By Lindsay Whipp and Mure Dickie in Tokyo
Published: April 25 2010 17:47 |
Last updated: April 25 2010 17:47
An estimated 90,000 people rallied in Okinawa on Sunday piling fresh pressure on Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s prime minister, as they demanded the removal from the island prefecture of a US Marine air base.
The demonstration, one of the largest ever held in Okinawa, follows weeks of increasingly desperate efforts by Mr Hatoyama’s administration to come up with a new relocation plan for the Futenma base ahead of a self-imposed May deadline.
The Washington Post reported on Saturday that US officials were “pleased” by a Japanese proposal it said was made last week that indicated Tokyo would “broadly accept” an existing agreement under which Futenma was to be moved to a site largely reclaimed from Okinawa’s scenic Henoko Bay.
Katsuya Okada, foreign minister, said the Washington Post report was “not true” but gave no details of whether Tokyo had made any formal proposal on Futenma or what such a proposal might involve. Mr Hatoyama said the report was “not necessarily true” and that he could not accept the existing relocation deal, adding that reclaiming land from Henoko Bay would be a “desecration of nature”.
A narrowing of differences between Washington and Tokyo on what to do with Futenma could go a long way to repairing relations that have frayed badly since Mr Hatoyama decided to rethink the existing relocation deal.
However, Mr Hatoyama previously courted Okinawan voters by promising to try to move the base out of the prefecture and the political cost of sticking with Henoko Bay was underlined by the scale of Sunday’s rally and the increasingly vocal opposition from local leaders.
“I strongly demand [the Futenma base] is moved out of the prefecture or out of the country,” Susumu Inamine, mayor of Nago city, told the crowd which reportedly included about 40 mayors.
Hirokazu Nakaima, Okinawa governor said: “I’m confident that the passion of the people gathered here today can move both the Japanese and US governments to reach a satisfactory conclusion.”
Members of Mr Hatoyama’s cabinet have sought to balance Okinawan and US pressures by floating compromise ideas, some of which involve moving functions of the Futenma base to the island of Tokunoshima, about 200km from Okinawa.
US officials have described such a separation of part of the marine air wing from its other forces on Okinawa as operationally unworkable. However, the Washington Post appeared to suggest that such a change was part of the Japanese proposal that was now being welcomed.
Even a compromise that moves Futenma from its site at the centre of a busy city while reducing its impact on the Henoko Bay area would prompt a political backlash against Mr Hatoyama in Okinawa.
The 90,000 people estimated by Japanese media to have gathered in Okinawan town of Yomitan on Sunday held banners and disposable fans with slogans such as: “Against the [base] move within the prefecture”.
Many wore yellow, the colour chosen to symbolise the protest. Officials in Naha, the capital of Okinawa, also encouraged residents who could not make it to the demonstration to dangle yellow cloth from car mirrors or wear a yellow scarf in order to show the government a “yellow card”.
A local high-school student at the rally told a community radio station: “We really don’t need the base in our lives, so at the very least we want it out of the prefecture.”
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