Bones. Okinawa has a land area of 2,281 km². Buried in that land in a number of different places are the remains of over 100,000 civilians killed during the "Typhoon of Steel", or the Battle of Okinawa from March to October, 1945. Eventually, the Japanese military was defeated and the US military occupied the islands. The whereabouts of some civilian remains are known and honoured. Many thousands of others, not so.
It is one thing to walk on the earth, not knowing if you are perhaps walking on the bones of your murdered ancestors. To Okinawans, it is quite another thing that soil containing the bones of their ancestors is being transferred to the site of a new US military base near Henoko: in fact, it is an atrocity to them.
Not surprisingly, Okinawans are protesting this move. Being a civilian body under occupation, those involved in non-violent protests tend to use hunger strikes and sit-ins.
Takamatsu Gushiken has stationed himself in front of the Okinawa Prefectural (government) building since March 1. He and a number of supporters have begun a hunger strike to force the US military to change its plans.
"It is unforgiveable to use soil that may contain the remains of the war dead for the construction of a military base," he has said (The Asahi Shimbun, March 3, 2021).
This is but one of a host of situations that Okinawans have had to endure since the end of the Second World War. The US military is the law for its personnel, who are beyond the reach of Japanese civil law. Rapes and assaults upon vulnerable Okinawans by members of the US military have led to frustration on the part of citizens who complain that the perpetrators are not made properly accountable for their crimes. That said, a very recent indecent assault case by a US soldier involving interfering with Okinawan police may signal a change in this reality.
US military bases not only create problems of excess noise and dangerous materials such as parts of aircraft falling on densely-populated areas, but take up considerable space on the relatively small land area of Okinawa.
While it can be a commendable action to move one such base, Henoko, away from a populated area and out into Okinawa Bay, not only is there the problem with the soil to be used to create an artificial island, but negative environmental impact from the construction itself. The ecosystem of the area is sensitive, and a number of threatened or endangered fauna may be destroyed in the process.
The idea of creating yet another military base in Okinawa goes against one very important aspect of Japanese Civil Law, the constitutional Article 9. As previously mentioned, Article 9 is about eschewing war and an aggressive military, and yet, Okinawa is the reluctant host to a very powerful force of military aggression in the US forces. No matter how benign the US military may feel it is toward its host population, its presence is in some ways deeply offensive.
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