An Appeal From Okinawa to the US Congress

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26697-an-appeal-from-okinawa-to-the-us-congress



"No More Futenma!" Protesters at the "No Base Okinawa" demonstration in Ginowan, Japan.

An Appeal From Okinawa to the US Congress
Wednesday, 08 October 2014 00:00 By Hideki Yoshikawa, The Asia-Pacific Journal | Op-Ed

Introduction

Much has been written on this site on recent developments in the long-running saga over the US and Japanese governments’ plan to construct a US military air base, the Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF), in Henoko, Okinawa, Japan (Henoko plan).[1] On July 1, 2014, 17 years after the plan was first conceived, the Okinawa Defense Bureau (the government of Japan) started the “construction phase” amid protest from local citizens and municipal governments. Just over a month later, on August 14, the US Congressional Research Servicereleased a report, The US Military Presence in Okinawa and the Futenma Base Controversy (the CRS Report).[2] The CRS Report provides a useful and up-to-date (though, as noted below, in one major respect incomplete) file of information, paying for the most part due attention to local, national, and international factors.

As warned in the CRS Report, the Japanese government is now using “heavy handed actions” to push forward the Henoko plan, escalating the tensions between it and Okinawa.” “Most Okinawans,” the CRS authors write, “oppose the construction of a new US base for a mix of political, environmental and quality of life reasons.”

The fact that the governments of Japan and the United States should be committed to a project against the wishes of “most’ of the people of Okinawa should in itself be cause for strong Congressional concern, particularly since a major Okinawan newspaper now writes to ask “if there has ever been a case like this, where the government has trampled on the will of the overwhelming majority of people in a prefecture elsewhere in Japan.” “This,” the Ryukyu shimpo goes on, “is a barbaric action by the government, and so shameful if the international community just stands by.”[3] What follows here, however, is not a general disquisition on that “barbarism,” but a focused consideration of the environmental aspects of the base construction plan. What we offer here is the perspective of Okinawan civil society, through the medium of its environmental NGOs.

We draw the attention of Congress to the lacunae in the CRS report which fails to address the involvement of the US justice system (through a Californian court) and the US National Historical Preservation Act (NHPA) and US Marine Mammal Commission (MMC), in the environmental aspects of the Henoko plan. The US government bears a distinct legal responsibility, even though the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the Okinawa prefectural government’s land reclamation permit approval process are both primarily responsibilities of the government of Japan. This paper complements the CRS Report by discussing these matters. It concludes by offering four recommendations as to how the US military and the US government can (and should) deal with their legally prescribed environmental responsibilities.