Thousands rally against Futenma plan

[unhappycamper]

Thousands rally against Futenma plan
By David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, April 27, 2010

YOMITAN, Okinawa — Tens of thousands of Okinawans swarmed to a sports complex at the Yomitan village center Sunday to express their opposition to constructing any new military base on Okinawa.

More than a third of the crowd wore yellow, a color suggested by the rally organizers to show their support of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly’s call for immediately closing Marine Corps Air Station Futenma and moving the air units outside Okinawa. Yellow, organizers said, represents a yellow warning card used by soccer referees.

The rally began at 3 p.m., and traffic into the area along Highway 58 was still bumper to bumper two hours later. Organizers estimated 90,000 people eventually took part. Okinawa police did not release a crowd estimate.

Sunday’s event had the support of Okinawa’s political spectrum. Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, an independent backed in the last election by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, shared the stage with the members of more left-leaning parties, including Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan.

It was the first time members if the LDP — the ruling party for more than 50 years before Hatoyama took office — attended an anti-base rally on Okinawa.



unhappycamper comment: I wonder if this is the same 'tens of thousands' of us that showed up in DC in January 2007?

--

Japan's prime minister denies report on agreement
By David Allen, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, April 27, 2010

GINOWAN, Okinawa — Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Saturday shot down a Washington Post story that said Japan was close to accepting major portions of a 2006 agreement to move Marine air units from this urban center to rural northeast Okinawa.

In a nationally televised news conference, Hatoyama said going along with the plan to build a new air facility on Camp Schwab — on the Henoko Peninsula and reclaimed land in Oura Bay — was unacceptable.

"The report is not true," Hatoyama said. "We cannot accept the existing plan."

He said putting the air base on land reclaimed from the ocean would harm the marine environment.

On Sunday, however, Kyodo News, citing unnamed sources, said Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa was pushing for accepting a modified plan to build a single runway on Camp Schwab.

[MrScorpio]

1. I hope that they win

For all of our sakes