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By: Kelly Dietz
09/29/2004
On Aug. 13th, a CH-53D helicopter from the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station crashed into a residential neighborhood in Ginowan City, Okinawa. It exploded when it slammed into a building just inside the small campus of Okinawa International University, after sending the entire tail assembly, a propeller blade, parts of the fuselage and more than 30 other pieces of debris into the surrounding urban neighborhood. There were no deaths or injuries on the ground, and the crew members walked, assisted, away from the wreckage. But the impact of the crash is still being felt six weeks later.
Ironically, at the time of the crash I was listening to the mayor of Ginowan report on his recent trip to Washington D.C., where he met with U.S. lawmakers about the lack of progress on a 1996 agreement between the U.S. and Japan to close Futenma base. Occupying 1,190 acres in the very center of Ginowan, an average of over 110 flights per day originate from Futenma. Most of these are drills, so helicopters merely circle low over the city before landing. In other words, it was routine policy for the helicopter to fly over a residential neighborhood on Aug. 13. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it during his visit here last November, "It's a wonder there are not more accidents."
I live about 400 yards from where the helicopter came down. My neighborhood - the whole of Okinawa - is still reeling from the crash. A continuing source of anger, and indeed fear, is the way the U.S. military unilaterally and forcefully took control over the crash site and surrounding neighborhood. Without seeking permission, marines immediately occupied the campus, preventing university authorities and Okinawan police from accessing the site for two full days, and then only allowing observation of the wreckage from a distance.
The military also refused Okinawan authorities' demands to investigate the crash site and wreckage. Footage showing U.S. military personnel in full-body protective gear removing a large covered object, and subsequent footage of the military taking away top soil from the site, fueled concerns about a cover-up by the military. Although the military insisted the aircraft carried no depleted uranium - a radioactive material condemned internationally but still widely used by the U.S. in its weaponry - it later admitted the presence of cancer-causing strontium 90.
Anger turned to rage when the marine base resumed flights just three days after the crash. With the burned-out remains of the helicopter still on the ground and the U.S. military's own investigation into the cause of the crash ongoing, the military justified its resumption of flights by citing "operational necessity" in its war on Iraq.
Images in the news of marines shouting at and using force against residents on the day of the crash, along with accounts of soldiers confiscating film and entering private property without permission, bolster calls for a formal investigation into the military's response.
Not surprisingly, protests occurred almost daily, culminating in a massive rally of 30,000 people at the campus on Sept. 12. But local anger is directed equally at the Japanese government. Prime Minister Koizumi refused to meet with Okinawan officials during his summer holiday. Japan's Foreign Minister suggested the U.S. military did not violate provisions of the agreement spelling out the legal status of U.S. military forces in Japan.
Calls for unconditional closure of Futenma reflect widespread frustration with Japan's dogged support of the U.S. military's desire to relocate the airbase within Okinawa.
What few Americans realize is that 75% percent of all U.S. forces in Japan are located in Okinawa, a mere 0.6 percent of Japan's territory. To put these figures in perspective for Times readers, Okinawa Island, at 476 sq. miles, is just a fraction larger than Tompkins County. In addition to 38 bases, the military also controls 29 sea zones and 20 air spaces here. U.S. forces landed here in early 1945 and never left.
Polls show 80 percent of Okinawans want the U.S. military gone. Eighty four percent want immediate, unconditional closure of Futenma. Ninety four percent oppose the new base. When the Japanese government and US military ignored the results of an official 1997 citizens' referendum, in which a majority of Nago residents voted against the new base, residents began an encampment at the proposed site. Opposition intensified this year, so far successfully preventing the Japanese government's initial drilling of the seabed, scheduled to begin on April 19. The elders leading the Henoko movement, mostly women in their late 70s, vow to give their lives to prevent the construction of yet another US military base on Okinawa.
Kelly Dietz is a visiting researcher at the University of Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan. She is an Ithaca resident.
GINOWAN JOURNAL
By JAMES BROOKE
Published: September 13, 2004
GINOWAN, Okinawa, Sept. 12 - For years, Okinawans have tolerated the deafening thud-thud of United States Marine Corps cargo helicopters over schools, playing fields and apartment buildings near the fence of one of the busiest military airfields of the Western Pacific.
Some shrugged when one helicopter spiraled from the sky on Aug. 13, banging into a university building, its rotor gouging a concrete wall, its fuselage exploding into an orange fireball. Miraculously for this congested city of 90,000, no one was killed, and the only people injured were the three American crew members.
Photo: Some 30,000 Okinawans rallied Sunday to protest the handling of the crash of an American military helicopter at a local university campus.
But what really galvanized residents of this sultry tropical island were images of young American marines closing the crash site to Japanese police detectives, local political leaders and diplomats from Tokyo, but waving through pizza-delivery motorcycles.
One month after the crash, that fast-food delivery image - part truth, part urban myth - was strong enough to help to draw about 30,000 people on Sunday for the biggest anti-base protest in Okinawa since those a decade ago protesting the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by three American servicemen.
Photo: Ginowan, a city of 90,000, is host to a bustling American airfield.
In the sea of parasols, sun hats, balloons and banners, Chikako Oguma, a high school teacher, sat on the main soccer field of Okinawa International University. She said she had rummaged through her drawers to find an anti-United States protest shirt that she had not worn for years.
"At first when the accident happened, I did not get angry," Ms. Oguma said, shading herself under a parasol. "But then I learned that Japanese police could not enter the area. At that time I felt Okinawa is really occupied by the U.S., that it is not part of Japan."
"Tokyo doesn't care; Mr. Koizumi didn't come," she said, referring to Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi. "He was too busy last month watching the Olympic Games to see our governor. I feel a gap between Tokyo and here."
Indeed, beneath the overnight surge of anti-American feeling is a surge of regionalism in Japan's southernmost islands, an archipelago known until the 1870's as the independent Kingdom of the Ryukus.
Photo: Beneath the overnight surge of anti-American feeling is a surge of regionalism in Japan's southernmost islands.
"Go back to Japan," was an insult thrown at soldiers of the Japanese Self-Defense Force, seen as deferring to the Americans running the crash site.
"The behavior of the soldiers was really shocking," said Kelly Dietz, a Cornell University doctoral candidate in sociology who lives near the base, referring to the Americans. "I saw marines pushing people back, covering news cameras with their caps, pushing cameras down."
Ms. Dietz, whose apartment is near where the helicopter's tail rotor landed, recalled watching a group of marines blocking access to a group of senior Okinawa police detectives.
"People were getting very angry, they were shouting, 'What country are we in?' " recalled Ms. Dietz, who took part in the protest on Sunday.
But while the protesters marched outside, frustration reigned inside the fence of Marine Air Station Futenma. The American marines were angry that no one gave credit to the pilots who had wrenched their helicopter away from a populated area, or marines who, after spotting the struggling craft, scrambled over two 15-foot chain-link fences, raced through the campus and dragged out the three injured crewmen before the copter blew up.
"It would have been irresponsible to allow people to walk through the wreckage," Lt. Gen. Robert Blackman said in his office on Sunday. "If there were Domino's guys getting around the outer cordon, they were not getting through the inner one to deliver pizza to the wreckage."
"We were basically following procedures, guidelines of longstanding application," he added, referring to a five-decade agreement that allows the United States to investigate accidents caused by American military personnel while on duty but off base in Japan. But the backlash has been so great that on Friday, American officials agreed to renegotiate accident guidelines with Japan.
At Futenma, one of two American airstrips in Okinawa, there is a larger frustration. Built more than 50 years ago on flat land surrounded by sugar cane fields, it is now surrounded by neighbors who want it closed.
Paint is peeling, there is a hole in a hangar roof, and Col. Richard W. Lueking, the base commander, complains that "temporary" offices have served for 10 years. Construction stopped in 1996, when the United States and Japan agreed to build an alternative site at Nago.
Critics deride the plan as a classic sop to politically connected construction companies: a $2 billion floating helicopter base that would be built on the other side of Okinawa, in a rough area nicknamed "typhoon alley." The military's plans involve blowing up a coral reef, then building a huge landfill and a steel platform nearly a mile long.
At last count, the plan is opposed by 400 international environmental groups, 889 international experts on coral reefs, a majority of voters of Nago in a 1997 referendum, a lawsuit in United States District Court in San Francisco and a sit-in protest that has lasted for 147 days.
Last Thursday, Japan's government surreptitiously tried to send survey ships to visit the offshore site to drill 63 test holes in the coral. But the ships were met and harassed by a flotilla of sea kayaks, several piloted by local women in their 60's who have been training for the past year in maritime disruption tactics.
In Tokyo, Yukio Okamoto, a former Okinawa adviser to the prime minister, feels as if he has seen this before.
"When Okinawans feel isolated from the central government, they rise," said Mr. Okamoto, now a lobbyist, as he recounted waves of anti-base sentiment since World War II. "It may be happening again."
Saturday, Sept. 4, 2004
By RICHARD HALLORAN
Special to The Japan Times
HONOLULU -- In East Asia today, a line is gradually being drawn in the water, starting in the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, and running south through the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait into the South China Sea.
East of this line are the United States, which has started streamlining its military forces in Asia; Japan, which is shedding the pacifist cocoon in which it wrapped itself after World War II; and Taiwan, with which the U.S. has been quietly expanding military connections.
West of the line are China, swiftly emerging as a military, economic, and political power, and its ally, poverty-stricken but militarily dangerous North Korea. Both want the U.S. to withdraw its forces and influence from Asia.
Where South Korea and the Philippines fit into this formation is open to question. South Korea, driven by anti-Americanism, has been leaning toward China despite disputes with Beijing over ancient history.
The Philippines has lost favor with the U.S. after withdrawing its soldiers from Iraq in the face of terrorist blackmail.
Still another question is the role of Russia. While the Russians have been seeking to revive their influence in Asia, diminished after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, they have been preoccupied with problems in European Russia while their Pacific fleet lies rusting at anchor.
No strategic thinker in Washington or Beijing has deliberately drawn this line in the water. Rather it has evolved as a new balance of power in Asia has taken shape. Even so, it is across this line that both sides must manage a strategic competition if it is not to turn into confrontation or open conflict.
Japan's emergence as a sturdy ally appears to have had a subtle effect on U.S. strategic thinking. Japan will become the site of forward headquarters for all four U.S. military services when the army's I Corps moves from Seattle to Camp Zama, southwest of Tokyo, in the autumn. The navy, marines, and air force already have headquarters in Japan.
The U.S. plans to add a seventh aircraft carrier to its Pacific fleet as it turns more to sea and air power to maintain a presence in Asia. A larger, nuclear-powered carrier will most likely replace Kitty Hawk, based in Yokosuka, Japan, when that ship retires in 2008.
As the U.S. redeploys forces worldwide, Japan will experience only a slight drawdown although some bases will be consolidated to reduce discord between Japanese and Americans. The main ground contingent to leave Asia will be 12,500 out of 37,000 troops leaving South Korea.
Evidence of the fundamental change in Japan is seen in a new, favorable attitude toward collective defense and moves to revise or reinterpret Article 9, the famed "no-war" clause of the Constitution. The deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq has set a precedent and Japan has shown definite interest in joining the U.S. in missile defense.
The catalyst that has caused Japan to shed its postwar cocoon has been North Korea, which has fired missiles over Japan, set about acquiring nuclear arms, and abducted Japanese citizens from their own shores. In addition, Japanese appear to be increasingly wary of Chinese hostility.
In Taiwan, American observers have been sent to observe exercises, to discuss command and control, and to urge Taiwanese forces to work better together. Taiwanese officers occasionally come quietly to Honolulu to meet with the U.S. Pacific Command here.
In the center of this line is the Japanese island of Okinawa, site of U.S. bases that will become more important as this competition unfolds. Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, who commands U.S. Marines in the Pacific, says the reason is the "tyranny of distance."
"Naha (Okinawa's capital) is closer to Manila and Shanghai than to Tokyo, and closer to Hanoi than to Hokkaido," he says. "No place else is so close to so many other important places, no other single location would permit U.S. forces to carry out their crucial role."
The increasing importance of Okinawa lends urgency to efforts to mitigate frictions generated by incidents like the recent crash of a U.S. helicopter there. No one was killed but many Okinawans were angered.
U.S. officials have begun looking for new ways to ease antibase pressures. One possibility: Turn the bases over to Japan and relegate U.S. forces to being tenants. "Japanese and American troops often operate together, deploy together, and live together," says one officer. "We do it on exercises now, and it works. Why not do it when we're in garrison?"
Richard Halloran, formerly a correspondent for Business Week, The Washington Post and The New York Times, is a freelance journalist.
By Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sept. 2, 2004 – Within the next several years, one-third fewer American soldiers will be stationed in the Republic of Korea. But, senior officials say, even that reduced number of soldiers will be better able to meet U.S. commitments to the nation's Korean allies.
"In the process of transforming ourselves, we're dramatically increasing our own capabilities on the peninsula and in the region. And at the same time, the Republic of Korea is evolving itself and transforming itself," Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Lawless said today. "The ability of both forces to increase their capabilities and transform their force structure in a complimentary way allows us to have a net gain in our deterrent capability as we reorganize ourselves and reorient ourselves on the peninsula."
In an interview with American Forces Press Service and the Pentagon Channel, Lawless outlined three areas of significant change concerning U.S. force posture in South Korea in the near future:
• Repositioning the 2nd Infantry Division from its current position near the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Lawless said moving the division south actually will increase its deterrent capability.
• Relocating the Yongsan Garrison out of Seoul. "We are giving back, at the request of the Republic of Korea, very valuable land at the center of their capital city," Lawless said. "This is something that is very important to the citizens of that city and the citizens of the Republic of Korea."
• Transforming U.S. military forces in South Korea and redeploying some forces to facilitate transformation. This "will result in improved deterrent capability on the peninsula that further serves that interest of the alliance," Lawless said.
Moving and consolidating 2nd Infantry Division forces and the troops currently in Seoul will result in the United States giving back 75 percent of the land granted for U.S. military use in South Korea -- or roughly 35,000 acres of "very valuable property," Lawless said.
"This is something that we think will benefit the alliance, and it indicates the spirit with which we're attempting to develop and protect this alliance," he said.
As part of the U.S. military's overall transformation, officials have estimated DoD will spend some $11 billion in enhancing more than 100 specific military capabilities on the Korean Peninsula or in the immediate region "that could come to the aid of Korea and our commitments there," Lawless explained.
These upgrades are spurring the South Korean government to improve their own armed forces. "The net result of this is a much stronger, much improved alliance over a very short period of time," Lawless said.
The realignment and transformation also entails moving some 12,500 troops out of South Korea over an unspecified period of time. Officials have announced 5,000 forces will leave Korea by the end of 2004.
Part of that force has already departed the peninsula -- though not to the United States. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division deployed from Korea to Iraq earlier this summer. Officials have announced that unit will not return to Korea, but no U.S. destination for the unit has been agreed upon.
At the end of this period of realignment, U.S. and South Korean forces on the peninsula will be better able to defend against any potential threats. Lawless said he believes the final details will be worked out between both sides in consultations over the next few weeks.
"I think we're very confident that when we do conclude a final agreement on the balance of the troops that will be redeployed that both sides will be satisfied that the combined deterrent capability of the remaining forces on the peninsula will be very satisfactory to the mission statement," he said.
By: Kelly Dietz
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