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NAHA, Okinawa Prefecture -- Japanese police, whose only new equipment
for the event are 23,200 pairs of sunglasses, have effectively caused
anti-U.S. bases demonstrations at the Okinawa G-8 Summit to flop badly.
On second thought, the police should not get all the credit, or blame.
"Sure, having American bases occupy one-fifth of the prefecture's land
nearly 50 years after the war is an affront to Japanese sovereignty" says
Tetsuo "Babe" Sasaki, who makes a living selling used cars on the fringe
of downtown Naha. "The 26,000 American military men and their dependents
are usually good neighbors but, hey, this is supposed to be Japan, not
outside the gate at Camp Pendleton in California."
Sasaki, who "did a couple of years" at Sophia University in Tokyo,
asks rhetorically "But where are the Japanese politicians to lead us to
something better? In the Philippines, the Senate voted to take back Subic
Bay Naval Base and Clark Field Air Base and the U.S. gave them up."
Junko Terada, a graduate of George Mason University in Fairfax,
Virginia, and co-chair with Sasaki
of the Okinawa Political Club, says "The constituency for change here is
weak."
"It takes a rape to get anybody out in the street protesting," she says.
The U.S. servicemen on Okinawa are generally better-behaved than their
peers anywhere in the world, statistics show.
The marines and air force have worked hard to win back the public's
trust after the rape of a local school girl by three servicemen in
September 1995. A curfew in the area of the crime went into effect but was
lifted last year.
It was reimposed last week after a 19-year-old marine was arrested on
charges of indecency and unlawful entry after he allegedly entered a house
and fondled a 14-year-old girl.
The incident, coming just before the G-8 summit, was said by the
English-language Japan Times to have "shocked and outraged Japan and
renewed calls for the U.S. military to leave Okinawa."
Foreign Minister Yohei Kono called in U.S.Ambassador Thomas Foley and
scolded him for the incident as Kono's face is at stake if anything
untoward happens during the July 21-23 summit.
bringing together leaders of Japan, United States, Britain, France,
Canada, Germany, Italy and Russia.
Some 7,000 "outraged" citizens took to the streets and another protest
was set for about 10,000.
Okinawa's geography, 100 patrol vessels, 20 aircraft and helicopters and
the wearers of those 23,200 sunglasses -- discomfort from the sun's intense
ultra-violet rays, was claimed by police -- have kept the numbers of
foreign demonstrators at bay. Apathy on the part of local citizens is a
factor.
The students who clogged the grounds of the Diet building in 1960 to
protest with passion the signing of the revised Japan-U.S. Security Treaty
have raised families by now. Their children know about the issues of bases
and sovereignty only from history books.
Michiko Kamba, 22-year-old daughter of Chuo University Professor Toshio
Kamba died as a result of injuries battling with police after crashing
through a Diet Building gate that year.
Many of today's young Japanese ladies, with no leadership from
politicians or the media, seem more concerned with yellow hair, white
lipstick, platform shoes, and other Shibuya fast lane accoutrements.
My first Japan story, as a reporter still in his 20s for the Christian
Science Monitor was to wade into the crowds as rightist students clashed
Zengakuren leftists and Rengo unionists surging against police.
More than 300,000 demonstrators surrounded the Diet Building that summer
of 1960, pushing the nationwide total to above 800,000.
I didn't understand the subtleties of the issues at the time but I
wrote what I saw and it made the front page in Boston.
How different were those demonstrations and other circumstances which
resulted in the cancellation of the visit to Japan of U.S.. President
Dwight Eisenhower.
This time President Bill Clinton becomes the first American President to
visit Okinawa since its reversion to Japan. The only diplomatic
cancellation this time around was Secretary of State Madeline Albright's
as she gave priority to Middle East negotiations. By the way, those
Japanese press reports that Miyazaki city fathers scrapped a plaque
honoring her out of pique, are pure hogwash.
Can Okinawa become something bigger and more prosperous if and when the
bases are gone or in some kind of cooperative relationship between U.S.
and Japanese military forces? It is a complicated scenario to begin to
sketch.
Taizo Watanabe dared to think about it. The former Foreign Ministry
spokesman, former Ambassador to Indonesian then Egypt before joining the
corporate wars, said a few years ago:
"Make Okinawa into an information island, with low land prices for new
technological ventures.
A combination of Japan's Bit Valley and California's Silicon Valley
might be promoted there. But alas, Okinawa's infrastructure, from water to
universities, is insufficient.
Just as the "MASH" series trivialized U.S.-Korean relations, Okinawa
received the Hollywood treatment in a 1956 motion picture "The Teahouse of
the August Moon," scripted from John Patrick's successful Broadway play,
about the rehabilitation of an Okinawan village by the U.S. Army.
Glenn Ford saves the day with a keen comic touch but Marlon Brando
plays an Okinawan
interpreter in one of filmsdom's most flagrant miscastings.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.