Pastor protesting against U.S. base in Japan is freed

A Japanese pastor who opposes the presence of American military bases in Okinawa, Japan, and who was arrested during a protest in front of a U.S. marine camp in Nago City, was released from custody in late September after staging a hunger strike.

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	Natsume Taira (Photo: David McNeill)

Forty-four-year-old Natsume Taira was arrested and faces charges of obstructing government officials in carrying out their duties. He and more than 20 others protested on 25 September in front of the gate of the U.S. Marine’s Camp Schwab in Nago City on the main island of Okinawa, an archipelago that makes up Japan’s southernmost prefecture.

“I think it was a totally unjust arrest. We have been thoroughly non-violent and I think that there was no reason for me to be arrested. We will continue to do our best to stop construction of the base,” said Taira, a pastor of the United Church of Christ in Japan, following his release on 27 September.

The protestors oppose the planned construction of an air facility at Camp Schwab said to be part of an overall scaling down of U.S. forces in Okinawa. They say construction work will damage precious environmental and cultural assets and they oppose a government survey of the site because they claim it is being carried out in too hasty a fashion.

The daily newspaper of the U.S. forces in Okinawa, Stars and Stripes, quoted Hiroshi Oyakawa, the deputy chief of the Nago police saying, “It was the second time Taira threw himself under a vehicle in an attempt to block the survey. On September 15 we warned him against the dangerous behaviour. However, yesterday, despite our repeated warnings, he did it again.”

The public prosecutor’s office in Okinawa’s capital city Naha said that Taira was released because it did not believe that he would escape or destroy evidence while investigations continue, the local Ryukyu Broadcasting Corporation reported.

The protestors say the government survey of the site is a pretext to allow the construction of a new U.S. military base, planned under the agreement involving the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station in Futenma, currently located in another Okinawa city, Ginowan.

In an article in The Independent in 2004 Taira was described as “a mild-mannered bespectacled parson and pacifist in the Martin Luther King mode” who will not be pushed concerning the expansion of the base. “If the authorities come back with more people, we’ll be waiting for them,” he said.

“I am not a violent man but they are not going to get through.”

Taira said at that time that the islanders had endured enough from the U.S. military presence. “The soldiers get drunk and crash their cars. There are four accidents a day; two rapes a month. Almost every person on Okinawa has a family member who has been assaulted.

“Then the soldiers go off to kill poor people in Iraq and Afghanistan. It makes my blood boil.”

In a June 2005 article on the website of Global Ministries, a joint effort of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), two U.S. churches, Taira said more about the movement he works in.

“We do not want any more bases to be built in Okinawa. We do not want to comply with the forces that drop bombs on people in other lands such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We know what it is like to have helicopters fall out of the sky onto our universities. We have seen flames flare up from our wells. We have experienced the unrest among U.S. service men who return from active service in combat.

“We know the deafening noise of the U.S. Airforce manoeuvres which disrupt our daily lives. That’s why we do not want any more U.S. bases built on our islands. We do not want this quiet fishing village to be yet another victim of the U.S. military presence.”

Okinawa was the first part of Japan occupied by U.S. forces during the Second World War. It accounts for only 0.6 per cent of Japan’s territory but 75 per cent of the land occupied by U.S. forces in Japan.

More than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan operate out of 40 bases around Okinawa and these comprise almost 22 per cent of the island’s landmass.

A substantial number of Okinawa residents oppose the U.S. military presence but the referendums over whether or not to have bases have always been won by those wanting them. Many residents say this is due to economic dependence on the presence of the U.S. military in Okinawa, the poorest of Japan’s 47 prefectures.

Ecumenical News International/Staff