IHT/Asahi: November 6, 2004Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi recently announced plans to ``advance the relocation of U.S. military bases in Okinawa Prefecture to the mainland.'' While Okinawa Governor Keiichi Inamine was quick to welcome the announcement, it seems most Okinawans are reacting coolly and taking the news with a grain of salt.
If the government really wants the mainland to share the burden of Okinawa, which hosts 75 percent of U.S. military bases in Japan, it needs to initiate a broad debate that includes the residents of communities where the bases will be relocated. But there is no indication that the government is seriously trying to form a consensus. The prime minister's words show no compassion and do little to alleviate the sufferings of Okinawans.
Come to think of it, Okinawa has had its hopes shattered many times in the past. In 1996, when Japan and the United States agreed on the return of the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station, Okinawans were overjoyed. However, it turned out that the promise only gave rise to a plan to build a new base off Henoko in Nago, in another part of Okinawa, to relocate Futenma's functions-a move that totally disregarded the wishes of Okinawans.
When a U.S. military helicopter crashed on the campus of Okinawa International University in Ginowan in August, how seriously did the people outside Okinawa take the accident? The government's response to the accident symbolically showed where Okinawa stands and has stood since before the prefecture reverted to Japanese control in 1972.
I am willing to set aside the fact that the prime minister turned down the Okinawa governor's request to meet him on grounds that he was on summer vacation. When U.S. military authorities refused the prefectural police permission to investigate the accident site, Okinawans raised objections that it violated Japan's sovereignty. But instead of taking action, the government merely repeated an empty slogan saying it would ``improve the application of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement.''
Okinawans' outcry for the immediate removal of U.S. bases was totally ignored. Instead of squarely responding to the demand, the government sidestepped the issue and made it look like the greatest problem was to reach an agreement that takes for granted U.S. military bases are here to stay. It even tried to take advantage of the accident to expedite the construction of a new military base in Henoko.
A nationalistic outcry against the violation of sovereignty serves no purpose except to avert one's eye from the real problem. Okinawa's desperate cry for help takes on a completely different tone when it passes through a political filter. Ever since the end of World War II, Okinawa's assertions have been belied and used against it.
When I stood before the scene of the helicopter accident, I was bitterly reminded of the crash of a U.S. military plane on Miyamori elementary school in Ishikawa in central Okinawa in June 1959. The accident killed 17, including elementary school students. As a university student, I visited the crash site with my friends and wrote an article for a school newspaper.
``Something in the hearts of Okinawans was killed and disappeared. Just as our emotions were killed and our rational faculty disappeared,'' I remember writing as a way to express our frustration at not having the freedom to even file a protest against the U.S. bases at a time when Okinawa was still under U.S. jurisdiction. Nothing seems to have changed in the 45 years since then.
Grave markers of the more than 100,000 people who died in the Battle of Okinawa continue to haunt us today. The ``postwar'' era has yet to reach Okinawan shores in the true sense. The island prefecture is still ``at war'' serving as a military base for American soldiers fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Based on the Okinawa experience, we know that simply shifting the burden of U.S. bases onto communities in the mainland provides no real solution. The United States is currently advancing transformation of its military bases and personnel on a global scale. If Japan seriously wants to reduce Okinawa's burden, it should take advantage of this opportunity to re-examine the security system in East Asia and take the initiative to start a national debate on how the Japan-U.S. alliance ought to be.
However, Koizumi's recent comment seems to be focused solely on dodging public criticism by offering to reduce Okinawa's burden to accommodate U.S. demands to expand its presence in Japan. This is also evident from the fact that he makes no reference whatsoever to the immediate return of the Futenma air station that Okinawans want more than anything else.
Let me quote the following words of Fuyu Iha (1876-1947), a prominent Okinawan thinker: ``I pray that Okinawan youths be spared the mindset of slaves to easily bow to money and power for their own survival at the expense of fellow Okinawans.''
The speech made 90 years ago called on young people, on whom Iha pinned his hopes, to exercise self-discipline.
I urge the government not to bow to foreign ``money and power'' and remember that it takes more than shifting Okinawa's pain to the mainland to fundamentally settle the situation.
* * *
The author is professor of history of modern Japanese thought at the University of the Ryukyus. He contributed this comment to The Asahi Shimbun.(IHT/Asahi: November 6,2004)
Posts
