Okinawan Delegation goes to Washington; Western & Okinawan scholars issue separate statements with same request: Abandon plan for new military base in Henoko

 Left: Mr. Seiryou Arakaki, Chairman of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly's special committee on U.S. bases. Center: Ms. Keiko Itokazu, Upper House member of Japanese Parliament. Right: Mr. Caesar Uehara, Naha City Council.

(Photo courtesy of Ms. Keiko Itokazu)

This week, three Okinawan political leaders who comprised the 2014 "No Henoko Base delegation," visited Washington, D.C. to meet with US Congressional members, think tanks, and scholars to convey the results of Mayor Susumu Inamine's January 19, 2014 reelection in Nago and  Okinawan concerns. They told Americans that Mayor Inamine was reelected because of his promise to protect Henoko, an environmentally sensitive coastal area in central Okinawa, under threat by an ecologically destruction military base plan. 

The base plan, pushed by a few military construction companies in Okinawa with close ties to the LDP, never had the support of the Okinawan people, who have viewed it as an ecologically destructive boondoggle.  The current Okinawa governor, Hirokazu Nakaima won reelection in 2010 because of his campaign promise to oppose the plan.  However in late December, Governor Nakaima capitulated to the current Japanese (LDP-run) administration and signed an approval for military landfill. All the while, he made it clear that he did so only under political duress, reiterating his belief that it was not politically viable.

Governor Nakaima's surprise hairpin switch galvanized the formation of an informal network of scholars, writers,  and peace activists who quickly came together to issue a statement (now a petition) asking the Japanese and US governments to honor the popular will of the Okinawan people: abandon the Henoko plan and close Futenma, a flight training base dangerously located in the middle of Ginowan City in central Okinawa.

Johan Galtung (Photo:Transcend.org)

Signatories include Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, Peace and Conflict Studies founder Johan Galtung, anti-nuclear activists Angie Zelter and Alice Slater, Pulitzer Prize winning historians Herbert Bix and John Dower, scholars Mark Selden, Gavan McCormack, Satoko Norimatsu, Laura Hein, Peter Kuznick, and Norma Field, filmmakers Oliver Stone and John Junkerman, environmentalist David Suzuki, novelists Joy Kogawa and Kyo Maclear, Daniel Ellsberg, and Sheila Johnson, widow of Chalmers Johnson:

Not unlike the 20th century U.S. Civil Rights struggle, Okinawans have non-violently pressed for the end to their military colonization. They tried to stop live-fire military drills that threatened their lives by entering the exercise zone in protest; they formed human chains around military bases to express their opposition; and about a hundred thousand people, one tenth of the population have turned out periodically for massive demonstrations.

Octogenarians initiated the campaign to prevent the construction of the Henoko base with a sit-in that has been continuing for years. The prefectural assembly passed resolutions to oppose the Henoko base plan. In January 2013, leaders of all the 41 municipalities of Okinawa signed the petition to the government to remove the newly deployed MV-22 Osprey from Futenma base and to give up the plan to build a replacement base in Okinawa.

We support the people of Okinawa in their non-violent struggle for peace, dignity, human rights and protection of the environment.

On Thursday, Okinawan scholars and journalists issued their own statement, with the same request: "Respect the voice of the people of Okinawa." The Ryukyu Shimpo reports:

This statement was made in response to Susumu Inamine’s re-election as mayor of Nago. The signers stressed that the election result was an expression of dissent towards the new base not only by the citizens of Nago, but also by the Okinawan people...

Seigen Miyazato, a political scientist and adviser of the Okinawa International Issues Study Group, and other signers issued the statement at a news conference held on January 27. The signers included scholars who specialize in constitutional law and political science, and journalists...

One year ago the mayors of all 41 municipalities visited Prime Minister Abe to submit the petition to cancel the relocation plan within the prefecture. Kunitoshi Sakurai, a professor at Okinawa University, stressed, “We must rebuild an ‘All-Okinawa’ system. We have the common ground that we will decide the future of the region for ourselves.” Masaaki Gabe, a professor at the University of the Ryukyus, Tateki Yafuso, a former professor of the University of the Ryukyus and Masako Yafuso, a board member of the Okinawa Human Rights Association, attended the news conference.

Left to Right: Seiryou Arakaki, Chairman of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly's special committee on U.S. bases; Ms. Keiko Itokazu; Peter Kuznick, American University professor; Caesar Uehara, Naha City Council; 

 and John Feffer, co-director of "Foreign Policy in Focus", a publication by the Institute for Policy Studies. 

(Photo courtesy of Ms. Keiko Itokazu)

In "The Front Line in the Struggle for Democracy in Japan – Nago City, Okinawa," published on Jan. 27 at The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Gavan McCormack outlines and explains the significance of this latest episode of the sixteen-year struggle of Okinawans to close Futenma  and to halt the proposed construction of the air training base's ostensible "replacement" at Henoko.  

The East Asia scholar (co-author of Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States) frames the conflict as construction pork barrel politics and militarism versus vibrant citizen democracy and nonviolence in Okinawa.  McCormack (an original signatory) notes that the international letter on behalf of the movement uplifted Mayor Inamine, Okinawan political leaders and activists during the Nago campaign:

Many, including Mayor Inamine, spoke of taking heart from the sense that the Okinawan cause, Nago’s cause, was just and internationally supported. Solidarity is something that Okinawans have long looked for and deserved - by the justice of their struggle, their persistence over so many years, and the resolutely non-violent, citizen-centred democratic frame of their movement. 

Okinawan daily Ryukyu Shimpo's coverage here, "Opposition leader Itokazu visits the U.S. to request cancellation of Henoko landfill."

Cherry blossoms in full bloom in Nago, Okinawa

Cherry blossoms in full bloom Nago, Okinawa, 

via Okinawa Outreach on FB. (Photo: Sueko Yamauchi)

Alexis Dudden: Will the U.S. practice the democratic values it preaches in Okinawa?

Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, and 28 boats with local (mostly elder) activists from the "Save Life Society" stage a flotilla, with a large 'dugong' on top of Henoko reef where a proposed American military base

 would be built across important dugong habitat. With the planned construction of the airbase, dugongs, 

which are one of Japan's cultural icons and protected animals, are about to lose their habitat. 

(Photo: Greenpeace calls for dugong rescue in Japan: Protest against American airbase intensifies, 2005)

Great article—"Democratic Values and US Bases in Okinawa Will the U.S. practice the democratic values it preaches in Okinawa?"—at The Diplomat by historian Alexis Dudden (one of the signatories of a statement by North American authors, scholars, filmmakers, in support of democracy and peace for Okinawa) overviews the history of local community opposition to the proposed destruction of the last habitat of the critically endangered Okinawa dugong and repeats a question Okinawans have been asking for a long time:

...Villagers who had never considered themselves politically active joined the cause.

The numbers remain small but consistently larger than the government-backed construction companies have anticipated; at one point, fearing confrontation, Japanese surveyors received special permission from the U.S. military command and launched their boats from nearby Camp Schwab instead of the public dock at Henoko. Protesters responded with a peaceful flotilla strategy: an “in water” sit-in made up of kayaks and other small craft. The struggle intensified with government-backed construction firms attempting to bore holes through the coral reefs to erect scaffolding on the one hand, while protesters tried everything in their power to stop them. In December 2004, several construction workers became reckless with their heavy equipment; a few members of the “Society for the Protection of Life” wound up in the hospital. News of their injuries outraged fishermen throughout Okinawa. In solidarity, they sailed to Oura Bay, expanding the resistance from protecting life in Henoko to protecting life in all of Okinawa.

John Einarsen: Waking up to snow in Kyoto...

John Einarsen, Kyoto Journal founding editor:

Waking up to snow in Kyoto is one of the best things in life. It is an event, an occasion when the world is totally transformed...

Here is one of my favorite Kyoto spots in the snow—Nanzenji

Still Praying for Tohoku: Uncanny Terrain follows mayoral candidacy of organic farmer in Fukushima

"Uncanny Terrain"  2012-2013 interview footage with Akira Asami, organic farmer in Fukushima

Via filmmakers Junko Kajino and Ed M. Koziarski, at work on Uncanny Terrain, a documentary exploring the lives of organic farmers in Fukushima in the aftermath of 3/11:

Akihiro Asami left his life as a city salaryman to raise his family on a self-sustaining organic farm in the mountains of Kitakata, on the western outskirts of Fukushima prefecture.

When the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melted down in 2011, Akihiro's wife Harumi evacuated with their two young daughters. Akihiro stayed behind to continue farming. In the face of public fears of Fukushima food, some of Akihiro's neighbors were unable to keep their farms going and moved away. Akihiro found his crops showed no detectible contamination from the fallout. He worked to hold his community together.

In 2012, Harumi and the girls moved back to Kitakata, accepting the risk of exposure over the pain and disruption of separation and displacement.

Akihiro Asami on the campaign trail in the snow

In December, Akihiro announced his campaign for mayor of Kitakata on a platform of local economies and natural agriculture as an alternative to the unsustainable systems that spawned the nuclear disaster.

Next week we return to Fukushima to capture Akihiro's dark horse campaign, a hopeful protest by one Fukushima farmer for a better way to live.

Please help us to continue our journey, complete the film, and share the stories of Akihiro and his fellow Fukushima farmers with the world. We gratefully accept tax-deductible donations at Uncanny Terrain.

See more photos of Akihiro Asami and follow the election at Uncanny Terrain on Facebook.

To the Japanese Fisherman of Taji from Yoko Ono

TO THE JAPANESE FISHERMAN OF TAIJI
FROM YOKO ONO, 20 JANUARY 2014.

Dear Japanese Fishermen of Taiji,

I understand how you must feel about the one-sided-ness of the West to be angry at your traditional capture and slaughter of Dolphins. But that tradition was made only when the world, and Japanese Fishermen did not know what it meant to do harm to the Dolphins. I'm sure you have heard so many speeches in which all of these things have been discussed. So I will not bore you with it.

But I think you should think of this situation from the point-of-view of the big picture. Japan has gone through such hard times lately. And we need the sympathy and help of the rest of the world. It will give an excuse for big countries and their children in China, India and Russia to speak ill of Japan when we should be communicating our strong love for peace, not violence.

I am sure that it is not easy, but please consider the safety of the future of Japan, surrounded by many powerful countries which are always looking for the chance to weaken the power of our country. The future of Japan and its safety depends on many situations, but what you do with Dolphins now can create a very bad relationship with the whole world.

The way you are insisting on a big celebration of killing so many Dolphins and kidnapping some of them to sell to the zoos and restaurants at this very politically sensitive time, will make the children of the world hate the Japanese.

For many, many years and decades we have worked hard to receive true understanding of the Japanese from the world. And, because of our effort, Japan is now respected as a country of good power and ingenuity. This did not happen without our efforts of many decades.

But what we enjoy now, can be destroyed literally in one day. I beg of you to consider our precarious situation after the nuclear disaster (which could very well effect the rest of the world, as well).

Please use political tact and cancel the festival which will be considered by the rest of the world as a sign of Japanese arrogance, ignorance, and love for an act of violence.

Thank you.

Yoko Ono
20 January 2014

---

Postscript: Dolphin hunting and selling dolphins to aquariums around the world are not Japanese traditions. The large-scale hunts at Taiji only began in 1969.  Smaller scale kills are an"invented tradition" dating back to the Meiji (1868-1912) period, when the Japanese government sought to replace the Japanese archipelago's diverse regional and local cultures with a standardized state-directed national culture. Large-scale whale hunts also began during the postwar period, introduced to Japan by the US Occupation.  Traditional Japanese cuisine is characterized by no or sparing use of meat of mammals. 

Background on Taiji dolphin kills as an"invented tradition" at this 2009 post "Taiji (killing dolphins is not a Japanese tradition) and Beyond: Saving Dolphins and Whales throughout our Planet." Background on the even more recent large-scale kills at "Taiji Dolphin Drives Started in 1969, and Are Not a Part of Japanese Tradition" by Candice Calloway Whiting (published at Seattlepi.com).

Related post: "Blackfish explores the capture and treatment of killer whales in marine entertainment parks; (Japan: 4 captive Orcas); ocean sanctuaries as a way forward...," TTT, Oct. 26, 2013)

Moral Arc of the Universe Bends Towards Justice: Mayor Susumu Inamine, defender of Henoko, wins reelection in Nago

(Photo: Shingetsu News Agency)

Shingetsu News Agency President Michael Penn, who covered the campaign and election in Nago:

It's victory for democracy, popular sovereignty, citizen's movement against the bribes and intimidation from Tokyo.

Agree with Penn's POV.  See the reelection not as win against Tokyo per se, but, instead, as a victory for Okinawan and local determination to use established democratic procedures to protect the traditional community and beautiful natural environment of Henoko, a fishing village situated in an exquisite coastal area.

Penn's photo of the moment of the announcement of Mayor Inamine's reelection (after sixteen years of struggle in Nago to save Henoko, and especially after the shock of Governor Nakaima's abrupt late December hairpin switch from his 2010 campaign promise to protect Henoko) brings to mind this quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, as Americans enjoy the peace and justice activist's birthday holiday weekend in the US:

"Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice...I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Mayor Inamine vowed to use his local authority to block the military landfill, proclaiming that his victory was an unofficial referendum on Henoko:

This election was easy to understand. It was about one issue, the Henoko issue...

Most of the politicians in Washington and Tokyo who have made deals concerning Henoko (and journalists writing about Henoko) have never visited Okinawa and this biodiverse coastal area, and, therefore, have no understanding of the precious ecosystem and cultural heritage at stake. It's much more than a "less densely populated area in the north of the island."

Biologists once called Okinawa the “Galápagos of the East” for its rich biodiversity. Although the herds of thousands of dugongs that once grazed on seagrass on Okinawa's coasts are gone, around fifty of the critically endangered sea mammals (cousins to the manatee) still swim with similarly endangered sea turtles in the coastal waters of Henoko. Together with rare birds, fish, crustaceans, insects (classified as rank 1, warranting the highest level of protection by the Okinawa Prefectural Government), the Henoko coast is still a prime habitat of the unique biodiversity of Okinawa. A colony of critically endangered blue coral was discovered in 2007. A World Wildlife Fund study found 36 new species of crabs and shrimps in 2009.  And Tokyo marine science researchers found a “rain-forest”-like variety of 182 different species of sea grasses and marine plants, four of which were probably new species, in Oura Bay in 2010.

In December 2013, Japan moved to designate Yanbaru, a subtropical rainforest (which includes the proposed military landfill site), a natural World Heritage site:

Environmental NGOs are concerned that the reclamation [landfill] and its concomitant introduction of invasive alien species like the Argentine ant would lead to the destruction of the vulnerable island ecosystem.

[The International Union for Conservation of Nature] IUCN has adopted three Recommendations/Resolution requesting the two governments [US and Japan] to review the construction plan.

The Okinawa dugong, a natural monument, is beloved in the mainland as well as Okinawa. Dozens of mainland Japanese environmental NGOs representing hundreds of thousands of Japanese people have supported their Okinawan counterparts and the elder residents of Henoko who have kept watch at a 24/7 sit-in Henoko since this struggle began in 1996.

On January 9, a plaintiffs group (and legal team of 126 people) announced they initiated a lawsuit seeking the cancellation of Nakaima's approval of the Henoko landfill:

Article 4 of the Public Water Body Reclamation Act requires that the landfill work properly and reasonably use national land. The act also requires the work to be environmentally friendly. The landfill approval by the governor does not meet the requirements of the act.

The plaintiffs and legal team are filing a suit against the Okinawa Prefectural Government. They seek cancellation of the approval. At the same time of the filing the action, they seek the stay of execution of the approval.

Kunitoshi Sakurai, a member of the Okinawan Environmental Network, and a professor and former president of Okinawa University, detailed the environmental protection problems in "Japan’s Illegal Environmental Impact Assessment of the Henoko Base," noting that Japanese backroom environmental assessment procedures and laws do not come close to the standards of other developed countries. The founding chairman of the Japan Society for Impact Assessment, Nagoya University professor emeritus Shimazu Yasuo described the Henoko EIA as the "worst in Japanese history."

Even a former Minister of Defense, Satoshi Morimoto, criticized what he described as the "sloppiness" of the Environmental Impact study and the concealment of “'inconvenient facts' of the appearance of the dugong...He asserted, "the Yambaru forest and rivers, whose biodiversity is recognized under both national and prefectural plans, cannot be protected under the planned relocation."

Additionally Earthjustice, a US environmental law firm,  the Japan Environmental Lawyers Federation (JELF) and  Okinawan environmental NGOS will file a new Dugong lawsuit in the US, at the same federal court in San Francisco (in which they filed the first Dugong Lawsuit in 2003):

The lawsuit aims to make the U.S. government stop the Japanese government from entering the area for the reclamation work. The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of the United States requires its government to protect cultural heritage around the world. If the government’s actions could affect cultural assets in other countries it must take that impact into account...

The plaintiffs, including the Okinawa dugong and three Japanese citizens, as well as six Japanese and American environmental associations have brought another action against Secretary of Defense and the United States Department of Defense for violations of the National Historic Preservation Act. They allege that the defendants approved plans for construction of the Futenma replacement facility without taking into account the effect of the construction of the military facility on the Okinawa dugong, which is a marine mammal of cultural and historical significance to the Japanese people...

The plaintiffs are same environmental groups and individuals who filed the Okinawa dugong lawsuit in 2003, which they effectively won. In the interlocutory decision, the judge decided that the dugong is subject to the National Historic Preservation Act, and that the government not evaluating the impact on the dugong was a violation of the law.

Kagohashi said, “We considered protective measures for the dugong in the previous case, but this new lawsuit aims to block the construction involved in the landfill. The American Environmental Law is very strict when it comes to the destruction of the natural environment. Our chances of victory are better in the United States than in Japan.”

The first Okinawa Dugong Lawsuit was filed in 2003. The same federal district court determined in the interlocutory decision of Jan. 2008 that the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) applied to the Okinawa dugong as a protected species.

The new lawsuit will not only take protective measures for the dugong as the original lawsuit did; it will additionally more fully address the issue of military landfill construction. U.S. environmental laws are more comprehensive and impartially administered than Japanese environmental laws. According to legal experts, the issue of whether or not a ban on the construction is in the interests of the general public will be a central issue.

In 1966, Ryukyus postal stamp commemorates the dugong's designation as a natural monument. 

(Image: Save the Dugong Campaign Center) 

"Who hopes for closing the sea of HENOKO?"

"Who hopes for closing the sea of HENOKO？20140113"

(Courtesy of Yoshio Akamine, StudioＯ Akamine Zoukeishitsu, Naha, Okinawa)

Shingetsu News Agency in Okinawa covering the Nago mayoral election

Analysts are calling the Nago election an unofficial referendum on Okinawa Governor Nakaima's approval of military landfill in Henoko (to make way for a new training base opposed by the majority of Okinawans and residents of Nago), a municipality in northern Okinawa which includes Henoko.  In keeping with the region's fierce grassroots commitment to protecting the natural environment and biodiversity of Henoko (habitat of the critically endangered Okinawa dugong, a natural monument), polls are showing that a majority of Nago voters support Mayor Inamine's reelection.

For the most up-to-date English language coverage on the election, we're following Michael Penn, president of Shingetsu News, who is on the road in Okinawa.

Highly respected and followed by Japan scholars and seasoned Japan journalists, Penn provides well-informed, insightful, accessible reporting and analysis for everyone interested in Japan, Okinawa, and East Asia.  No noticeable ideological orientation. Fantastic voice: perfect pitch and tone. His background knowledge and tempered, thoughtful insights add great context to reliable, in-depth reporting.

Moreover, his Tweets and FB posts are lively, interesting, colorful:

Wow. Coming back to my hotel, who walks out of the elevator but Tadatomo Yoshida, leader of SDP.

Now entering Ginowan City to film Futenma base and interview former Mayor Yoichi Iha.

Now working my way around the edges of the giant Kadena Air Force Base.

Penn's analysis on the latest Okinawa news, "Editorial: Nakaima’s Betrayal Cuts Deep," reflects a penetrating and deeply principled point-of-view:

We believe that the only fair approach to the choice of whether or not to build the new US Marine air base at Henoko must come in a referendum put to the people of Okinawa themselves. They are the ones who were denied their rights under 27 years of US military occupation...

Of course, neither Washington nor Tokyo will allow any such referendum to be held, because they already understand perfectly well that “Okinawa” does not approve construction of the base, but only that the Abe government has been able to successfully bribe and intimidate some senior Okinawan politicians to fall into submission.

The choice for Okinawa’s people today is a rather clear one between self-determination and democracy on the one hand, and the continuation of developmental neo-colonialism on the other. No doubt there will be political forces within the prefecture that will line up on both sides. We don’t presume to say at this point which side will actually gain the advantage in 2014, but we can safely predict that Governor Nakaima’s foul betrayal of his people will open up a more intense chapter of the struggle. And, in the long run, it is certainly democracy which must come out on top, one way or the other.

Shingetsu's coverage on Japan, Okinawa and East Asia is great political and public interest reporting that deserves broad following and support. 

Democracy Now! interview with filmmaker John Junkerman on Okinawa

Amy Goodman began her Democracy Now! program on Okinawa today with an excerpt from Korean American filmmaker Annabel Park's five-minute video interview with Hirotoshi Iha, "The Heart of Okinawa."

Filmed in Takae in 2010, Mr. Iha explains why he became a peace and democracy activist and the deep meaning of the "Heart of Okinawa." In 1955, his six-year-old cousin, Yumiko-chan, was raped and murdered by an American soldier, who was quietly returned to the U.S. after conviction. The life-long activist then explains why the majority of Okinawans don't want the noisy and dangerous Futenma training base "transferred" to Henoko: "because we know the human cost of it."

"Okinawa’s Revolt: Decades of Rape, Environmental Harm by U.S. Military Spur Residents to Rise Up" then segways into an interview with academic and activist Kozue Akibayashi and filmmaker John Junkerman, who describes the massive expansion [on private property acquired by force and coercion] of US military training and bombing support bases on the tiny island during the Korean War and Vietnam War.  US military bases now take up 20% of the island. Junkerman explains that nearly seventy decades of US use of Okinawa for war training and war support has violated the spirit of the Ryukuan people, who are traditionally pacifist.