The above cartoon shows the strategic importance of the US military base in Okinawa. However, at present, this island has become the headache of both Obama of the US and Hatoyama of Japan as local Japanese people are asking for their American buddies to leave. NO US BASE IN OKINAWA!
More than 21,000 Japanese gathered in the southern island of Okinawa on Sunday to demand that a US Marine base be moved out of the region, days ahead a visit by US president Barack Obama. Protesters asked the US troops to realign its military base and said that the military in Okinawa is a burden for the island.
Under a 2006 U.S.-Japan agreement, the Futenma Marine base in the center of the city of Ginowan is set to be closed and replaced with a facility built partly on reclaimed land at Henoko, a remoter part of the island, by 2014.
The deal, which Washington wants to push through after years of what a military official called "painful" negotiations, is part of a wider plan to re-organize U.S. troops and reduce the burden on Okinawa by moving up to 8,000 Marines to Guam.
The row over the re-siting of the Futenma air base threatens to stall a realignment of the 47,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan and sour defense ties between the two countries, seen as key in a region home to a rising China and an unpredictable North Korea.
It could also prove a domestic headache for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose support ratings have slipped since his landslide election victory in August.
"Okinawa's future is for us, the Okinawan people to decide," Ginowan mayor Yoichi Iha told a supportive crowd which spilled out of an open-air theater by the beach. "We cannot let America decide for us."
