More than 10,000 Japanese descended on a massive US air base in Okinawa Island Thursday to protest against the American military on the eve of a Group of Eight summit.
Sheltering from the fierce heat in the shade of trees, they planned to link hands and form a human chain around Kadena Air Base, the biggest US air facility in East Asia.
Anti-US sentiment has boiled over on Okinawa Island, host to the G8 summit and home since World War II to two thirds of the 47,000 US troops stationed in Japan under a joint security agreement.
Resentment has been smoldering since three US servicemen raped a 12-year-old girl in 1995.
The ill feeling was re-ignited when police arrested a drunken 19-year-old US marine July 3rd on suspicion of breaking into an unlocked apartment in Okinawa City and molesting a 14-year-old girl.
"I am joining the human chain to give a base-free Okinawa to my grandchildren," said Yoshimitsu Nakasone, a 66-year-old farmer who lives nearby.
"I cannot sleep at all because of the horrendous daily noise at the base. During the summit, the base has been very quiet but that is just to lie and deceive the World."
A women's group collected white, pink, red and blue handkerchiefs from around Japan, each with a protest message, and hung them from ropes slung on the trees' branches.
They read: "No more war!" "We want peace!" and "Free Okinawa from war and US bases."
One protest banner read: "Bring back our lands. No to US-Japan military alliance. Crush the Okinawa summit."
Another depicted a weeping woman saying: "No more military. People in Okinawa are crying."
The Kadena coastal air base has two runways of about four kilometers (three miles) each and is home to the 18th Wing of the 5th Air Force.
About 100 warplanes including fighters and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) surveillance aircraft are stationed there.
"Enough is enough. Okinawans have suffered so long since World War II," Misako Takagi, a 60-year-old former social worker who came from Tokyo, told AFP.
"I want to appeal to the world that people in Okinawa and Japanese people do not want the US military base at all. We demand the United States and Japan abolish the military bases completely."
The demonstration was organized by the Okinawa People's Committee for a Human Chain, which bussed in the protesters, many of whom were from labor unions in Okinawa and the mainland.
One third of Okinawa's population died fighting the Americans in World War II.
The 38 US military facilities occupy 23,759 hectares (58,684 acres), or 11 percent of the island chain's land.
After the 1995 rape case, Tokyo and Washington agreed to return 11 facilities to the island, but even after such a move, Okinawa will still be home to 70 percent of the US bases in Japan.
"I want the United States and Japan to liberate Okinawa from the military bases as soon as possible," said Ryoko Miyagi, a 65-year-old Roman Catholic nun from Okinawa -- KADENA, Japan (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
