000 marines.
The decades-long protest movement was given a boost in October, when the US and Japanese governments issued a 14-page bilateral report on improved military co-operation and a realignment of forces and bases in Japan, which included the withdrawal of 7,000 marines from Okinawa over six years. A final report is due next month.
This review has sparked a flurry of meetings and campaigning. 'The dream of Okinawa people is an island that's a haven of peace, without bases,' its governor, Keiichi Inamine, told a public gathering on December 17.
The protesters want their land back, an end to aircraft noise, an end to accidents with aircraft and bombs landing in civilian areas, and for the rest of Japan to share the burden.
Fuelling the anger are regular reports of misconduct by US soldiers. In November, a court in the capital Naha gave an 18-month suspended sentence to Sergeant Armando Valdez, from the Kadena base, for groping a 10-year-old girl and taking a photo of her naked chest in a car park.
The event forced the base commander to confine his men to the base. Ms Mihara said local women avoided the area around the bases at night.
Data published by the prefectural government shows 5,076 criminal cases between 1972 and 2001 involving US military, civilian employees and their families.
The foreigners can't be arrested by Japanese police unless the US Army chooses to hand them over, a privilege that many Okinawans consider a disgraceful hangover from colonialism.
The protests draw on a well of anger and resentment among native Okinawans that dates back to 1879, when their country was annexed by the aggressive new Meiji government and their king sent to exile in Tokyo.
After the second world war, the US took over the islands, putting many of the population in camps. Of the total land area of the prefecture, 11 per cent is US bases. Okinawa has 0.6 per cent of the land area of Japan and 70 per cent of the US bases. Washington returned the prefecture to Japan in 1972.
But not everyone wants the Americans to leave. 'Our soldiers are as bad as the Americans, but the newspapers don't report their crimes,' said taxi driver Masahiro Tanaka. 'The Americans keep our economy going. The rents the landowners receive from the government for the bases are more than Okinawa earns from tourism and the Americans spend heavily.
'What would happen if the bases closed? Our agriculture cannot compete with products from overseas. Our fishing industry is limited. We cannot live entirely off tourism.'
