opinion

A demonstration recently took place in Okinawa Prefecture in demand of the withdrawal of the US military base from Japan.

The demonstration, held on the occasion of the 52nd anniversary of Okinawa Prefecture's return to the Japanese mainland, was attended by 2 190 persons related to trade unions from across the country. They marched in two columns as if they were to lay siege to the US air base in the centre of Futenma City, shouting for the closure and return of the air base, the abandonment of the relocation of the base to Henoko in Nago City, the withdrawal of the deployment of the Ground SDF missile unit, etc.

The march, which takes place in all parts of Okinawa before and after May 15 every year, started in 1978. This year reportedly marked the 47th round of the event.

What the inhabitants of Okinawa Prefecture demand at present is the total withdrawal of the US forces.

But it is impossible due to the Japanese authorities' policy of submitting to the US.

Historically, the US military bases in Okinawa Prefecture have threatened the existence of the local residents as the root causes of misfortune and hotbeds of crimes.

After occupying the Ryukyu Islands in June 1945, the US concluded the San Francisco peace treaty in 1951 to take over all the administrative, legislative and judicial power on the Ryukyu Islands including Okinawa and turned Okinawa into the largest military base for invading the Far East and Asia. This resulted in the concentration of more than 70 percent of the US military facilities in Japan in Okinawa.

In the 1970s, the "agreement on the return of Okinawa" was concluded and the prefecture was returned to Japan, but its former character as the US forces’ occupied area did not change at all. Its residents had to suffer mental anguish owing to the noise of US planes and the occasional accidents of US planes threatened their lives.

The US military base in Okinawa was branded as the "general headquarters of crimes" as such crimes as murder, rape and violence frequently occurred there.

This is why voices of protest and denunciation for the removal of the US military base, the root cause of crimes, are daily rising among the local residents. It is the exercise of their basic right for their existence.

What matters is the attitude of the Japanese authorities towards it.

Yielding to the residents’ demand, the Japanese authorities worked out an incoherent plan for relocating the US military base to Henoko in the prefecture and have been enforcing it since late December 2018.

Meanwhile, they are stepping up the militarization of Okinawa as they establish a stationing place for the Ground SDF and deploy missile and other units on different islands of the prefecture. The area in which the SDF facilities have been deployed in Okinawa is about 4.7 times larger than at the time of its return.

Such moves of the Japanese authorities are aimed at realizing their wild ambition for overseas expansion at any cost with the backing of the US.

Japan, which left all its territory at the mercy of the US as the latter’s outpost for a war of aggression in utter disregard of the provision of its people's elementary right to existence, will not escape the fate of a tiger moth which likes playing with fire.