A survey of U.S. aircraft noise impact on classrooms was carried out by the Education Bureau of Okinawa Prefecture last June for 27 public schools in three municipalities: Ginowan, Kadena, and Chatan. The majority of schools responded in the survey that the noise had some effect on classrooms. At the prefectural assembly on February 24, Akira Moromizato, head of the board of education, answered questions from Mio Nakamura of the Social Democratic Party (Pro-Constitution).
The survey was carried out in three municipalities that host Futenma Air Station and Kadena Air Base, and vice principals of each school answered the questionnaire. The survey asked in a free description format about the implementation status of noise measurement based on school environmental health standards and about the impact on classrooms.
Fifteen out of 27 schools described the effects in classrooms. To a question where multiple answers were allowed, 10 schools (37 percent) answered, “The class gets disrupted by the noise of hovering and flying jet planes”; seven schools (26 percent) answered, “The teacher’s voice does not carry during outdoor activities”; six schools (22.2 percent) answered, “Students cannot focus in class”; and three schools (11.1 percent) answered, “The noise shakes glass windows and basketball hoops.” Twelve schools replied, “There is no impact.”
The survey did not include the impact of the MV-22 Osprey, which generates low-frequency sound during take-off. Questioned about the need for an Osprey impact survey, Moromizato answered, “We would like to listen to opinions from concerned municipalities and consider the implementation of a survey.”
Nine schools (33.3 percent) carry out noise measurement based on school environmental health standards. Only Futenma Daini Elementary School and Futenma Junior High School carried out noise measurements dedicated to the noise around the military base.
The Ministry of the Environment (MOE) announced on February 27 that it would designate about 17,000 hectares of the northern part of Okinawa as “Yambaru National Park (tentative name)”. The area, which is located in three villages, Kunigami, Higashi and Ogimi, is covered by the nation’s largest subtropical evergreen broadleaf forest.
The MOE will decide this plan at the central environment council held in June and release its announcement through official gazettes in July.
It will be the third national park in Okinawa prefecture, following the Kerama Islands which became a national park in 2014.
About 7,800 hectares, a part of the U.S. Marine Corps’ northern training area that the governments of the United States and Japan agreed to return to the owners, will not be included in the designated area.
According to the MOE, it will discuss the expansion of the designated area when the part that is now the training area is returned in the future.
The government aims for the Amami and Ryukyu island chains, which include the Yambaru area, to be registered as a UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage site for natural assets in 2018.
UNESCO has asked Japan to strengthen the regulations for preserving the natural environment in the area as a condition for listing. The MOE aims to build momentum towards winning the world natural heritage listing through its designation of the Yambaru National Park.
The new park will have about 13,600 hectares of land area and about 3,700 hectares of sea area.
A part of the Okinawa Kaigan Quasi-National Park will be added to the new park.
Many indigenous species, including Yambaru kuina, or Okinawa rail, and Noguchigera, or Okinawa woodpecker, live in the evergreen broadleaf forest of Yambaru.
The MOE plans to designate 790 hectares of the new park as a special protection area, where the strictest rules will be imposed, and designate 4,402 hectares of the park as a class 1 special district. These areas will be included in the Amami and Ryukyu island chains, which the government has recommended as a world natural heritage site.
The Japanese government decided to nominate seven prefectures’ cultural events, including Miyako island’s Pantu, for intangible cultural heritage designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In Miyako’s Pantu, local residents disguised as gods’ messengers go around communities putting mud around in order to remove bad luck. Pantu, the national significant intangible folk cultural asset, will be added to the existing “Toshidon of Koshiki Island” in Kagoshima, which was designated in 2009. The group of events will be nominated for designation as “visiting gods’ event”.
Pantu in Miyako is also used to generically refer to “Pantu Punaha” in Hirara Shimajiri as well as “Satiparou” Ueno Nohara in Miyako city. Other cultural events that will be added to the nomination list include “Oga no namahage” in Akita, “Yoshihama-no-suneka” in Iwate, “Yonekawa no mizukaburi” in Miyagi, “Yuza no koshogatsu gyoji” in Yamagata, “Noto no amamehagi” in Ishikawa, and “Mishima no kasedori” in Saga. The government will nominate the events to UNESCO by the end of March, and the events will be examined around November 2017 at the earliest.
February 23, 2016 Hirokazu Otsubo, Correspondent of Ryukyu Shimpo
Whale watching season has taken off at Zamami Bay. Two large humpback whales were spotted from a whale watching boat on February 18. They occasionally peeked their heads above the water and swam together playfully.
In the morning, there was only one humpback whale. In the afternoon, a second whale appeared. The two whales were seen raising their heads above the water together. Occasionally a whale blow was spotted right next to the boat. The two-hour tour, which had participants from all over the world, was filled with excitement.
Taizo Shibata, a 48-year-old visitor from Kochi Prefecture, commented, “This is my fifth year whale watching in Zamami, and never have I encountered such a spectacular scene. The two whales went around, greeting each boat. This is what keeps me coming back to Zamami.”
Whale-watching tours hosted by the Zamami Whale Watching Association will continue until April 5. However, visitors are advised to plan their tours early, as the number of whales will decrease during the latter half of the season.
February 19 is called Usui or rainwater, which is one of 24 solar terms in the traditional East Asian lunisolar calendars, and the time the coldness eases and farming starts.
Ueda ugan is an annual event held on February 18 at Ukinjuhainju,Tamagusuku Nakandakari, Nanjo, where rice cultivation started in the Ryukyus. The community held the event to pray for a good harvest on the same day this year. The event is held annually on the first Ox day in the Lunar New Year.
The community’s residents prayed at Meji where a crane flew from China, dropped a rice stalk and a sprout grew. They also offered prayers at Ukinjuhainju. Then, three men from the community planted rice at Ueda.
In the ceremony called Sanju sanpe held at Yuemo, the people offered their prayers towards the north, south, east and west. They sang a song, Amaueda’s kuena, that is a work song featuring the scenes from planting to harvest.
Tomio Shiroma, a former Nakandakari community chair said, “We want to recover the original performance and pass it onto the next generations.”
Chokei Taira, the president of the Okinawa Convention & Visitors‘ Bureau (OCVB), delivered a lecture titled “Rethink about the future of Okinawa and the tourism industry” held on February 20 at Okinawa International University.
Taira stressed the position of tourism as a peace industry. He said, “We would like to make use of Okinawa’s geographical advantage to promote business, not seeking to preserve military power. Military bases are the biggest obstructive factor in developing economic growth in Okinawa.”
Taira said, “For example, a quick bit of maths tells you, if hotels with 2,000 rooms [instead of a new U.S. base] were built in Henoko, employment opportunities for about 2,000 local people (direct and indirect hire) would be created; the annual sales would reach 50,000,000,000 yen. We would like here to be a dream-inspired place.”
“Okinawa has enough conditions to develop as a tourism prefecture. Okinawa follows the growing trend of global tourism, having a geographical advantage and the potentiality of a growing population. These are the driving forces to promote the tourism industry,” Taira explained.
He added, “About 200 million people reside within a 3,000 kilometers radius and about 300 million people live within a 4,000 kilometers radius. We have a massive potential market.”
Taira said, “We have been discriminated against even after Okinawa returned to Japanese sovereignty. We can overcome the discrimination, but now more seriously we are completely discarded. We have to clear the path for the future, becoming as one.”
More than seventy years have passed since the Battle of Okinawa, yet heavy-handed political forces still aim to fill the bountiful ocean with concrete in order to build a new military base. However, popular will is spreading in resistance to this authoritarian form of government. This is an encouraging sign that the people are striving to bring democracy back into their own hands.
A record 28,000 people recently encircled the Japanese Diet building demanding that the government cancel its plans to build a new military base as part of the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko, Nago. The day before and the day of the encirclement, similar actions were held in nine cities across the country, with more than 31,000 people participating.
At the Diet building encirclement and other venues across the country, men and women, young and old carried protest signs and wore blue to represent the ocean around Henoko. Cries of “Don’t build the base!” and “Stop the land reclamation!” filled the cold winter sky.
A rising wave of popular opinion is joining Okinawa to oppose the new base. The Abe administration must not avert its eyes from this trend.
Journalist Satoshi Kamata called for people nationwide to share Okinawa’s pain, saying, “We must ask ourselves whether we can really continue to live our lives complacently while forcing Okinawa to sacrifice for us.”
Unfortunately, a majority of Japanese citizens still turn a blind eye to the pain Okinawa faces from the overwhelming concentration of military bases and the construction of a new base. Many of the major news corporations based in Tokyo failed to report on the recent Diet building encirclement.
In January, though the Ginowan mayoral election saw reelection of the incumbent, who was supported by the Abe administration, this did not imply popular acceptance of the Henoko relocation. Nevertheless, a Kyodo News opinion poll conducted a week later showed a majority of Japanese people supporting the government’s policy.
Combined with indifference toward Okinawa, the government’s attempt to manipulate public opinion with repeated assertions that “Henoko is the only solution” is seeing some success. This trend must not be allowed to continue.
The numerous actions held recently represent a break with the logic of indifference that has allowed Japan to unblinkingly keep a majority of military bases in Okinawa. The protests show a movement toward sharing Okinawa’s pain and a strong awareness of popular sovereignty with the potential to force the government to give up on the base construction plan.
This was the fourth time the Diet building has been encircled in protest against the new Henoko base. Participation has increased every time. After 22,000 people encircled the Diet building in protest in September 2015, Governor Takeshi Onaga nullified the Henoko land reclamation permit needed to build the base. Immediately after, however, the Japanese government filed a lawsuit to authorize the land reclamation by proxy in an attempt to wrest the governor’s authority from him. The Okinawa prefectural government responded with a protest suit.
Additionally, the defense ministry circumvented the Nago municipal government and provided direct financial subsidies to the three Kube districts around Henoko. Just as with the lawsuit, this constitutes a flagrant violation of local autonomy rights.
Opposition is strong against the government’s heavy-handed stance which ignores the will of the Okinawan people and endangers democracy and local autonomy. The Abe administration should give up its plan to build a new military base.
On the afternoon of February 21, according to the organizers , 28,000 people gathered and made a human chain encircling the National Diet Building to protest construction of a replacement facility for Futenma Air Station in Henoko, Nago. Participants wore blue to symbolize the ocean at Henoko and shouted slogans such as, “Don’t build the base, cease landfill work,” and “Don’t destroy Henoko’s ocean,” as they linked hands and surrounded the National Diet Building. The executive committee of Stop! Henoko Umetate, a group opposing landfill work in Henoko, and the executive action committee of a citizen’s group for protecting the war-renouncing constitution organized this encirclement protest. This is the fourth time the Diet Building has been encircled as a protest against new base construction in Henoko.
The executive committee of Stop! Henoko Umetate organized the last three Diet encirclement protests. The prior-mentioned executive action committee for a citizen’s group for protecting the war-renouncing constitution joined in organizing the fourth encirclement on February 21. According to the executive committee of Stop! Henoko Landfill, the first encirclement protest on January 25 last year drew about 7,000 participants, the second one on May 24 involved 15,000 participants, and the third occurrence on September 12 had 22,000 participants. This successive increase in participant numbers displays the expansion of popular will opposing construction of the new base in Henoko.
In relation to the Japanese government forcing construction of the new base, co-representative of the All Okinawa Council and Mayor of Nago City Susumu Inamine said that he wants the government to listen more attentively to the opinions of its citizens, and that Diet members must ensure that public opinion is reflected in Diet discussions. Co-representative of The Helicopter Base Objection Association Hiroshi Ashitomi, freelance writer Satoshi Kamata, and members of Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy RYUKYU (SEALDs RYUKYU) took the microphone and called for abandonment of new base construction. The February 21 encirclement protest to new base construction was the first protest since Governor Takeshi Onaga retracted the landfill permit, and the Japanese and Okinawa prefectural governments went to court over the issue.
31,000 people from eight municipalities nationwide gathered in Tokyo on February 21 to raise their voices and participate in simultaneous political action with Stop! Henoko Umetate. Simultaneous political action from across the nation has begun calling for suspension of new base construction. It began in Kochi Prefecture as of February 20, and the next day it started in Sapporo, Sendai, Toyama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, and Okayama.
On February 18, the Okinawa Prefecture Culture, Tourism and Sports Division announced 14,175 couples had Okinawa resort weddings in 2015, a rise of 17.5 percent for the same period last year and the highest number ever. Among the weddings, the number of couples from Japan was 12,717, which was a 16.2 percent increase on the same period last year. The number of couples from overseas, which was 1,458, increased 29.9 percent. Both numbers hit a record high.
220,000 tourists visited Okinawa for resort weddings bringing an estimated 21.7 billion yen to the local economy.
In addition to a weak yen, promotion and online public relation activities through social network services seem to have contributed to the increase.
“Chapel Wedding,” in which a couple have a wedding at a chapel, was the most popular, accounting for 70 percent of the total number of the couples that had resort weddings in Okinawa. “Photo wedding,” in which a couple takes photographs only, tends to increase every year and accounted for about 26 percent.
On the percentages by region, 40.3 percent of tourists visited from the Kanto area, which is the highest, 22 percent visited from the Kinki area, and 15.2 percent visited from the Chubu area.
A comparison of visitors from overseas by region shows that 56 percent of tourists visited from Hong Kong, 32 percent from Taiwan, 9 percent from China, and 2 percent from South Korea.
By districts within Okinawa, Onna and Yomitan villages accounted for 45 percent of resort weddings, followed by Nago City, Chatan Town, and Itoman City.
21.4 percent of couples from overseas had a “Legal Wedding” where they submit a marriage registration and receive verification. This registration by a municipality has been appreciated by couples.
The survey focused on 59 companies that had held resort weddings. The tally came from 49 companies that had answered the questionnaires.
On February 18, 161 college students belonging to a non-profit organization, International Volunteer University Student Association (IVUSA), collected remains from the Battle of Okinawa in the Kuniyoshi district of Itoman. Skulls and thigh bones that seemed to belong to the war dead were unearthed. The students finished collecting the remains on February 20. The IVUSA began its involvement in the recovery of remains from the Battle of Okinawa in 2010. This is the fourth time that the organization has worked on the project, and the largest number of students that has taken part.
Students from Kanto, Kansai, and Kyushu took part. They learned about the Battle of Okinawa at the Okinawa Peace Memorial Park on February 16. The next day, the participants heard to Kuniyoshi village’s story from former high school teacher Sojun Taira and then worked on collecting the remains. The students checked the weight and feel of the remains unearthed. They joined their hands in prayer for the war dead.
Yuka Arai of Doshisha University said, “Each and every one of the bones immersed in the soil weighed differently. It made me think about those who died.”
Hiroki Takeuchi of Ryukoku University took part in the project, continuing his involvement from last year. Takeuchi said, “Even though we finish collecting the remains, it does not mean the recovery of the war dead is complete. The bereaved family members need to receive them. We were just engaged in unearthing the remains. I thought about the significance of recovering the war dead of Okinawa.”
Seventy-seven-year old Isamu Kuniyoshi, who has been working on the recovery of the war dead for a long time, and Aomori resident Tetsuji Hamada and his wife Ritsuko, who come to Okinawa every year to work on collecting the remains, supported the participants.
In 1947, the Kuomintang administration in Taiwan massacred civilians in what is known as the February 28 Incident. One of the victims of this incident was the father of 72-year-old Keishou Aoyama of Urasoe City, who was a Japanese fisherman in Taiwan at the time. Aoyama brought a claim demanding compensation from the Taiwanese government for the death of his father. On February 17, the Taipei High Administrative Court issued a verdict in favor of Aoyama. The Court acknowledged the high likelihood that Aoyama’s father, Esaki, then 38, was a victim of the February 28 Incident. It ordered the Taiwanese government to pay Aoyama 6 million New Taiwan dollars (around 20 million yen) in compensation. The Taiwanese government is currently considering whether or not to appeal. If it ends up paying the compensation, it will be the first time a foreigner receives compensation for the February 28 Incident.
After the verdict was made, Aoyama spoke to the press in Taipei, saying, “It was a landmark verdict. My father will finally be able to rest in peace.”
The verdict included mention of three other Okinawan men in addition to Esaki: Minoru Nakatake, Kane Ishizoko, and Genchuu Ohnaga. Through its investigations, the “Okinawa Association to Discover the Truth of the Taiwan February 28 Incident” uncovered that these men had been victims of the Incident. Yoshiaki Aoyama is representative organizer of the association. Okinawa University visiting professor Morikiyo Matayoshi, who is an advisor to the association, says that the association plans to prepare claims to compensation for the other three victims as well.
Aoyama first demanded compensation from a fund managed by the Taiwanese government in 2013. However, last year, the fund rejected his claim, giving as one reason the fact that the Japanese government has continually ignored claims for compensation for Taiwanese people victimized as comfort women and in other ways during World War II. The court’s verdict, in addition to acknowledging Esaki’s disappearance during the February 28 Incident, ordered the Taiwanese government to pay compensation.
Investigations by the “February 28 Incident Memorial Fund,” an NPO established by the Administrative Court to provide relief to victims of the Incident, found that Esaki had indeed been a victim. Nonetheless, the Taiwanese administration, which is in charge of determining compensation, denied compensation on the basis of the principle of equality, stating that Japanese government compensation to Taiwanese former soldiers serving in the Imperial Japanese military, as well as Taiwanese former comfort women, has been inadequate.
In September 2015, Aoyama filed a lawsuit against the Fund. The court’s verdict pointed out that the principle of equality does not apply according to the February 28 Incident Management and Compensation Regulation, a special regulation stipulating the nature of compensation for victims of the Incident. The court ordered the government to pay foreign victims compensation equivalent to that accorded to Taiwanese victims, noting that there is no article in the law denying compensation to foreign victims. The February 28 Incident was regarded as taboo under the Kuomintang dictatorship, but as Taiwan’s government democratized, the facts are coming to light and compensation is being paid to the victims.
Webcam(Kokusai Street)
