Okinawa. Henoko. Camp Schwab. 
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 41, October 19, 2015

Please, see also former appeals from Okinawa/Henoko
Read this article as pdf.

In-depth critical analysis of the forces shaping the Asia-Pacific...and the world.
Urgent Okinawan Appeal for Help
Oct. 17, 2015

Ashitomi Hiroshi

[Henoko] Council against the Helicopter Base

Introduced by Gavan McCormack and translated by Doug Lummis

Introduction

To Japan and to the world Japan is a democratic country, in which popular sovereignty, the rule of law, and the division of powers (executive, legislative, judicial) are assured. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has repeatedly told international fora – including the US Congress and the UN General Assembly – that such is the case. But what is evolving now in the course of confrontation between the Abe government and the people of Okinawa, led by their Governor, suggests otherwise.
 
Okinawa’s travail, in its present, intense form, owes to the determination of the Abe government to overrule the overwhelming Okinawan consensus it confronted on taking office (for the second time) in December 2012 that no new base should be constructed in the prefecture. Such a view first surfaced in 1996, as soon as the Henoko plan was announced. Under the government design, a major military facility would be constructed on Oura Bay (Henoko district) for the US Marine Corps, to which the existing, obsolescent and inconvenient Futenma Marine Base, currently set in the middle of Ginowan City, could be transferred. By 2012 the Okinawan consensus of opposition to that design was overwhelming, shared even by the Okinawan members of Abe’s ruling LDP, the Governor, and the heads of almost all Okinawan towns and cities. Never in Japan’s modern history had any prefecture so unanimously opposed the central government on a matter of such moment.