Okinawa's Nature Groaning –
Let's Turn Mt Kushi into a Forest of Life.

On the Sixtieth Anniversary of the San Francisco Treaty and
the Fortieth Anniversary of Okinawa's Reversion to Japan

Urashima Etsuko with an introduction by Gavan McCormack

Introduction – Troubled Anniversaries

May 15 marks 40 years since Okinawa "reverted" from US military administration to Japan, but the celebrations in 2012 will be muted. While few Okinawans regret the fact of reversion, there is widespread resentment over the fact that the national government continues to insist the prefecture serve US military ends first and foremost. Newspaper opinion surveys taken on the eve of the commemoration found that 69 percent of Okinawans believed they were the subject of inequitable and discriminatory treatment because of the heavy concentration of US military bases, and nearly 90 percent took the position that the Futenma Marine Base should either be unconditionally closed and the land simply revert to Ginowan township or else be moved away, whether elsewhere in Japan or beyond it. That figure exceeds even the opposition of the time of the Hatoyama government (84 percent) less than two years ago. A similar 90 percent oppose the deployment within Okinawa of the accident-plagued MV22-Osprey VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft that the Pentagon, backed by the government of Japan, promises to deploy in Okinawa from July.1

Such is the strength of this sentiment that Okinawa's governor, the conservative ex-bureaucrat Nakaima Hirokazu, visiting Tokyo at the time of the announcement, declared that such a deployment would be "extremely impossible " (sic), and suggested that if the aircraft were really so safe they could be deployed in Tokyo's Hibiya or Shinjuku Gyoen parks.2 The outrage deepened a week later when it was announced that the aircraft would be assembled and first tested at Naha Military Port, little more than a stone's throw from Okinawa's capital, Naha. Naha mayor Onaga described it as the worst proposal ever, and declared that he could not contain his fierce anger at the way the people of Okinawa and Naha were being mocked.3 Medoruma Shun, the prefecture's pre-eminent novelist, also widely respected as its conscience, called upon the governor to convene a mass meeting of Okinawans to formally declare their opposition.4

The points of confrontation between Tokyo and Okinawa slowly multiply and deepen in seriousness – Ginowan City, home of the Futenma Marine Base; Nago City, designated site for a Futenma replacement facility; Kadena City, 22,000 of whose citizens are suing (the biggest civil suit in Japanese history) to try to recover their peace from the constant noise caused by landings and takeoffs from the city's USAF base; and Yonaguni Island, where residents mobilize to prevent the deployment of Japanese Self Defense Forces (for the first time). Throughout the island anger spreads at the prospect of a new threat – the vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, MV22-Osprey (discussed by Urashima) now scheduled to be introduced to the island in July.

In the north of Okinawa Island, little attention is paid to the appropriation of forests by the US marine forces based at Camp Schwab. On the commemoration of another, closely related, anniversary, the 60th of Okinawa's formal severance from Japan under the San Francisco treaty of 1952, the writer Urashima Etsuko, like Medoruma a voice of Okinawan conscience, walked up Mt Kushi to reflect on the price that was being paid by nature itself under the weight of priority to the US military. We are pleased to publish an English translation of her April 2012 essay.
(Gavan McCormack)

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April 28th was the 60th anniversary of the day the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into force in 1952. Under the Treaty, mainland Japan recovered its sovereignty lost in the defeat of the war but Okinawa remained under US military control for a further twenty years. On this day, known in Okinawa as a "day of humiliation," at the suggestion of a friend I climbed Mt Kushi which overlooks the US Marine Corps' Camp Schwab training grounds.

The twin peaks of Mt Henoko (332 metres) and Mt Kushi (335 metres) rising up in roughly the middle of the island still today are a fine sight and it is easy to believe that the children of Henoko and Kushi villages used to dispute with each other over which was the more beautiful. But today, from as far away as Henoko village, you can see how the red soil of the mountain has been exposed by shelling practice from the live firing range that surrounds it.

Symplocos (ruriminoko)

I had thought it would not be possible to climb [in a military area] but, while one cannot climb from the east sea side one can climb from the west because that side is not used as a firing range. Hearing that the mountain was quite an easy walk, and that you could look out over the firing range from the peak, I put on boots and a rain coat – since unfortunately it looked like rain – and set off on the climb. (The Okinawa rainy season began on this day, 11 days earlier than usual.)

Going by car as far as the track that lies between the settlements of Kyoda and Sukuda on Nago City's west coast, I headed off on foot on the mountain path that begins from the "improved" area of farmland on the skirt of the mountain. As I later realized, the west coast sector of Mt Kushi is part of Kyoda. Kyoda is a village made up in the main of people known as "yadui" who came and settled here at some point, clearing land on the mountain where they subsisted by planting sweet potato and the like, while also cultivating timber, firewood, charcoal, and indigo dye as cash crops.

Here and there while climbing the mountain may be seen relics of the lives people used to live in those times -- the remains of stone walls built to terrace the fields, charcoal burning kilns still more-or-less intact, shards of old glass bottles, pots, and jugs, and holes that might have been dug as wild boar traps. The mountain track across the soft surface of fallen leaves was without doubt a path that people had once worn as they went about their daily lives.

It being just slightly past the season of new green growth in the forest, trees were vying with each other to blossom. I gasped in astonishment at suddenly coming across a gorgeous climbing orchid. There were also black orchids in abundance flowering along the path. Dark and at first glance inconspicuous, on close inspection they reveal a delicate flower. Here and there, white flowers of the symplocos (ruriminoki) family were also to be seen.

The Ruddy Kingfisher (Akashobin)

As a gentle rain fell and I walked along entranced by the song of a ruddy kingfisher (akashobin) migrating from southern parts (that started to sing on April 15 in the vicinity of my home) and the familiar beautiful song of the bush warbler coming from somewhere up ahead, suddenly I heard the ear-splitting bang bang of live firing practice. The noise grew louder as I approached the summit, joined by the sound of engines. It was most likely the noise drifting over the treetops from "Yukari Farm" (which used to be a bull-fight site and is now used as a race track, creating a racket that people nearby complain of); the two together created an ear-splitting racket. What a nuisance they must be to the birds. When I looked to where my friend had indicated there were the scattered remains of what looked like a helicopter.

On reaching the summit I was astonished at the breadth of the shooting range that spread out before me. Being accustomed to look at the mountains from the sea, I had not imagined them to be so vast. The forests of Higashi and Kunigami villages that make up the Northern Training Centre (or "Jungle Warfare Centre") are so splendid as to be said to be worthy of classification as World Heritage, but this was in no way inferior. Here and there practice sites had been set up and these sites were one source of the firing noises. My friend also said that these sites had been freshly cleared, not existing on the previous occasion when he had come up here. The stick-like poles were, he said, "dummy human targets for shelling."

View from Mt Kushi across firing ranges towards Henok

In the Okinawan newspapers of 25 April, it was reported that the US military had told the Government of Japan that it was going to deploy the V-22 Osprey (vertical takeoff and landing or VTOL) aircraft to Futenma Marine Base from July, though it had been scheduled for September. Just a little earlier, on 11 April, an Osprey had tragically crashed while on manoeuvres in Morocco, killing two marines and leaving another two severely injured. I could hardly contain my anger at the way that, so soon after the Osprey had proved itself worthy of the name "flying coffin," they treated Okinawans with such contempt, shamelessly kicking aside the fierce protests not only from Futenma but from the whole of Okinawa. It sends shivers down my spine to think that if ever a new base was to be built at Henoko, the Osprey might come here.

(Photo: Urashima)

Before the US bombing of Okinawa on 10 October 1944 (which not only reduced Naha City to rubble but caused severe damage throughout Okinawa Island) US forces took aerial photographs of the whole of Okinawa Island, so they knew the exact location of everything. It seems that, by analysing these aerial photographs, they drew up detailed plans for use of the island – just as if there were no people here. You can also see this from the nature of the bombing. To take one example, while many villages were burned by bombing attacks, other, neighbouring settlements escaped unscathed and these were later used as refugee encampments.

When looking over the forest from the peak, my thoughts turn to the US soldiers that once looked down over this forest from the sky. They must have been thinking about how they could make use of this place for war. I thought once again that this precious forest that has given life to so many creatures and sustained the local people must not be allowed to be used for war. It pains me to look upon the withered brown firing range. I want to take back this forest and resurrect it as a forest of life. Moved by such thoughts, I stood on the summit of Mt Kushi.

 

Urashima Etsuko is an environmental activist, author, and chronicler of Okinawan people's movements of resistance against bases and hyper-development and for nature conservation. The Japanese text of this article was written (dated 30 April 2012) as her regular essay for the quarterly Impaction.
Author Urashima at Henoko, 2008

Translator
Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor at Australian National University, a coordinator of The Asia Pacific Journal, and co-author (with Satoko Oka Norimatsu) of the soon to be released Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States (Rowman and Littlefield, July 2012).

Recommended citation: Urashima Etsuko with an introduction by Gavan McCormack, 'Okinawa's Nature Groaning – Let's Turn Mt Kushi into a Forest of Life. On the Sixtieth Anniversary of the San Francisco Treaty and the Fortieth Anniversary of Okinawa's Reversion to Japan,' The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 20, No 1, May 14, 2012.

Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan Focus

Articles on related subjects

•Jon Mitchell, U.S. Veteran Exposes Pentagon's Denials of Agent Orange Use on Okinawa

•Kimie Hara, The San Francisco Peace Treaty and Frontier Problems in the Regional Order in East Asia: A Sixty Year Perspective

•Medoruma Shun, We Cannot Allow Governor Nakaima to Falsify the History of the Battle of Okinawa

•Gavan McCormack, Mage – Japan's Island Beyond the Reach of the Law

•Steve Rabson, Henoko and the U.S. Military: A History of Dependence and Resistance

• Gavan McCormack, Sakurai Kunitoshi, Urashima Etsuko, Okinawa, New Year 2012: Tokyo's Year End Surprise Attack

•James Roberson, Songs of War and Peace: Music and Memory in Okinawa here

•Ahagon Shoko and C. Douglas Lummis, I Lost My Only Son in the War: Prelude to the Okinawan Anti-Base Movementhere

 

Notes:

1 "Fukki seron chosa, fubyodo no ne utsu toki da – shin kichi kobamu min-i no hanei o," Ryukyu shimpo, 10 May 2012 (editorial).

2 "Osupurei 'anzen nara Hibiya koen ni,' Okinawa chiji hanpatsu," Asahi shimbun, 11 May 2012.

3 "Gunko e Osupurei, Futenma haibi o sokkoku tekkai o," Ryukyu shimpo, 13 May 2012.

4 Medoruma Shun, "Warushiki 'rinjin, tomodachi' tachi," Uminari no shima kara, 12 May 2012.

 

After The Media Has Gone:

Fukushima, Suicide and the Legacy of 3.11

Makiko SEGAWA

For the media, time is of the essence in a news story.  The March 11, 2011 disaster attracted thousands of reporters and photographers from around the world.  There was a brief deluge of Japanese and international media coverage on the first anniversary, this spring.  Now the journalists have packed up and gone and by accident or design Japan's government seems to be mobilizing its agenda, aware that it is under less scrutiny.

The press pack has disappeared like a ghost since this April.  The influx of foreign media has suddenly stopped, as I can attest since I worked as a translator and aid to many foreign journalists in the year up to the 3.11 anniversary in 2012.  Using the keywords 'Fukushima' and 'nuclear plant' in Japanese to scour the Nikkei TELECOM 21 search engine shows 9,981 domestic news items in April 2012, just over half the 17,272 stories the previous month.

As if to take advantage of the precise timing of the media evacuation, the municipal government of Minami-soma city, Fukushima Prefecture began implementing a blueprint planned some time earlier.  In the dead of night on Monday April 16th, the city lifted the no-entry regulations and changed evacuation zone designations that had stood since March 12, 2011.  The decision allowed people to return to the district of Odaka and some parts of the Haramachi district.

Map showing 20 kilometer evacuation zone
and neighboring towns

Watanabe Ichie, a volunteer from Tokyo who witnessed the scene near the roadblock into the zone observed that: "several police vehicles with flashing red lights arrived after 23:00 on April 15th. By 0:15, all the vehicles had gone". "After that, all that remained was the light from the traffic signals."

Für den 7. April 2012 war vereinbart, dass die hier wiedergegebene Erklärung der "Korea-Japan Peace Action to Stop the Establishment of Jeju Naval Base" in Gangyeong auf Chejudo veröffentlicht wird. Den japanischen Mitgliedern wurde am 6. April die Einreise verwehrt, sie wurden deportiert. Daraufhin wurde die Erklärung sowohl auf Chejudo als auch in Japan in getrennten Pressekonferenzen veröffentlicht.

Die Erklärung folgt, zuerst in Englisch, danach in Koreanisch und Japanisch.
Quellen:
English ( translation by Rebecca Kim) -  http://cafe.daum.net/peacekj/I51g/304
Japanese  -  http://www7b.biglobe.ne.jp/~jeju/01kaisetu/20120413.html
Korean (국문)  -  http://cafe.daum.net/peacekj/RXi3/13

 

Statement to Protest the Establishment of Jeju Naval Base and Build Jeju-Okinawa Peace Solidarity

Tensions comparable to an under-siege and daily confrontations rise in Gangjeong Village where Jeju Naval Base is under construction. Even rudimentary protection of human rights and common sense became something hard to find. There is every reason why the current situation came to remind us of what happened on Jeju Island during the April 3rd Massacre of 1948.

There were numerous cases of human rights violation and deprivation in Okinawa during the US military occupation. When there was the US military administration in South Korea, the April 4th Massacre on Jeju Island took place. There were killings everywhere from Torabora to Helmand during the US military government in Afghanistan. A Faluza attack was operated during the US military occupation of Iraq. The US military administration field manual was first made in the occupied Italy and North Africa in the 1940s, completed in Okinawa, recycled in South Korea to be maintained until today. It is inevitable that large-scale killings are repeated before a general election to set up a pro-US government wherever the US militarily governs, since the process is from the US military administration manual. The historical wounds that Okinawa and Jeju Island have stem from the same perpetrator.

Depleted uranium munition was used in the Gulf War in 1990. There was a shooting accident where DU munition was used in Okinawa in 1995. There was an accidental bombing where DU was used in Yeoncheon in 1997. There was another DU-used accidental shooting in a US warship in Hawaii in 1998. And it turned out that in the US bases in Suwon, Cheongju, Osan in South Korea, and in Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, is being stored over 3 million DU bombs, the amount of which outnumbers three times that used in Iraq. US nuclear Tomahawk missiles aboard submarines use Jinhae in Korea as their port of call through Hawaii and the White Beach Naval Facility in Okinawa. It is obvious that those US ships would also be called to Jeju naval base once its construction is finished. All around the globe, the US bases are fraught with sexual assaults against civilians, cases of noise damage, and oil and other environmental contamination. The ongoing wounds in a state of constant aggravation in Okinawa and Jeju Island also have the same perpetrator.

The most decisive factor in the connection of Korea-Japan, Okinawa and Jeju Island

Fukushima: Everything has to be done again for us to stay in the contaminated

Apr. 15, 2012
An interview with IWATA Wataru by Nadine and Thierry Ribault
Translation by Francis Guerin

Introduction

We have known Iwata Wataru for more than two years, and when he decided to depart to Fukushima from Kyoto, he asked us to locate Geiger counters in France because at that time there were none available for his use in Japan. Despite active searching we found none. However, we contacted the independent radioactivity measuring laboratory CRIIRAD, which was created in France following the Chernobyl accident. The CRIIRAD people decided to send counters and other measurement accessories free to Wataru's recently created "Project 47". In May 2011, we joined the CRIIRAD measurement mission to Fukushima and witnessed the first steps in "Project 47" and their collaboration with CRIIRAD. The link was made and the idea to create a Japanese version of CRIIRAD came to mind and Iwata took the lead: in July 2011 CRMS was born. Iwata became the founder and technical director, with the technical support of CRIIRAD and of the Umweltinstitut in Munich, with the financial support of Days Japan and other donors. Iwata's experience engagement and commitment is the topic of the new book by Nadine and Thierry Ribault :

Les Sanctuaires de l'abîme - Chronique du désastre de Fukushima - aux Editions de l'Encyclopédie des Nuisances, Paris, 2012. (provisional English title: Snatched Away to Darkness - The Story of the Fukushima Disaster)

Composer IWATA Wataru poses many difficult questions regarding the long-term health risks faced by the victims of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. He presents a compelling call to action framed in terms of what he calls an "auto-evacuation". In contrast to the state's directive to evacuate specific areas, the nature of auto-evacuation is that "people themselves decide to evacuate the affected zone."

On March 13 2011, two days after the Tohoku Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukushima, the composer Iwata Wataru left his studio in the suburbs of Tokyo to take refuge in Kyoto. He was acutely aware, as the entire population now is, that an unprecedented catastrophe – even larger than Chernobyl – had occurred. After sleepless nights, Iwata, who never engaged in activism before, either humanitarian or political, decided to go to Fukushima prefecture on March 20, propelled by a zeal even he cannot fully explain.

During the following three months, Iwata created "Project 47″, named after the 47 prefectures of Japan. Funds were raised both to organize the evacuation of victims and to buy radiation measurement equipment to gather data that would subsequently be published. He explains:

"The situation in Japan looks more and more like that in wartime: television, print and Internet outlets are being called upon to impose a voluntary gag order on themselves."

"Project 47″ observers go to farms, schools and homes with radiometers and Geiger counters to measure radiation levels and publish them on their association website. They want to create the basis  for what they call "auto-evacuation": a system whereby people can autonomously decide to evacuate those affected zones in which the state does not oblige them to evacuate.

Concerned citizens from all over the world who are committed to peace and the preservation of nature

Die folgende Erklärung hat uns spät erreicht, zu spät, um Unterschriften zu sammeln. Wir geben sie dennoch zur Kenntnis in den 5 Sptachen, in  denen sie uns zugesandt worden ist:
Englisch | Japanisch | Koreanisch | Chinesisch | Deutsch.

National Association of Professors for Democracy in Korea
Do-Heum Lee, Hee-Yeon Cho, Chang-won Seol, Seung-seok Kim, Yong-tae Choi
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | Telefon: 82-2-2610-4232 | http://www.professornet.org/

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Stop the Jeju Naval Base Construction:

An Urgent Call for Global Support to Restore Justice in South Korea and

Preserve Peace in East Asia

Despite sustained protests by local citizens and increasing international criticism, the South Korean Government and its Navy have recently begun blasting parts of a treasured world-heritage site on Jeju Island in South Korea in order to proceed with the construction of a naval base, a military project that also threatens peace in the wider East Asian region. The naval base construction has set off popular turmoil in response to its destructive blasting of the Gureombi coastline, located at a site of exceptional historical and geological significance in Jeju, which is recognized globally for its exquisite natural beauty and unique biodiversity. Each time an explosive blast detonates at Gureombi, the South Korean Government and Navy betray their fundamental responsibility of environmental stewardship with ruthlessness and dishonesty, which have infuriated Korean citizens, drawing further condemnation from concerned observers all over the world.

 

The South Korean Administration under President Lee Myung-Bak has acted unlawfully and illegitimately by proceeding with this naval base construction despite Gureombi's inclusion in the "Absolute Preservation Zone," an area strictly protected from development by South Korean legal regulations. The Lee Administration has attempted to justify the construction by ostensibly removing Gureombi from the Absolute Preservation Zone, but this exclusion occurred without due process and against the wishes of a majority of Jeju residents and other Korean citizens. The Lee Administration has also tried to garner support by claiming it would develop the area into an attractive military-civilian tourist port, but a technical assessment of the plans for the naval base exposed serious flaws in the design that gives the lie to the government's claims. Nevertheless, the Lee Administration continues to deny the existence of such design problems in a deliberate attempt to deceive the public and to downplay the enormous damage it is inflicting on both the natural environment and the regional conditions for peace.

There is every reason to believe that the South Korean government is building this base in collaboration with the U.S. government and military, given the Mutual Defense Treaty whereby "the Republic of Korea grants, and the United States of America accepts, the right to dispose United States land, air and sea forces in and about the territory of the Republic of Korea as determined by mutual agreement." If constructed, the naval base will be used to project U.S. power in the region, especially as part of a strategy to contain China, in alliance with Japan.

Where there are weapons, there are killing and war. The construction of the Jeju naval base cannot help but disrupt the military balance in the region, exacerbating existing tensions, and greatly increasing the possibility of war, one that could quickly engulf the entire region and perhaps the world.

The shores and coastline at Gureombi comprise a celebrated ecological preservation zone and scenic tourist destination, where people from throughout East Asia and the world can together appreciate the extraordinary beauty of the natural environment. Although UNESCO designated Jeju Island in 2002 as a Biosphere Reserve, the island has a fragile ecology where flora and fauna still face the danger of extinction. The South Korean government also declared Jeju as a Natural Heritage Protection Zone, a measure authorized by the Cultural Heritage Administration. In October 2004, Jeju Island was designated as an Absolute Preservation Zone by the South Korean Government, which prohibited any development or other changes that would alter the landscape. Furthermore, the Gureombi seashore is critically important to the islanders because that area includes several Yongcheonsu springs. These springs provide a precious source of water essential to the livelihood of Jeju residents, who face an insufficient water supply due to the island's volcanic terrain.