Makoto Arakaki: Photographs of the Okinawa Prefectural office sit-in

(Rally at Okinawa Prefecture office building. Photograph: Makoto Arakaki)

Mark Selden, editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal, notes that Okinawans have created the most vibrant and sustained grassroots movement for democracy and peace in the Asia-Pacific, comparable only to the Korean movement in intensity, longevity, and creativity.

Makoto Arakaki's photographs of the late December sit-in at the Okinawa Prefecture's administration building captures the intensity of not only this latest moment in history, but also of the breadth and depth of the entire Okinawan Movement, now in its sixth decade.

Okinawans, including prominent elected political leaders and journalists, engaged in a successful 24/7 sit-in at the Okinawa Prefecture administration building to prevent the delivery to the Okinawan Prefectural officials of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the DC-Tokyo U.S. Marine base proposal. Part of the EIA did reach the office in a surreptitious 4 a.m. backdoor delivery, but not the entire document.

According to sociologist Masami Mel Kawamura, the Japanese government wanted "to rob the Okinawa prefectural government of precious time for preparation of "Governor's Comments" on the EIS while distracting the media's attention. According to the EIA law and ordinance, Governor's Comments for the airport plan should be issued within 45 days after the submission of EIS while for the reclamation plan they should be issued within 90 days."

The EIS alleges that the destruction of Oura Bay and Henoko to make way for offshore runways for military aircraft would not result in any significant environmental impacts to Oura Bay's biodiverse sea life, including the federally protected Okinawa dugong.

Joy Kogawa's "Three Deities": Okinawa's history & culture of peace

Japanese Canadian author Joy Kogawa has long been a supporter of the Okinawan democracy and peace movement. Her brother, Reverend Timothy Nakayama, an Episcopalian minister, served in Okinawa after his retirement. Kogawa's former husband is an Okinawan Canadian whose family lost their home because of U.S. military seizure.


(Joy Kogawa and Reverend Timothy Nakayama.
Photo: Todd Wong, GungHaggisFatChoy)

This excerpt from 'Three Deities," a speech Joy Kogawa gave in Stockholm in 2002 illuminates the profound meaning of the Okinawan culture of peace and examines its threat to the primitive forces of violence:

My brother, a retired Episcopalian priest, was in Okinawa for a few years in the 90’s. He told me that in 1815, Captain Basil Hall of the British navy steamed into Naha, Okinawa and was amazed at what he found. The story goes, that on his way back to England, he dropped in to the island of St. Helena and had a chat with Napoleon.

“I have been to an island of peace,” the captain reported. “The island has no soldiers and no weapons.”

“No weapons? Oh, but there must be a few swords around,” Napoleon remarked.

“No. Even the swords have been embargoed by the king.”

Napoleon, we’re told, was astonished. “No soldiers, no weapons, no swords! It must be heaven.”

A unique culture of peace had developed in one tiny part of our warring planet. We might well wonder about the spiritual heritage of such a people. Today they boast not just the longest living humans in the world – the number of centenarians per 100,000 is six times that of the U.S. – but the world’s longest disability free life expectancy.

According to The Okinawa Program by Dr. Bradley Willcox, Dr. Craig Willcox and Dr. Makoto Suzuki, Okinawan society “… reflects a cultural cosmology where the female embodies and transmits sacred forces (shiji). Most Okinawan villages still have “divine priestesses,” called noro or nuru, whose job it is to commune with the gods and ancestors and serve as spiritual advisers. In fact, until the late nineteenth century, the king’s well-being and success as ruler depended on the spiritual sustenance granted by the high priestess (kikoe ogimi), who was of equivalent social standing. This is a unique cultural phenomenon. Although women act as religious functionaries in other societies, there is no other modern society in the world where women hold title as the main providers of religious services.”

When Japan, that once warring nation, took over the kingdom, there was an entirely bloodless coup. No soldiers were found to help later with the invasion of Korea. A disobedient people, Japan concluded. A kingdom without soldiers was clearly impossible. Okinawa, with its history of peace, must surely have had a culture as close to heaven as this planet has managed. And perhaps therefore a special target for the forces of hate.

On Easter day in 1945, on the day of triumph for the Prince of Peace, war came to the people of peace. The battle of Okinawa was the biggest land battle of history to that point. In twelve weeks, in eighty-four days, 234,000 people died, more than the people killed in August in the two atomic bombings.

My brother was in Okinawa in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the battle. Beginning at Easter, and for twelve weeks after, with the pastoral candle lit, a breathtaking action of speech took place. For two hours at noon and two hours at night, the dead were recalled and their names read. These were not just prayers for the Okinawan victims -- parents, grandparents, infants, schoolchildren, the familiar members of the community. The embracing in prayer included Japanese and American soldiers, those who had brought this disaster upon the most gentle of peoples. Here was mercy quietly demonstrated. It did not make headline news. But the Prince of Peace, mocked and murdered on Easter day 1945, was powerfully alive on Easter fifty years later.

In Okinawa’s Peace Park, the names are engraved on row upon row of granite slabs resembling the waves of the ocean nearby. A white towering structure encloses a huge statue of Kannon. She is described as an Asian symbol (with no deification) and is the central figure in the structure where each year on August 15 an interfaith service is held.

(Many thanks to Joy Kogawa for permission to excerpt this speech, published at positions: east asia cultures critique Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 2005).

Ongoing Sit-In at Okinawa Prefecture Office

Scholar of East Asian history and politics Gavan McCormack has long compared the Okinawan movement to the Polish Solidarity Movement, in terms of tactics and the similar widespread challenge to undemocratic domination by a client state satellite of a world power.

The Polish Solidarity Movement, although it erupted in the summer of 1980, had been fueled by citizen dissatisfaction since 1945, when Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a betrayal of trust and principles of national self-determination, delivered Poland and other Eastern and Central European countries to the former Soviet Union for military occupation. Okinawa was delivered to the U.S. by the postwar Japanese government, for similar use. The Okinawan movement, like the democracy movements in Eastern and Central Europe, has been in the making since 1945.

The ongoing sit-in at the Okinawa Prefecture Building (fueled by collective moral, spiritual, social and political energy passed down through generations .

Sociologist Masami Mel Kawamura:

This shot of the meeting, held at the lobby of Okinawa prefecture building on Dec.28 , shows what our sit-in is like (still now, a considerable people are sitting in Okinawa Prefecture Building).

The media tends to report sensational scenes which emphasize the "conflict" between the Okinawan people and the Japanese government , and to highlight peoples' anger. But we are fighting against the Okinawa Defense Bureau's [Okinawa arm of the Japanese Defense Ministry] outrageous submission of the EIS. Our sit-in is in collaboration with Okinawa Prefecture Assembly members and Diet members from Okinawa.

At the meeting, they reported how they addressed Okinawa Prefecture and Okinawa Defense Bureau, to block the submission of EIS documents, after the Okinawa Defense Bureau's submission of EIS at 4:00 AM.

Although we have been showing strong opposition and Okinawa prefecture is in winter holiday, the Okinawa Defense Bureau is still trying to sneak and deliver the rest of the EIS, which is needed to meet the requirement in EIA process. It forces people now to keep a continuous 24-hour sit-in at the prefecture building.

GANGJEONG PEACE PHOTO STUDIO open from Dec. 28, 2011 -Jan. 3, 2012

Seoul-based photographer David Fox:

These young and fully inspired university students are going to open "GANGJEONG PEACE PHOTO STUDIO" from Dec. 28 ~ Jan.3.2012.

The JOONGANG Universiry Photo-documentary team "THE FIELD" had their summer with GANGJEONG and had host several photo-exihibition with their deep depth photography about GANGJEONG and it's struggle against naval base.. This winter, they will do other experimental documenting efforts: "The Peace photo studio"

Everyone in GANGJEONG can visit peace studio for the family,id,snap or any kind of photography which who want and need in the professional quality and grade. The entire studio lighting equipments will be carried out with them. Also in peace photo studio, every products which GANGJEONG PEACE CORP are selling now will be taken pictures by them.

Feel free and hope everyone can join us. For the peace of GANGJEONG.

Noda lifts ban on weapons exports

Bad News for Article 9 supporters: "Japan PM lifts ban on arms exports":

Noda’s decision, long sought by the Japanese industry, is likely to draw strong protests from many quarters at home that want no departure from the pacifist tradition that has defined Tokyo’s international orientation since the end of the World War II.

Some Asian countries including China, which bore the brunt of Japanese aggression during World War II, are certain to respond warily.

Battle of Okinawa Update: Latest Okinawan citizen rally against delivery of EIS

(Latest rally against the delivery of EIS to Okinawa. Photos: Masami Mel Kawamura)

Update from Kinay Oshiro at Okinawa Outreach on FB:

URGENT. The environmental report was delivered to the prefecture, at 4 in the morning. Another mistreat of Okinawa by Japan.

Lee Myung Bak administration's March of Folly continues in S. Korea: Four Rivers & Jeju Island

29 civil society representatives and peace activists including Gangjeong villagers and Father Moon, a Catholic priest, were arrested on Dec. 26, 2011 for obstructing the entrance to the naval base site, located on residential and farm property forcibly seized by the state from the villagers

In her 1984 book, The March of Folly, historian Barbara Tuchman charted how governments have acted against their own best interests from Troy to the Vietnam War. It would be interesting to see her perspective on the Lee Myung Bak administration's massive destruction of what's left of South Korea's natural environment, from rivers to wetlands to the most beautiful coastline on Jeju Island.

S. Korea ranked the second worst nation in environmental degradation in proportion to natural resources, just behind Singapore, in a 2010 study based on seven indicators: natural forest loss, habitat conversion, fisheries and other marine captures, fertilizer use, water pollution, carbon emissions from land use, and species threat. The professor leading the study noted that, “The environmental crises currently gripping the planet are the corollary of excessive human consumption of natural resources. There is considerable and mounting evidence that elevated degradation and loss of habitats and species are compromising ecosystems that sustain the quality of life for billions of people worldwide.”

Lee may be compared to former Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, a former construction company executive remembered for his 1970's-era construction boondoggles. Lee, also a former construction company executive, never met a river or coastline that didn't need to be dredged, demolished and paved over, by means of transfer of public funds into private construction company coffers. His "Four Rivers" project will cost S. Korean citizens nearly $33 billion and will, if completed, destroy what's little left of habitat for critically endangered wildlife dependent on shallow rivers and wetlands. His Jeju Island military base plan would, if completed, destroy a soft coral habitat; the Korean peninsula's only natural dolphin habitat; and an indigenous farming (tangerine groves) village.

To achieve his policies, which are not supported by the majority of citizens who want a clean natural environment and democratic society, Lee has relied upon violent tactics reminiscent of South Korea's military dictatorship era, routinely using state power to violate private property rights, democratic process, and individual freedom of expression.

SoonYawl Park, a research fellow at Seoul National University, provides a recent analysis, "Korea's rivers take brunt of 'shoveling' politics," at Asia Times (originally published at The Asia-Pacific Journal):

The Four Rivers project is far from its original goal of developing the regional economy and the rivers into a nature-friendly zone. Instead, it has produced environmental degradation and cultural and ecological destruction, while channeling super profits to the big construction companies.

Security analyst Matt Hoey charts the latest at Jeju Island in this commentary for The Hankyoreh: "Is S.Korean navy finally backed into a corner on the Jeju Base project?"'.

Okinawa Update: Blocking the van delivering the EIA of the Tokyo-D.C. proposal to destroy Oura Bay & Henoko to make way for another U.S. military base

Kinay Oshiro via Okinawa Outreach on FB:

Blocking the van delivering the Japanese Defense Ministry's Environmental Impact Assessment of the Tokyo-D.C. proposal to destroy Oura Bay and Henoko to make way for a U.S. military base.. Director Shiroma is convincing the driver to go back.

Noda administration sends EIS by mail to Okinawa despite widespread public outcry

Kyodo via Mainichi: "Gov't sends environment report on Futenma base relocation by mail":

The report, the sources said, is expected to conclude there would be no problem with noise caused by a U.S. plan to deploy the MV22 Osprey vertical takeoff and landing aircraft in Okinawa in 2012.

Tokyo attempts to subvert Okinawan democratic process by submission of US military base EIS before the New Year

(Democracy activists in Okinawa stage sit-in. Photo: Henokohama Tsushin blog
Okinawan sociologist Dr. Masami Mel Kawamura explains the latest citizen action in Okinawa:

Okinawan people stage a sit-in protest in the Okinawa Prefecture Office building today to block the Japanese government's submission of Environment Impact Statement (EIS) for a new US military base in Henoko....

Background and analysis of Tokyo's latest attempt to move forward on this costly project rejected almost unanimously (99% ) by Okinawan citizens at Okinawa Outreach: "Okinawa Defense Bureau to submit EIS":

Amid Okinawa’s strong opposition, the Okinawa Defense Bureau (OBD) [Okinawan arm of the Japanese Defense Ministry] will submit its Environment Impact Statement (EIS) for the planned US base in Henoko/Oura Bay on December 26 to show Washington that the construction plan is on the right track as promised, according to the Ryukyu Shimpo .

By having the ODB submitting its EIS just before the New Year's season, the Japanese government can rob the Okinawa prefectural government of precious time for preparation of "Governor's Comments" on the EIS while distracting the media's attention to the base construction issues. According to the EIA law and ordinance, Governor's Comments for the airport plan should be issued within 45 days after the submission of EIS while for the reclamation plan they should be issued within 90 days.

The Okinawa Prefectural Assembly and municipal assemblies on the islands have adopted resolutions protesting against the submission of the EIS.

On the Street, citizens' groups stage protest rallies everyday against the ODB's submission of EIS and the Japanese government's handling of the base construction issues. Citizens also held rally on December 19 in front of the US Consulate in Urasoe City, criticizing the US government for "interfering" in domestic affairs.