10,000 protest U.S. training in Okinawa

Some 10,000 residents rallied in Igei Park, Kin Town, Okinawa, on July 19 to protest increased military training with live ammunition at the U.S. Marine base at Camp Hansen, which is near residential areas. The Marines aim to train troops in anti-guerrilla warfare for urban areas.

The almost spontaneous outpouring only four days after the new training was announced showed the extent of Okinawa residents’ anger against training of urban counter-insurgency forces and plans to build a new U.S. base in nearby Henoko, according to a report to Workers World from the Japan Anti-War Joint Action Committee (AJAC). This upsurge was so strong, says AJAC, that the Liberal Democratic Party and other administration parties were obliged to join the rally and Gov. Keiichi Inamine of the Okinawa prefecture addressed it. Some of the audience booed his appearance.

Sixty years after World War II, many U.S. bases and over 40,000 troops remain in Japan. They cause the most popular resentment on the small island of Okinawa, far south of the main Japanese islands, where about half the U.S. forces are stationed. Struggles against U.S. bases there are similar in many ways to those carried out in Puerto Rico, especially on the island of Vieques.

AJAC also reported that Igei residents are sitting-in every day to protest the training and the new base. They told the sympathetic crowd: “From last autumn, through cold winter, to hot summer, we sit-in day by day. We won’t allow this training. We will struggle at the risk of our life.”

—John Catalinotto