Okinawans protest plan for new U.S. base

Residents of Nago City, Okinawa, protested Dec. 23 against U.S. plans to build a new military base in the waters near their city, according to Kikuchi Takao of the Anti-war Joint Action Committee of Japan. The occasion was the eighth anniversary of the passage of a referendum in which voters made it clear they wanted no part of any new U.S. base on Oura Bay.

The people took 56 boats out into the bay to protest U.S. and Japanese government plans to build the naval air station in the sea off Camp Schwab. This new base would be enormous and include a runway, a naval port and an ammunition depot.

After the demonstration on the bay, they held a rally and expressed their determination to struggle throughout 2006 against the proposed base.

Sixty years after the end of World War II, the U.S. still has tens of thousands of troops in Japan, about half of them in Okinawa. The local people have protested the U.S. military presence many times, much as Puerto Ricans for years protested the U.S. base and bombing tests on the island of Vieques, which have been halted.

—John Catalinotto