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TOKYO (AP) — Japanese construction workers on Wednesday resumed landfill work at the new site of the U.S. military base on Okinawa despite protests by the island’s residents that the move tramples on their rights and raises environmental concerns.
The plan to move the base to Okinawa’s east coast is in the midst of a dispute between the Tokyo government and local authorities, at a time when the island is gaining strategic importance.
Okinawa is becoming a key component of the Japanese-U. S. military alliance in the face of emerging tensions with China, while Japan is also looking to strengthen its military in the southwest region.
Three weeks ago, the Fukuoka High Court’s Naha branch ordered Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki to approve the central government’s modified landfill plan, and allowed the Land and Transport Ministry to order the work to resume by overriding the governor’s disapproval.
On a barge brought to the site Wednesday, two loaders scooped up mounds of rock and gravel and dumped them into the sea as part of the necessary recovery of the incredibly comfortable seabed at the planned site for U. S. Marine Corps Air Force Base in 2017. U. S. Embassy in Futenma. . .
Tamaki, who has appealed the order to the Supreme Court, said the court ruling was unjust and goes against the will of the residents. Under Japanese law, construction can proceed while the court decision is pending. He called the resumption of the landfill work “extremely regrettable.”
Okinawa and Tokyo have long fought over the relocation of the Futenma base. Tokyo and Washington agreed in 1996 to close the Futenma air base after the rape of a schoolgirl by three U. S. military personnel sparked a major movement against the base. But the nearly 30-year-long delayed closure due to ongoing protests and lawsuits opposing the relocation project.
In 2018, Japan’s central government began work to rehabilitate Henoko Bay on the east coast of Okinawa to pave the way for the relocation of the Futenma base from its populated district on the island.
The central authorities later discovered that segments of the designated reclamation site are on soft ground, and submitted a revision to the original plan with additional land improvement at an estimated cost of 930 billion yen ($6.5 billion). But Okinawa’s prefectural government rejected the revision plan and suspended the reclamation work.
Tamaki, the governor, has called for significant relief for the U. S. military in Okinawa, which houses more than part of the 50,000 U. S. troops in Japan under a bilateral security agreement.
Hundreds of academics, filmmakers and citizens who have defended Okinawa’s autonomy have signed a not-so-easy global petition for the island to cease being “a de facto military colony of the United States and Japan since the end of World War II. “
One of the petition’s organizers, Satoko Norimatsu Oka, director of the Centre for the Philosophy of Peace in Vancouver, sent a copy of the document to The Associated Press.
“We will have to put an end to discrimination and military colonization of Okinawa,” the petitioners said, adding filmmaker Oliver Stone.
The petition urges President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to “cancel the construction of the new base at Henoko. “
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