Apr 27 01:28 AM US/Eastern
TOKYO, April 27 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Okinawa mayors and citizens staged a sit-in in front of Diet members' buildings on Tuesday to call for the relocation of a U.S. Marine base out of the southernmost prefecture, as the government struggles to solve the issue by the self-imposed deadline of May 31.
Demonstrators who were among 90,000 participants of a mass rally Sunday in the village of Yomitan, Okinawa, to seek the removal of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station repeated their slogan of rejecting any new base construction in the prefecture.
Setsuko Oshiro, head of a women's group in Okinawa, asked, "Why is the base problem in Okinawa neglected? Why do we have to bear the possible crash of helicopters?"
Mayor Yoichi Iha of Ginowan, the city hosting the Futemma facility, criticized the Japanese and U.S. governments for the lack of progress in implementing the agreed-on return of the land occupied by the U.S. facility.
"Fourteen years have passed since Japan and the United States agreed on the land return, but the airfield remains a major impediment to the city's urban planning and economic development," Iha said.
Japan and the United States agreed in 1996 that the land of the Futemma facility in a crowded residential area will be returned to locals within five to seven years after a gang-rape of a local schoolgirl in the prefecture the previous year fueled outrage among residents.
The two countries reached an accord in 2006 to relocate heliport functions of the Futemma base to a less densely populated coastal area of the Marines' Camp Schwab in Nago, also in Okinawa.
Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine said he "believes in" Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who has pledged to try to move the Futemma airstrip out of Okinawa or even abroad. "I'd like the premier to clearly show a road map" toward the base relocation out of the prefecture, he said.
According to government sources, the government is considering modifying the current Japan-U.S. relocation plan. A pile-supported platform would be built in shallow waters off the coast in Nago, which is expected to reduce the impact on the local marine environment compared with the existing one requiring land reclamation.
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