Marking the third straight day of demonstrations, tens of thousands protested in Okinawa, Japan on Sunday against the presence and expansion of U.S. military bases on the island.
The massive rally “aimed to pressure Tokyo to halt building work for the military base that has continued despite vehement opposition from the local government in Okinawa,” Al Jazeera reports.
Held in the Okinawa Cellular Stadium, which Stars and Stripes notes is “usually reserved for professional baseball teams, including Major League all-stars when they visit the island,” the event was called ‘Seventy Years After the End of WWII—Stop Construction of a New Military Base at Henoko.’
Okinawa is home to more than half of the 47,000 U.S. service personnel stationed in Japan as part of a defense alliance—a proportion many of the island’s residents have for decades said is too high.
The U.S. military announced plans to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in 1996, hoping to ease tensions with the host community after the gang-rape of a schoolgirl by servicemen. A new runway, being built into Oura Bay at the more remote Camp Schwab base near Henoko, is necessary to facilitate the closure of Futenma, which is located in a densely populated urban area of central Okinawa.
But locals have pushed to block the relocation of the base within the island, insisting the facility should be fully removed instead.
“The government says we are to blame that the issue has stalled for 19 years and they tell us to find an alternative place [for the base relocation]. That is outrageous,” shouted the anti-US base mayor of the Okinawa city of Nago, Susumu Inamine. “The government is thrusting their responsibility on us.”
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