[CPEO-MEF] GLOBAL, CLOSURE: "US Military Returns Land to Japan, but Okinawa Isn't Celebrating"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

US Military Returns Land to Japan, but Okinawa Isn't Celebrating


By Jon Letman
Truthout
December 21, 2016  

Even as the US returns large sections of tropical forest on Okinawa island, it is building new helipads at the expense of neighboring forest land. (Photo: Rody Shimazaki)

When US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and top American military brass join Japanese officials for a much-anticipated land return ceremony on December 22 (Japan time), they will mark the largest handover of property by the United States in a generation. Okinawa, once the independent Ryukyu kingdom, has been part of Japan since the 1870s and after World War II was administered by the US military until 1972 when the islands reverted to Japanese control. But the US never really left and still has roughly half of its 50,000 troops and its greatest concentration of military bases on just 0.6 percent of Japanese territory.

Now, after 20 years of negotiations, the US is returning a large swath of land in Okinawa island's northern wilderness -- eager for a positive story after a year marred by US military sexual violence, murder and embarrassing drunk driving incidents. Any celebratory air, however, will be tempered by clouds of resistance and regret as Okinawans fight to prevent more land and sea from being militarized in exchange for land that was originally theirs.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38809-us-military-returns-land-to-japan-but-okinawa-isn-t-celebrating

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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