Henoko

Last weekend three hearty adventurers set off bright and early Saturday morning in search of a reported boating festival in Kin town. Upon arriving in Kin, said festival was nowhere to be found, and all organizers or people with knowledge of the festival were not answering their phones. Did we give up hope? NO! First, we decided to wander around Kin`s murky US-military-bar clad streets, in hopes that the traditional Okinawan boating festival would pop out of one of them and yell surprise! The walk did us good though, as J had yet to see a truly Americanized part of Okinawa. To the right here, you see a shocking example of how the atmosphere in Kin is quite different than where we live.

After that, we had the marvelous idea to venture out to Henoko.
If you dont know about Henoko, then I will give an brief explanation You could also read this article.

- Futenma airforce base is really big and smack in the middle of a very populated area. Below is an aerial view of my city, Ginowan, where Futenma is currently located (that big empty part in the middle):
Specific areas of my city (that's right, we're talking places with preschools, homes, playgrounds, etc) are designated "danger zones" 1, 2, etc. because bad things sometimes happen due to Futenma... like planes falling out of the sky and killing people. Also, daily flight practice with fighter JETs is very loud and shakes the windows of our schools. I once read about these findings that the constant noise of the fighter jets was giving Okinawan kids weird problems like the jitters and ADD or something. Check this out, from 2002 newspaper article:

Two hundred residents living around the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station filed suit against the Government of Japan ...on Wednesday for compensatory damages from the noise caused by military planes flying over their residences....

Their demands are as follows: to set a flight ban from the hours of 7pm to 7am, to ban airplane engine tests making noise over 55 db, to ban any noise over 65db, to abide by environmental conservation laws, to compensate for damages incurred in past years and expected future years.

One of the plaintiff group, Mrs. Tatsuno Kuba, joined the suit with her six family members. Housewife Kuba stated, "In the suit, I want to appeal against the unacceptable noise damage and the fear of a plane crash every minute a military plane skims over our roof." She also wanted the people of Nago City, the relocation site of Futenma, to pay attention to the suit.

Not to mention I have to drive a billion km around stupid Futenma to get to from point A to point B if those points are unlucky enough to be on either side of the base.

Ok, I'm getting back to the short of the story. Short and dirty. In 1995 three US soldiers kidnapped, raped and severely beat a 12 year old Okinawan school girl. Since then, there has been immense pressure on the US and Japan on both an international and national level to "do something"; some symbolic thing at least to look like they're helping the situation. Of course they don't really care, but what they did was promise to remove Futenma and give back the land. Now, it was a bit misleading. Instead of "removing" it, they're just "moving" it. Which sucks, because Okinawans have been peacefully protesting for 50 years trying to get the US killing machine away from their homes and lives and I think people finally thought they were going to get rid of Futenma. NOOOOOT!

Where have they decided to move it to? They are going to build a huge floating heliport off the Okinawan Northern coast at Henoko. Is it a bad idea? Of course it is! The biodiversity in the sea and coral reef at Henoko is amazing. Not only does the plan involve drilling deep into the coral reef (and killing it, along with messing up all the unique biodiversity there), but this particular area happens to be the home of the Okinawan dugong: an endangered marine creature. Henoko bay (where they're building the thing) is the dugong's feeding area where they live and where their special seaweed grows n shtuff:-((((Grrrrrrrrr, I don't heart you, Japan and US! Oh, right. Its also home to a lot of Okinawans who really dont want 4,000 marines and their ginormous base and constantly roaring/flying/crashing jet fighters to become a part of their rural northern community. Unfortunately, Okinawans economy sucks so the fact that a base would create lots of jobs is a major attraction for a lot of people up there... but they would have to accept the bad with the good.
PHOTO: 1,000 paper dugong @ Henoko headquarters.

Here is a picture of serene Henoko bay where they are planning to build the heliport:

When we got up to the beach at Henoko, Jeff played his Journalist Card (this gets him in everywhere) and soon we found ourselves comfortably seated in the make-shift headquarters of the Henoko protest movement, listening to Jeff interview an important senior member of the organization as a free-roaming chicken pecked at our feet and we flipped through informational photo booklets about the history of the movement (I really wish I had a copy of one of these, I would have so many more interesting things to say right now, but you know my memory...)

After the interview, they offered to take us to see the wall. The wall is this barbwire barricade between the military and Okinawan land out on Henoko beach. People come from all over Okinawa and write messages of peace or protest on scraps of colored cloth and tie them to the barbed wire. We also wrote on a hanky and tied it to the wall.