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Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 14:34:57 +0900
To: kld18 at cornell.edu
From: kelly dietz <kld18 at cornell.edu>
Subject: A VERY URGENT CALL FROM OKINAWA - Stop the construction of yet
another US military base
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**** PLEASE FORWARD FAR AND WIDE **** **** PLEASE FORWARD FAR AND WIDE ****
A VERY URGENT CALL FROM OKINAWA - YOUR MESSAGES ARE NEEDED *TODAY*
An eight-year effort to stop the construction of a new US military air base atop a healthy coral reef in Okinawa, Japan, has suddenly reached a critical point. (Scroll down for detailed information.)
The basics:
Despite widespread and sustained opposition, Japan's Defense Facilities Administration Bureau (DFAB), the agency overseeing the construction of the US military's new air base, announced that it will begin initial drilling of the seabed in just three days -- on Tuesday, November 16th. The plan is to drill 165 feet into the seabed at SIXTY-THREE sites on a coral reef in Henoko Bay, Nago City.
Incredibly, the US Department of Defense continues to deny any responsibility for the impact of the construction of one of its own bases. Building the air base will involve a massive landfill project stretching a mile and a half long and a half-mile wide, less than a thousand yards off the coast. The drilling alone threatens to destroy the coral reef, surrounding marine life and coastal area, irreversibly affecting the relationship between the nearby communities and the bay.
Nago City residents voted against the proposed base in a citizens' referendum. In addition to the referendum, recent polls show 93% of all Okinawans oppose construction of the air base. If built, it will be the US military's 38th installation on Okinawa (in addition to the 20 air spaces and 29 sea zones under US military control here).
The US government is counting on the Japanese government's continued disregard of Okinawans' rights in order to acquire a new military base in Okinawa.
YOUR MESSAGES ARE NEEDED TODAY
An emergency press conference has been called for Monday, November 15th (**NOTE: This will be late Sunday night, US Pacific Standard Time). The press conference will be a final effort to call attention to the overwhelming opposition to the project and call on the DFAB to, at the very least, postpone the drilling until an environmental impact assessment can be conducted.
With tacit US consent, the DFAB excluded the drilling survey from the construction project's environmental impact assessment process -- a process that engineering and marine experts believe will bring the entire base project to a screeching halt. Not only is the proposed site the primary habitat for the critically endangered Okinawa dugong (saltwater manatee) and home to eight other endangered species, the impact on the communities and coastal region will be profound.
On Friday (Nov 12), a committee of experts convened to make recommendations to Okinawa's governor regarding the overall environmental assessment plan announced it would recommend that the DFAB include the drilling in its assessment. For political reasons, however, it stopped short of calling on the DFAB to suspend Tuesday's drilling.
YOUR MESSAGES WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Believe it or not, the media here is covering every development surrounding the drilling, and the DFAB is increasingly aware of the extent to which this issue is being watched from outside Okinawa and beyond Japan. And, although the US media's attention toward the US military rarely extends to the day-to-day reality of its overseas bases, the US consulate in Okinawa dutifully reports opposition to the bases. All Japanese media reports on base issues are translated and sent to the State Department.
In other words, your voice WILL be heard by both governments. Your message will also give a tremendous boost to the Okinawan people -- who have said no, so many times and in so many ways, to yet another US military base on their island.
BUT YOUR VOICE NEEDS TO BE HEARD NOW.
PLEASE, TAKE THE NEXT SIXTY SECONDS and send a message calling on the Japanese and US governments to respect Okinawans' democratically expressed will and abandon construction of the base at Henoko. Copies of all messages will be given to the press, DFAB and US consulate.
I will be compiling the messages, so please send them to me at kld18 at cornell.edu.
Your personal messages will help stop the drilling on Tuesday.
If you live in the United States, PLEASE also take another two minutes to phone the following comment lines:
-- Department of Defense: 703-545-6700
-- Department of State's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs: 202-647-9022
-- Department of State's Japan Desk: 202-647-3152
-- Department of State's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental-Scientific Affairs: 202-647-9022
-- Director of Director of Office of Ocean's Affairs (Margaret Hayes):202-647-3262
If you live in Japan, PLEASE take a moment to contact the following comment lines:
-- Office of US Ambassador Howard Baker: 03-3224-5000
-- Naha Defense Facilities Administration Bureau: 098-868-0174
I anxiously await a flooded inbox.
Sincerely,
Kelly Dietz Visiting Researcher University of the Ryukyus
**** PLEASE FORWARD FAR AND WIDE ****
FURTHER INFORMATION:
--Your messages will put you in good company...
* In addition to widespread opposition in Okinawa, thousands of people have participated in the eight and a half-year encampment at the small fishing port at Henoko, near the proposed site for the new base.
* Over 400 US organizations signed onto a resolution calling on both governments to abandon the project.
* 889 coral reef experts gathered at the 10th International Coral Reef Symposium held this year in Okinawa signed a statement condemning the proposed air base project. This includes over 150 experts each from Japan and the US (including US government officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who expressed disbelief that the Department of Defense was allowing this project to continue, given that it would never happen under US laws).
* Japan's Bar Association officially denounced the plan to conduct the drilling survey before the overall project's environmental assessment as folly, given that the drilling will cause widespread damage to the area before the assessment is carried out.
-- The eight-year opposition at Henoko intensified on April 19th this year when the DFAB tried to begin drilling of the seabed. After completely preventing DFAB's work for five months, the local struggle moved out into the bay on September 9th when the DFAB entered the bay from another port and began initial preparations for the drilling. For the last two months, a flotilla of sea kayaks and several motor boats have engaged in a daily cat-and-mouse, often tense and dangerous, slowing the work of DFAB employees and contractors. Those at the encampment vow to continue their struggle until they halt the base construction. Local women in their 80s say they will give their lives to stop the project.
-- Plans for the new air base at Henoko came out of a 1996 agreement between the US and Japan to reduce the burden of the US military on Okinawans by closing the US military's Futenma Marine Air Station, which is dangerously located in the center of crowded Ginowan City. The agreement was hailed by both governments as a response to Okinawan demands in the wake of the 1995 gang rape of a twelve-year old girl by three US servicemen. Okinawans are quick to point out that the construction of a new base on Okinawa will not reduce the US military's burden on Okinawa, but rather strengthen US military capabilities here and ensure the presence on the island indefinitely.
-- By linking the closure of Futenma (which was to happen by this year) to the completion of the new air base at Henoko, the two governments leave Ginowan residents in danger indefinitely. Once underway, construction of the new air base is still estimated to take 18 years. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself put it during his visit to Futenma last November, the base is "too dangerous... it's a wonder there are not more accidents."
-- When a US Marine transport helicopter from Futenma air base crashed into a residential neighborhood in Ginowan on August 13th this year, the Japanese government responded by insisting that construction of the new base get underway immediately so that Futenma can be closed. Okinawans are outraged that the government has used the crash to impose the new base, pointing out that residents of Nago and especially several coastal villages live directly in the flight paths of the proposed air base.
-- The Japanese government's environmental assessment procedures do not include a "zero option" - the option of canceling the project due to unreasonable costs on the environment and surrounding community - which is standard in most environmental assessment laws in other countries. Experts suggest that the zero option would be exercised if the same project were in the coastal waters of the United States.
-- Okinawa has been called the "Galapagos of the East" and is home to ecologically significant coral reefs that support more than 1,000 species of reef fish, marine mammals and sea turtles, a diversity of marine life second only to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
-- A number of Okinawan, Japanese and American groups have filed a lawsuit - Dugong v. Rumsfeld - in San Francisco's Federal District Court against the U.S. Department of Defense in order to stop the construction of the new base. For more information on the lawsuit and the environmental issues at stake in the construction of the air base, see http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/dugong_aa
-- In addition to being the habitat for several endangered species, the proposed location for the offshore air base has garnered widespread criticism from engineers and architects because Henoko Bay is located in Okinawa's "typhoon alley" and will require tremendous amounts of fresh water to prevent saltwater damage to aircraft and other equipment on the base. The Japanese government refuses to explain why the Henoko reef was chosen as the site for the unprecedented base construction project.
-- The United States' official insistence that it has no relationship to the construction of the new base - a way for it to avoid dealing directly with Okinawan opposition - is easily countered by a long paper trail showing its ongoing, fundamental involvement in the project, including creating the original proposal to build an offshore base at Henoko (dated 1966) and subsequent design and operational requirements (dated 1997). The US has had to give the Japanese government "permission" to construct the base in what are officially US-controlled waters in Henoko Bay. Because the encampment prevents DFAB employees and contractors from getting on chartered boats leaving from Henoko Port, the US military has allowed DFAB employees and contractors to carry out their work from within nearby Camp Schwab. And yet the Department of Defense continues to maintain that it has nothing to do with the construction of the base. Of course, the US military will assume full control over the facility - and pay the annual $50 million maintenance fee - once it is completed.
-- Fully 75% of all US military bases in Japan are located in Okinawa. Even after ending its 27-year postwar occupation of Okinawa in 1972, the US continues to take advantage of the systematic discrimination of the Okinawans by the Japanese government, institutionalized via Japan's formal colonization of the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879.