Thousands rally against US air base in Japan

[thedrifter]

Thousands rally against US air base in Japan
AFP

Thousands of protesters gathered on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa to rally against plans to relocate a US air base there, with reports saying the protesters numbered as many as 35,000.

Despite pressure to move the Futenma Air Base off Okinawa, Japan and the United States agreed last October on a revised plan to transfer the facilities to an existing base at Camp Schwab, also on the island.

Holding placards Sunday demanding the immediate closure of the base and its relocation off the island, about 35,000 people took part in the rally in Ginowan, Kyodo News and public broadcaster NHK reported.

"The city of Ginowan strongly demands that Futemma, the world's most dangerous base, be shut down immediately and relocated outside of Japan," Ginowan Mayor Yoichi Iha was quoted as saying in the Kyodo report.

Tokyo and Washington have held marathon talks since 1996 on relocating Futenma Air Base out of the crowded urban center of Ginowan, where residents complain about aircraft noise.

Residents' opposition against the US military presence was heightened in August last year, when a Marine helicopter crashed on a college building in Ginowan and fell on its campus. No one was injured.

"If there is no US bases in Okinawa, it will be good and safe for our children," a local woman participating in the rally told NHK.

But few other communities are willing to host US bases, which are in the country under a security alliance as Japan has been officially barred from keeping a military since World War II.

The United States had initially planned to move the base to reclaimed land on the sea off a quiet fishing village within Okinawa but that proposal led to opposition by residents and environmentalists.

A bilateral deal reached last October in Washington agreed to transfer Futenma's facilities to Camp Schwab and to withdraw 7,000 Marines from the tiny province.

Later Washington agreed to up the number of Marines being withdrawn to 8,000.

Another southwestern city of Iwakuni outside Okinawa will vote March 12 on whether to allow more US warplanes on its soil, in a largely symbolic referendum on the controversial plan to shift US forces in the country.

The Japanese government has said the deal on the US military realignment aims to ease the burden on communities hosting US forces, particularly in the tiny island chain of Okinawa which hosts more than half the 40,000 US troops in Japan.

US troops are stationed in Japan under a security alliance reached after Tokyo was defeated in World War II and barred from maintaining an armed forces. Fourteen of Japan's 47 prefectures host US bases.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Environmental group: Helipads on Okinawa would harm birds
Center for Biological Diversity to sue U.S. government

By David Allen, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, March 5, 2006

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — A U.S.-based environmental group claims building new helicopter landing pads in the Marines’ Jungle Warfare Training Center would threaten Okinawa’s rare Noguchi woodpeckers there.

In a move that could threaten plans to return 9,852 acres of the JWTC to Okinawa, the Center for Biological Diversity has announced it plans to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to protect the woodpeckers.

But a Marine Corps environmentalist said the woodpecker is thriving on the bases and actions are being taken to protect it. Mitsugu Sugiyama, an entomologist with the Marines’ Facilities Engineer Division, said the Marine Corps paid for a $30,000 survey last year. “We found that the Noguchi is generally distributed pretty evenly throughout the JWTC,” he said. “It’s an excellent area for them.

“Surveys by us and the prefecture have shown that they are also thriving outside the JWTC area … mostly north of Nago.”

Still, the Arizona-based environmental group contends “a significant amount of prime remaining woodpecker habitat is threatened by a U.S. military proposal to construct new roads, helicopter landing pads and associated infrastructure.”

The birds should be protected under the act, the group claims, because they exist on a U.S. base.

The group says the department violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to protect “scores of the world’s most imperiled bird species,” including the Noguchi woodpecker.

The environmentalists and Japanese government also differ on how many woodpeckers remain. The environmentalists estimate 100 to 500 birds remain “in undisturbed subtropical forests in the northern mountainous region of the island of Okinawa, Japan,” the group stated in a news release. But a recent Japanese government census pegs the population at from 1,000 to 2,000 birds.

The Fish And Wildlife Service has ruled listing the woodpecker as endangered “may be warranted” but it already is adequate protected under Japanese law.

Sugiyama said that in Japan the bird is considered both an official endangered species and a national monument. It’s also Okinawa’s prefectural bird.

Japan has an active conservation and breeding project for the 10-inch-tall woodpecker, Sugiyama said.

The Marine Corps is part of that project, he added. A flier is distributed to all troops using the JTWC notifying them of the importance of recording any Noguchi woodpecker sightings.

“We are actually finding that they can adapt to noise and development,” he said. “Some nests have even been discovered close to roads.”

As part of a 1996 pact to return to Okinawa 21 percent of land the U.S. military then occupied, more than half the JWTC land is to be returned. But the hand-over hinges on building new helicopter landing zones on the remaining section of the base.

The new infrastructure would “have some effect on the woodpeckers,” Sugiyama said. But the new landing locations were chosen based on a four-year environmental survey, he said, “so the impact would be minimal on the woodpecker population.”

Ellie