TOKYO — Japanese development employees on Wednesday resumed landfill work on the new web site of the U.S. army base on Okinawa regardless of protests by the island’s residents that the transfer tramples on their rights and raises environmental considerations.
The deliberate relocation web site for the bottom, on Okinawa’s japanese coast, has been on the middle of a dispute between the federal government in Tokyo and the native authorities at a time of the island’s rising strategic significance.
Okinawa is turning into key for the Japan-U.S. army alliance within the face of rising tensions with China whereas Japan additionally quickly seeks to construct up its army within the southwestern area.
Three weeks in the past, the Fukuoka Excessive Courtroom’s Naha department ordered Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki to approve the central authorities’s modified landfill plan, and allowed the Land and Transport Ministry to order the work to renew by overriding the governor’s disapproval.
On a barge dropped at the situation on Wednesday, a pair of loader machines scooped up mounds of rock and gravel and dumped them into the ocean as a part of reclamation wanted to bolster the extraordinarily mushy seabed on the web site deliberate for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.
Tamaki, who has appealed the order to the Supreme Courtroom, mentioned the court docket ruling was unjust and goes towards the desire of the residents. Underneath Japanese regulation, development can proceed whereas the court docket resolution is pending. He referred to as the resumption of the landfill work “extraordinarily regrettable.”
Okinawa and Tokyo have lengthy tussled over the relocation of the Futenma base. Tokyo and Washington agreed in 1996 to shut the Futenma air station after the rape of a schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen led to an enormous anti-base motion. However the closing was held up for almost 30 years due to persistent protests and lawsuits towards the relocation plan.
In 2018, Japan’s central authorities started the reclamation work off Henoko Bay on Okinawa’s japanese coast to pave the best way for the relocation of the Futenma base from its populated neighborhood on the island.
The central authorities later found that segments of the designated reclamation web site are on mushy floor, and submitted a revision to the unique plan with further land enchancment at an estimated value of 930 billion yen ($6.5 billion). However Okinawa’s prefectural authorities rejected the revision plan and suspended the reclamation work.
Tamaki, the governor, has sought a major discount of the U.S. army on Okinawa, which is dwelling to greater than half of fifty,000 American troops primarily based in Japan below a bilateral safety pact.
A whole lot of students, movie administrators and odd residents who’ve advocated for Okinawans’ autonomy, signed a worldwide petition demanding the island stop to be “a de facto army colony of the US and Japan ever for the reason that finish of the World Conflict II.”
One of many petition organizers, Satoko Norimatsu Oka who heads the Vancouver-based Peace Philosophy Heart, supplied a replica of the doc to The Related Press.
“We should finish the discrimination and army colonization of Okinawa,” mentioned the petitioners, who embrace filmmaker Oliver Stone.
The petition urged President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to “cancel the development of the brand new base in Henoko.”