Sign the petition HERE! https://forms.gle/hnDxd8NXfKXqiHDb8
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| August 14, 2013 at Henoko, Okinawa. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick were invited to Okinawa by Ryukyu Shimpo, to learn about the U.S. military impacts on the island. (Photo: Sunao) |
Update on January 11: We members of the Okinawa Interest Group, an email-based group of about two dozens of scholars, journalists, writers and activists in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan and Okinawa drafted and released an international petition campaign on January 6, 2024 calling for cancellation of the new US Marine Corps base in Okinawa. See below press release and statement for details. Our action was covered by AP in English. The Kyodo News coverage reached every corner of Japan by being printed and posted on local, regional, and national newspapers. Two Okinawan newspapers, the Okinawa Times and Ryukyu Shimpo had an article on the front page, January 7. On January 10, we submitted the petition with more than 1,000 signatures to President Biden and Prime Minister Kishida.
Update on January 12: Our action was covered by Okinawa TV.
Update on January 23: The Asahi Shimbun, Japan's national paper covered the petition. Oliver Stone joins global petition against U.S. base plan
International Scholars, Journalists, Peace Advocates and Artists, in response to the recent “execution by proxy” by the Japanese government, demand that President Biden and Prime Minister Kishida stop the construction of the new Marine base in Okinawa
For Immediate Release
January 6, 2024
More than 400 people around the world, including distinguished scholars, journalists, peace advocates and artists, have signed a statement opposing construction of yet another U.S. military base in Okinawa. This small island prefecture already bears 70% of the total U.S.-exclusive military presence in all of Japan with 31 installations and over 25,000 troops on 0.6% of the nation's land area and about 1% of its population.
In the statement “U.S. and Japan, Stop Military Colonization of Okinawa,” the signatories condemn the U.S. and Japanese governments forcing construction of the new base “in the face of opposition by the majority of Okinawans,” and advocate “Okinawa’s right to self-determination, democracy, and autonomy.”
Signatories include Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, Academy Award winning filmmaker Oliver Stone, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, historian Peter Kuznick, Canadian author Joy Kogawa, Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility Helen Caldicott, Director of Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability Mazin Qumsiyeh, Co-president of International Peace Bureau Corazon Fabros, and Co-Chair of Focus on the Global South Walden Bello. See a partial list of signatories below, after the statement. The complete list of signatories as of January 5 (15:37 PST) is here. It will be updated as more names are added.
Speaking for the signatories, Steve Rabson, Professor Emeritus of Brown University who was stationed in Henoko as a U.S. Army draftee in the 1960s said, “The U.S. military in Okinawa does not ‘protect’ and ‘defend,’ but trains and supplies America's catastrophic interventions. When I was there it was the main support base for the war on Vietnam. More recently U.S. forces trained there for the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Dr. Katherine Muzik, a marine biologist conducting coral research throughout the tropical Atlantic and Pacific, dived in the Ryukyu Islands during the years 1981-1988 and 2007-2015. She reports that “the astonishing diversity of marine life in Oura Bay, rare and unique worldwide, would certainly be suffocated and destroyed by continuing this appalling military project.”
Satoko Oka Norimatsu, co-author with Gavan McCormack of Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) said that the intention of this petition was “for the U.S. and Japanese governments to know that the resistance against militarism in Okinawa has support from peace and anti-colonial movements around the world, and for the citizens of both countries to pressure their governments to cancel the base construction.”
The petition site URL is: https://forms.gle/hnDxd8NXfKXqiHDb8
See the list of organizers who can be contacted for interviews HERE.
International Statement:
U.S. and Japan, Stop Military Colonization of Okinawa
January 2024
President Joe Biden and the citizens of the United States
Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and the citizens of Japan
One decade ago, 103 international scholars, journalists, artists and peace advocates, including linguist Noam Chomsky and former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat Ann Wright, issued a statement opposing the construction of yet another U.S. Marine Corps base on the Cape of Henoko in the northern part of Okinawa Island. Yet even now, the U.S. and Japanese governments persist with this costly landfill project in the face of opposition by the majority of Okinawans, recklessly damaging the irreplaceable ecosystem. Unfortunately, the Henoko side of the construction, which accounts for about one fourth of the total area to be reclaimed, is almost complete. Now they are about to launch reclamation on the north, the deep and preciously diverse Oura Bay.
Plans to build the base at Henoko have been on the drawing board since the 1960s. They were revitalized in a 1996 Japan-U.S. agreement (SACO) as a “replacement facility” for the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma situated dangerously in the middle of congested Ginowan City. More than a quarter of a century later, the two governments have not yet returned the land occupied by the Futenma base to the people to whom it belongs, and there have even been reports that the U.S. aims to maintain both bases after the new base is built.
We, the signatories of this petition, who advocate for Okinawa’s right to self-determination, democracy, and autonomy, hereby renew our support for the Okinawan people who reject further militarization of Okinawa, a de facto military colony of the United States and Japan ever since the end of World War II.
Okinawa, previously the independent Ryukyu Kingdom, was forcibly annexed by the Empire of Japan in 1879 after three centuries of domination by feudal Japan. The people of the Ryukyu chain of islands were forcefully assimilated into Japan, deprived of their languages, their names, their traditions, and their dignity as sovereign and autonomous peoples, much like many indigenous peoples around the world who were colonized by Western imperial powers.
Toward the end of the Asia-Pacific War, Japan used Okinawa as a “sacrificial pawn,” keeping the battle there in an effort to protect the “emperor’s land,” and mobilized the entire population of the islands. The war between Japan and the United States killed over 120,000 Okinawan people, which was more than one-fourth of the population. The U.S. military then took control of the islands as a spoil of the war, and almost eight decades later it still occupies Okinawan land, air and sea, causing enormous human rights violations including rape and murder, deadly aircraft and vehicle accidents, and environmental degradations such as PFAS contamination of water.
On 20 December 2023, the High Court of Fukuoka, Naha Branch ordered Okinawa Prefecture to approve the change in the government’s construction method in order to deal with the “mayonnaise-like” soft ocean bed that would require costly, protracted, and “impossible” (according to experts) ground reinforcement to enable reclamation of the Oura Bay part of the new base. Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki, who won the 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial elections on a platform of opposition to the Henoko base, rejected the court order on 25 December, and submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court on 27 December.
On 28 December, the Japanese government approved the plan alteration on behalf of Okinawa Prefecture, in an extraordinary, FIRST EVER exercise of the “execution by proxy” (daishikkō) under the Local Autonomy Law that was revised in 1999.
In a word, the court has effectively allowed the state to take the law into its own hands and trample on the right to autonomy of the local government. The Japanese government is expected to start reclamation work on Oura Bay on 12 January 2024.
An Okinawa Times editorial on 28 December argued:
Execution by proxy under the Local Autonomy Law is unprecedented anywhere in Japan. Under the pretext of “eliminating the danger of the Futenma Air Station as soon as possible,” the Japanese government has resorted to strong-arm tactics that infringe on local autonomy.
The Ryukyu Shimpo, another Okinawan newspaper, asked in its 27 December editorial:
Would people in other prefectures approve of such a situation befalling their own communities? … are they indifferent because they think that this unprecedented ruling against Okinawa [execution by proxy] couldn't possibly happen elsewhere?
It is colonial indifference. The rest of Japan does not care, and the vast majority of U.S. citizens are unaware of what their government is doing in Okinawa.
President Biden and Prime Minister Kishida, and citizens of the United States and Japan, we must end the discrimination and military colonization of Okinawa. The first step is to cancel the construction of the new base in Henoko, on Oura Bay, which is expected to cost over 6.5 billion U.S. dollars and take more than 10 years to complete.
It is high time that we do the right thing.
The complete list of over 400 signatories as of January 5, 2024 (15:37 PST) is here.
The link to this press release is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r0t4IyAAJU3qEqrkUm5QyrXtK4UlgJ_O7xfVyv6-Am8/edit?usp=sharing
Japanese translation of the press release is プレスリリース日本語訳はここにあります:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MQgoxa1HdQZND9_i5Ad24P5pnGyVkbvE50v66jjVvGY/edit?usp=sharing
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