On June 8, which was May 4 in the Lunar Calendar, the Itoman Hare boat race was held at Itoman Harbor Central Area in Itoman City to usher in the fishing season with prayers for a safe voyage and a big catch. At Nashiro of Itoman City and Ou Island in Nanjo City, Hare was carried out from the early morning and exciting races were staged under blue skies.
Itoman Hare started off with Ugan Bare (a traditional canoe race, which is also kind of prayer), raced by rowers from the old villages of Nishimura, Nakamura, and Mijima. Nishimura won, with the team showing strong handling of their oars. At 3 p.m., Agaisubu, 2-kilometer distance race was held.
At Nashiro Hari in Itoman City, the three communities of Kushinti, Nakanti and Menti raced each other, and Kushinti won. 34-year-old Kazuki Ishiki, who was a No.1 rower, grabbed his bottle once on land, showing jubilation for his team’s win.
On Ou Island, Tamashiro, Nanjo City, Ou Island Sea-God Festival, which is a Hari event, was held.
At Hon Bari, there are seven different kinds of races such as Nagare Bune, in which rowers jump off from the bridge. Kunkerashi is a rare kind of race where rowers fall into the sea and must turn over their team’s canoe. With sweat in their palms from the excitement, the audience cheered loud at the race. At Hon Bari, the East won with four wins, two losses, and one draw.
A ceremony to give thanks for the natural cave that saved more than 500 evacuees during the Battle of Okinawa was held on June 9. The ceremony, Shiohira Gongen Festival, took place in front of the cave known as “Shiohira Gongen cave” located in between Shiohira and Ahagon in Itoman City. The ceremony is held annually on May 5 of the lunar calendar. Forty-five residents gathered at the ceremony, offered treats and prayed.
Residents in Shiohira evacuated into the cave for about three months from March 23 of 1945. They were chased off by Japanese military but returned to the cave, and almost all of them were taken into US custody on June 14.
Eighty-one year old resident Masahiro Kinjo who was among those to survive by escaping into the cave remembered the time and said, “When the attack became more severe we cooked food in the cave. We suffered with the smoke and endured as we crouched down on the ground.”
Following the recent arrest of a U.S. military employee on suspicion of murdering a woman, a protest rally will be held at Onoyama Athletic Park in Naha on June 19. More than 20 organizations in Yomitan Village set up an executive committee, in which all the villagers will unite to work towards the success of the rally. It is expected that other municipalities in Okinawa will utilize the Shimagurumi-kaigi to work hard before the rally.
A chairperson of the executive committee is Yomitan Mayor Denjitsu Ishimine. The chairman of Yomitan Village Assembly Atushi Iha, the head of the Yomitan Senior Association Sadahiro China, the head of Yomitan Women’s Association Mieko Ikehara, and Okinawa Prefectural Assembly member Satoru Nakasone took up posts as vice chairpeople.
Aiming to have 1,300 people from the village take part in the rally, the committee will encourage the villagers to participate. As well as banners, the committee members will announce a call for participation over the community wireless system and FM Yomitan. They plan to operate 10 motorcoaches on the day of the rally.
Yomitan Mayor Ishimine said, “Over 70 years after the war, 44 years after Okinawa’s return to Japanese sovereignty, there have been continuous crimes and incidents involving U.S. military personnel while Okinawa has been bearing an excessive burden of the U.S. military bases in Japan. I am angry deep in my heart.”
Yomitan has set up such executive committees four times since the massive protest rally that followed the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old by U.S. servicemen. It is the first time a committee has been set up in four years, the last being for the rally against the deployment of the U.S. Marine Corps’Opsrey to Okinawa in 2012.
Veterans For Peace (VFP)’s members, including Douglas Lummis, Daniel Broudy and Ann Wright released a statement regarding the May, 2016 crime committed against an Okinawan Woman allegedly by a former U.S. Marine in Uruma City, at a press conference held at the Okinawa Prefectural Government office on June 9.
The statement said: “Among the membership of Veterans for Peace, Ryukyu/Okinawa (VFP ROC) are U.S. military veterans who, like the suspect in this case, live in Okinawa. We feel ashamed that a person who is in some sense ‘one of us’ could have committed a crime of this nature. We extend our condolences to the victim’s parents, her relatives, her friends…”
According to Lummis who is a former U.S. Marine and political scholar, U.S. officials say they will make every effort to prevent a recurrence of these incidents, but in actual fact, nothing will change without the preventive measure of taking the troops out of Okinawa, and such crimes will occur repeatedly.
He suggested that soldiers experience a dilemma between training and discipline because the troops need to be trained to be both good neighbors and effective killers. Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and member of VFP Hawaii Chapter, stressed there is no way to eradicate violence involving U.S. soldiers other than removing the U.S. bases from Okinawa.
The members called for participation in a mass rally, which will be held on June 19.
‘No More US Military Bases in Okinawa,’ a gathering of mourning and protest to the incident of a base employee dumping the dead body of a young Okinawan woman, and to address structural violence of the U.S.
military in Okinawa, took place on June 8 in Furujima, Naha. At this gathering, a former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat Ann Wright made a speech. During Wright’s interview open to all media companies, she pointed out that as a background to the ceaseless incidents and accidents related to the U.S. military, there are people that think they can do whatever they want in other countries.
Wright retired as a diplomat in opposition to the Iraq War. She appealed for withdrawal of U.S. bases from Okinawa, saying that there is too much U.S. military violence both on and off base.
At the protest gathering, an assembly for women against the U.S. military and its bases, sponsored by 45 organizations, held a panel discussion between ten representatives of these organizations. After the discussion about 160 participants raised placards and demanded the withdrawal of all military bases from Okinawa.
The protest gathering resulted in a public proclamation demanding that: (1) victims be given apologies, reparations, and be treated with polite care, and (2) the truth be investigated and perpetrators given impartial punishment.
Sunmarina Hotel, a long-established resort hotel in Fuchaku, Onna Village, re-opened as globally known hotel brand “Sheraton Okinawa Sunmarina” on June 1. There will be 46 new rooms and a Wellness Center equipped with an indoor pool opening in the property later this year. It is the first time Sheraton has opened a hotel in Okinawa since 1992. Stephen Ho, the president of the Asia Pacific region of the Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Onna village mayor, Yoshimi Nagahama and other parties attended the opening ceremony.
President Ho stated that the hotel was returning with a new branding power that caters to the desires of local communities and needs of business customers as well as leisure customers. He went on to say that they hope to make it a destination for local residents and foreign visitors.
“Sheraton Okinawa Sunmarina Resort” is owned and operated by the foreign-financed hotel company, Ishin Hotels Group in Tokyo, under a franchising contract with U.S-owned Starwood Hotels and Resort, which owns 11 hotel brands in the world including Sheraton. The operation will be conducted by the Ishin Hotels Group.
On May 30, at Yubukuhama beach on Tonaki Island, a local resident found a green sea turtle unable to move in the sand and notified the village office.
The turtle was 130 cm in length. It seemed that the turtle was trapped in a hole, which she had dug to lay her eggs. The village office staff helped dig her out a bit, and the turtle was able to go back slowly to the sea by herself.
Many green turtles live in the sea surrounding Tonaki Island.
Marie Sasaguch, who saved the turtle, said, “I was worried the turtle was severely weak, but she was happy and able to go back to the sea.”
Regarding the discovery of a woman’s body in the central part of Okinawa Island, on the afternoon of June 9, the Okinawa prefectural police re-arrested former U.S. Marine and current U.S. military employee Kenneth Franklin Shinzato (formerly Gadson), age 32, on suspicion of murder and rape leading to death. The suspect had previously been in custody under arrest on suspicion of abandoning the woman’s body. At 3:30 p.m. on the same day, the Special Investigative Headquarters of the Okinawa prefectural police, headed by Criminal Investigation Bureau director Kenryo Tomari, held a press conference at the Uruma police station to explain the details of the re-arrest.
The suspect is thought to have decided to assault a woman going for a walk in Uruma on April 28, hitting her with a stick with an intent to kill, then dragging her into a grassy area, strangling her, and stabbing her in the torso with a knife, killing her.
Since being arrested on May 20 on suspicion of abandoning the woman’s body, the suspect has refused to testify regarding the incident.
The will of the people has been made clear once again. It is unacceptable for the Japanese government to continue to ignore and trample upon the Okinawan people’s will.
Okinawa’s twelfth prefectural assembly election drew nationwide attention, with people watching to see what would happen to the makeup of the prefectural assembly during Governor Onaga’s first term in office. The election resulted in a major landslide victory for candidates backed by Onaga’s prefectural administration. Furthermore, a large majority of the successful candidates expressed clear opposition to the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko, Nago, a plan the Abe administration is pushing forward forcefully.
Two years ago, candidates opposed to the Henoko relocation were successful in the election for the lower house of the national Diet, the Nago mayoral election, and the Nago city council election. As Japan is a democratic nation, there is no longer any grounds to justify the construction of a new base in Henoko. The central government should abandon the new base construction plan and renegotiate with the United States.
Unconvincing crime prevention measures
In the election, 71 candidates vied for 48 seats in the prefectural assembly. Excluding the two seats from the Nago City district, which were uncontested, fierce competition played out over the acquisition of seats in twelve electoral districts.
There are many and varied issues facing the prefectural administration, but the most hotly debated issue leading up to the election was that of U.S. bases. Amid a swell of fierce resentment after a civilian employee of the U.S. military was arrested for abandoning a woman’s body in the woods, nearly every candidate called for the revision of the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Only a tiny minority claimed to be satisfied with “improving the implementation” of the SOFA.
Immediately before voting started, the central government put forth new measures in light of the incident, but these merely constituted increasing the number of surveillance cameras and police officers patrolling the streets. These misguided measures, which might as well imply that increasing the number of cameras will deter U.S. military-related crimes, were utterly unconvincing. The central government should take seriously the fact that 96 percent of the candidates elected to the Okinawa prefectural assembly are demanding revision of the SOFA.
Regarding the U.S. bases in Okinawa as a whole, all of the candidates in the election demanded either their “large-scale reduction and consolidation,” their “complete withdrawal,” or their “reduction and consolidation.” Not a single candidate supported upholding the status quo. Regarding the U.S. Marines stationed in Okinawa, a large majority of candidates called for their “complete withdrawal” or “large-scale reduction,” with not a single candidate calling to uphold the status quo. Regarding the new Henoko base, nearly 70 percent of new assembly seats were filled by candidates who voiced clear opposition to the plan.
Regardless of political persuasion, a face-value consideration of the way candidates responded to pre-election surveys and their success in the election leads one to conclude that the message conveyed by the Okinawan people through the election was as follows: It is unacceptable to continue pushing U.S. bases onto Okinawa at the current scale. That the central government seeks not only to maintain the status quo in terms of the U.S. Marines but to even build a new Marine base in Okinawa is unacceptable.
At a press conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga repeatedly expressed his view that the results of the prefectural assembly election will have no impact on the new base construction at Henoko. No matter how much he may wish to forestall the implications of the election, there is a limit. His remarks are excessively insincere toward the will of the Okinawan people.
Hope for new policy proposals
Prefectural assembly members are required to grasp the diverse opinions and demands of the prefecture’s residents, and to integrate them into prefectural policy.
Okinawa faces many issues. One pressing issue is childhood poverty. Perhaps reflecting this awareness, significantly more candidates put forth policies to deal with this issue when compared to previous elections.
Parties aligned with the Onaga administration praised the measures it has taken, including investigating the details of the situation and creating a fund created to promote measures to deal with the problem. Meanwhile, opposition parties praised the central government’s Cabinet Office for appropriating funds to deal with the issue.
Along with the prefectural administration, the prefectural assembly is one half of a two-part system of representation. While it is fine to praise the administration’s policies, assembly members should also enact policies of their own.
Currently, the time period for the budget earmarked by the Cabinet Office remains unclear. Some municipal governments hesitate to act, concerned that they will be unable to bear the costs alone if central government funds dry up after a project is already underway. Projects to deal with childhood poverty must be incorporated into the administrative framework for the long term, not just discussed temporarily while the topic remains a hot-button issue. Hopefully the newly elected assembly members will exhibit such wisdom.
Okinawa also faces significant economic challenges. The average income of Okinawans remains only 70 percent of the national average, and 45 percent of workers are employed on an irregular basis. Okinawa needs concrete policy proposals that do more than just call for vague “promotion of the economy.”
In the last four years, the Okinawa prefectural assembly has enacted two bylaws based on proposals made by assembly members. This is quite a positive step, considering that during the previous 40 years only four bylaws were passed by the assembly. Hopefully the 48 newly elected representatives of the people of the prefecture will continue to propose and enact new policies.
A U.S. Navy sailor stationed on Kadena Air Base was driving under the influence of alcohol and in the wrong direction along National Route 58 in Mizugama, Kadena Town, and crashed into two kei cars (small vehicles with specific tax benefits in Japan) successively, injuring one man and one woman.
Proof such as this that the calls for tighter discipline on U.S. military personnel have been ineffective has appeared time after time in Okinawa, and can be considered an ordinary spectacle.
Speaking idealistically in this situation is just a waste of time. It has already been more than 70 years since the end of the war. By now, effective steps against U.S. military-related criminal activity should have been taken.
U.S. soldiers are specially protected. They are able to avoid arrest by Japanese authorities and escape onto base compounds, possibly destroying any evidence. It is easy to imagine that this protection invites misconduct.
The U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) should be drastically revised. As it stands, criminal investigations are affected by U.S. soldiers and base employees withholding information under the special protection they are afforded. Japanese domestic law should apply on all U.S. military bases, with the potential for investigations to access the entire compound.
Route 58 is Okinawa’s largest highway, offers high visibility, and usually invites fast driving. For other drivers to see a car going the wrong way must have been extremely alarming. The arrested sailor’s blood alcohol level was detected at six times the cutoff value. It is amazing that there were no casualties.
The suspect testified that he had been drinking at a friend’s house in Yomitan Village. Not even a full week had passed since the 30-day ban on U.S. military drinking off-base in Okinawa was put in place, in reaction to the incident of a woman’s body being dumped by a U.S. base employee. Circumstances are so severe that the U.S. military is observing a “period of unity and mourning.”
The fact that the Japanese government’s only attempts at providing countermeasures to U.S. military criminal activity are to increase the number of police officers and patrol cars is absurd. More than trying to prevent incidents and accidents, let us set in place a process of dealing with accidents and incidents that occur. In light of recent events, current deterrence policies are no longer laughable.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the accident is deplorable. His words are severe but are only for appearance. If nothing comes of this, than this is no more than a performance.
In order to take steps to earnestly do away with U.S. military-related incidents and accidents in Okinawa, there is hope outside of SOFA revision. This would be to remove the military base concentration from Okinawa.
There was the rape of a woman that took place in March, the Stimulants Control Law violation in April, the body-dumping incident in May, and this accident as the next in succession. However, just since Okinawa’s return to Japanese sovereignty there have been 5,896 U.S. military-related incidents as of the end of last year. This incident is only one in about 6,000.
No one can help but call it absolutely outrageous that this much harm is concentrated in only one prefecture. The government should face military-related incidents seriously. For it to not do so is discrimination.
Between May 30 and June 1 Ryukyu Shimpo and Okinawa Television Broadcasting Company (OTV) jointly conducted a public opinion poll related to the recent incident of a U.S. military base employee dumping the body of an Okinawan woman. The poll targeted Okinawans over the age of 18. When asked to select what measures should be used to prevent incidents and accidents related to military personnel, the most popular answer was ‘withdraw all bases from Okinawa’ at 42.9 percent. The other answers selected were ‘reduce and restructure the U.S. military in Okinawa’ at 27.1 percent, ‘thorough enforcement of training for military personnel’ at 19.6 percent. According to the poll, 52.7 percent of respondents agreed with the prefectural assembly’s protest resolution, which called for withdrawal of the U.S. Marines from Okinawa. Over 31.5 percent of respondents agreed with the alternative resolution that requested a drastic reduction of the bases.
In the poll, 79.2 percent of respondents requested that the governments of the U.S. and Japan revise or abolish the long-neglected U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Also, respondents opposed the government-supported plan for relocating Futenma Air Station to Henoko at 83.8 percent. After the recent body-dumping incident, 70.5 percent said they do not support the Abe Cabinet. Anti-base sentiment has surged upward following the incident.
Opposition to Futenma Air Station relocation to Henoko has increased 0.8 percentage points since the last public opinion poll in June 2015, reaching its highest level since the Abe Administration came into power in December 2012. When the poll inquired how Futenma Air Station should be relocated, the most popular answers were ‘it should be relocated outside of Japan’ at 31.5 percent, ‘it should be closed and withdrawn soon’ at 29.3 percent, and ‘it should be relocated outside of Okinawa’ at 23 percent. Only 9.2 percent of respondents believed that ‘the Henoko relocation plan should proceed.’
At the U.S.-Japan Summit Conference that took place after the dumped body incident, Prime Minister Abe conveyed to the U.S. that Henoko is the only option for relocation of Futenma Air Station. On the poll, respondents who supported Prime Minister Abe dealing with the SOFA by not addressing it only reached 7.2 percent, while those who did not support it accounted for 70.5 percent. Even within LDP supporters 33.3 percent disapproved of Abe’s handling of the matter.
In regard to the U.S.-Japan SOFA, 44.9 percent of poll respondents want ‘fundamental revision,’ 34.3 percent want ‘complete abolition,’ and 15.2 percent want the government-supported ‘improvement of the implementation’ of the SOFA. Of LDP supporters 63.6 percent are in favor of revision or abolition.
Poll respondents said at 42.3 percent the US-Japan Treaty of Cooperation and Mutual Security into a peacetime treaty of friendship between the U.S. and Japan. However, 19.2 percent think that the Treaty of Mutual Security should be thrown out altogether and 12 percent think it should be maintained.
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