FENCES

fences download / stream (4:16 / mp3 / 5.30MB) words + music (Kankara Sanshin) by Wesley Ueunten Japanese lyrics from Okinawan folklore recorded at annen annex, oakland ca. mixed by shing02 + shuichi sugimoto illustration by urban demographics
lyrics	translation
Everywhere that I can see Are chain link fences, barbed wire Are we inside, are we outside I can't tell, can you? Overseas bases, internment camps Prison industry, Gatekeeper Guantanamo, Henoko Security, not for you and me I've learned to close my heart To shut myself in, shut myself out I've build my own fence I don't feel, but yet I bleed Umuti kayuraba Shinrin ichiri Awan muduraba Mutu nu shinri Tukee yo hijamitin Tiruchichi ya, hituchi Aman nagayura Kiyu nu suru ya Even in these darkest times Love will shine, shine through No fence can hold us in What goes up must come down, what goes around comes around	If our thoughts are connected a thousand miles become one If I come back without seeing you you will be a thousand miles away We are apart with a sea between us but the same moon shines upon us we are gazing up at the same sky tonight

Kankara Sanshin Sanshin is a Shamisen-like three-string instrument mainly played in or around Okinawa. Kankara means cans. It is a bit difficult to tune the Kankara Sanshin, however that gives it a distinct, melancholic sound. The emotional folk songs of Okinawa represent the blues of Japan.
	Most People associate the Kankara Sanshin with the period right after the Battle of Okinawa (April to June 1945), when Okinawans had no materials to make sanshin and used cans cast off by the American military.
	However, according to oral histories, early immigrants to Hawaii, as well as internees in Japanese Latin-American internment camps, created sanshins using materials similar to the kankara.

Wesley Ueunten Profile
	Wesley is an Okinawa Sansei (third generation) born in Kauai, Hawaii. He lived in Okinawa and Japan for 10 years and learned Sanshin while he was living in Kawasaki, from Kenichi Nadoyama Sensei. He now lives with his family in Albany, CA and takes part of a sanshin group called GenYuKai. He is also completing a Ph.D. in ethnic studies at University of California at Berkeley. contact wesley

special thanks to Gina Hotta for playing the song on Radio Apex, KPFA 94.1 !

Please join Wesley and the Okinawa PeaceFighters and sign a
Petition to Stop the New Construction of an U.S. Marine Base on Beautiful Henoko Bay, Okinawa

in Japanese

Approach paths limited for new U.S. airstrip

Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006
Kyodo News

Japan and the United States agreed Monday to place aircraft approach lights only at the seaward-most ends of the two runways planned for the U.S. Marine Corps Camp Schwab near the city of Nago, government sources said.

The move is aimed at keeping the aircraft traffic pattern away from populated areas.

Photo: Approach lights will only extend off the seaward-most ends of the two runways planned for the U.S. Marine Corps Camp Schwab in Okinawa, thus off the lower end of the left leg of the V and the upper end of the right leg.

The accord was reached after Japan rejected a U.S. request for approach lights extending from both ends of both 1,800-meter runways, which are to be in a V configuration. However, U.S. military aircraft may have to fly over residential areas in emergencies.

Senior foreign and defense officials from the two countries worked out the agreement in a meeting Monday in Tokyo, the sources said.

Sources familiar with the trans-Pacific relationship said last month that the U.S. had requested that its military aircraft be allowed to land or take off using both directions of both runways. Tokyo rejected the request, they said.

The runways will straddle the tip of Cape Henoko and extend offshore on both ends.

They are to be built at Schwab as a replacement for the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma farther south in the city of Ginowan.

Japan, which wants to limit approach routes, rejected the U.S. request because allowing four approach routes would conflict with the central government's promise to local authorities to keep the flight paths away from residential areas.

In April, the Defense Agency struck a deal with Nago and four towns and villages in the vicinity to build two runways in a V pattern, with the seaward-most ends extending approximately northeast and east-northeast into Oura Bay.

The airport is to be built by 2014 and is not to be used by fighter planes.

The Futenma and marine relocations in Okinawa are key elements of a comprehensive package of measures to step up integration of Japanese and U.S. forces as part of Washington's military reorganization.

The dispute between Okinawa and the central government over the Futenma relocation has dragged on for a decade as it involves a complex mixture of factors, including noise and safety issues, local sentiments and environmental concerns.

Deal done: Lawless

A visiting U.S. defense official implied Tuesday that Okinawa is unlikely to get a response from the United States on its demands to change the plan for moving the Futenma air base in Ginowan.

"We do not get involved in the discussions between the local community and the central government," Richard Lawless, the deputy defense undersecretary for Asia and Pacific affairs, said.

Japan Visitor Blog - Tokyo Osaka Nagoya Kyoto: Henoko

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Henoko

辺野古

As I was walking back to Yotsuya station after work a student handed me a pamphlet as I went by Sophia University. I pulled it out of my pocket on the train and had a scan. It is by a group opposing the relocation of the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, a heliport in Okinawa, the southernmost of Japan's main islands. 75% of the US's many bases in Japan are concentrated in Okinawa.

It is planned to move the base to a so-far unspoiled area of Okinawa called Henoko, an area designated by Okinawa prefecture as a conservation area, noted for its coral reefs, tidelands and seaweed grounds. It is also the northern limit of the habitat of the dugong, an endangered saltwater manatee that is internationally protected.

The reef is said to be home to nine other endangered marine species. (Local authorities claim that no living dugongs have ever been sighted inside the reef.)

The base will be centered round a massive 1,280m (4,200 foot) long runway with 100m (328 foot) overruns at either end, built, like the whole base, on land reclaimed out as far as the reef. The total area to be reclaimed is about 2.4km (1½ miles) long and 800m (½ mile) wide less than a kilometer (about 1000 yards) off the coast. Drilling into the seabed began almost two weeks ago, on September 16.

Local opposition to the project is understandably strong, running at 82% according to a survey carried out last month. Some of the most ardent of the campaigners against the project are second-generation Okinawan Americans, known as uchinanchu, many of them living in the United States. They have organized themselves into an organization called the Okinawa PeaceFighters. They have even brought legal action against the US government in the form of the 'Rumsfeld vs Dugong' case before the San Francisco Federal Court, arguing that the danger posed to the dugong by the construction of the base makes it illegal under the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act.

What difference such activities make to the progress of the base remains to be seen. But the fact that at least a few of Japan's notoriously apolitical students are moved to do something beyond the usual confines of their sheltered worlds can only be encouraging.