Okinawa: GO HOME America

‘Nearly 100,000 people have attended a rally in Japan’s southern island of Okinawa demanding that a US military base be moved off the island. Under a 2006 agreement with the US, the US Marines’ Futenma base was to be moved from the centre to the coast. But demonstrators want Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to stick to an election pledge to remove it completely.’ – BBC.
Typically, the New York Times, licker of the earlobes of the military-industrial complex, spinned the story with more than a touch of fantasy, their ‘journalist’ scribbling away wildly, pretending World War II never happened: ‘The perception that Mr. Hatoyama has mishandled the relationship with the United States, Japan’s longtime protector, has contributed to his falling approval ratings, which have dropped below 30 percent.’ Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Longtime protector! Yeah, right. Remember that little war between the U.S. and Japan, hmm? The American military are in Okinawa as an occupier. Following a battle in Okinawa in which 200,000 people died, the U.S. military occupiers confiscated land from the people by force and stayed there. That is what happened. That’s why the U.S. military is there, no other reason, so stop trying to make stuff up! And I doubt somehow that ‘mishandling’ the relationship with the ‘protector’ is the reason for Hatoyama’s falling ratings. More likely it’s because Okinawa hasn’t been divested of the pointless and unreasonable foreign occupying military force already.

barry
Barry Kavanagh writes fiction, and has made music, formerly with Dacianos.

Contact him here.