Tokyo
\nJapan\u2019s central government resumed work at a disputed US military base relocation site on Okinawa on Thursday even though residents see the project as an undemocratic imposition on the small southern island.<\/p>\n
The Defense Ministry\u2019s branch on the island said an early stage of landfill work at Henoko on Okinawa\u2019s east coast began on Thursday morning. Construction workers were setting up floats to mark the designated landfill area, making it off-limits to the public, including protesters, said Satoshi Shirakata, a spokesman at the Okinawa Defense Bureau overseeing the Henoko project.<\/p>\n
At the centre of contention is a decades-old plan to move a Marine Corps air station from densely populated Futenma in the southern part of the island to less-crowded Henoko on the east coast.
\nMany Okinawans say the presence of so many US troops on the island is burdensome already and they want the air station moved off the island entirely.<\/p>\n
Defense Ministry officials said the resumption of work at Henoko followed the central government\u2019s decision earlier this week to reverse Okinawa\u2019s earlier ban on landfill work at the site.<\/p>\n
Okinawa Gov Denny Tamaki, who took office a month ago, has urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other central government officials to stop the Henoko plan and reduce Okinawa\u2019s burdens.<\/p>\n
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Tamaki said the central government was not giving due consideration to other options.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say Henoko is the only one, Henoko is the only solution. But we think that it is definitely not the case and that they\u2019re refusing to think critically,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American side has made multiple proposals under reorganization plans and the Japanese government should consider them.\u201d Washington\u2019s position is that the dispute should be resolved between Tokyo and Okinawa.<\/p>\n
The relocation of Futenma air station was planned after the 1995 rape of a schoolgirl in which three US servicemen were convicted. The case ignited simmering Okinawan opposition to the US bases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tokyo Japan\u2019s central government resumed work at a disputed US military base relocation site on Okinawa on Thursday even though residents see the project as an undemocratic imposition on the small southern island. The Defense Ministry\u2019s branch on the island said an early stage of landfill work at Henoko on Okinawa\u2019s east coast began on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46116,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46114\/revisions\/46116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}