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U.S. Veterans (and the Okinawa Dugong) Reveal MCAS Futenma's Infringement of U.S. Navy's Safety Standards: Call for Immediate Closure of the Base
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Dedication: This essay is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Arasaki Moriteru, Professor of Politics at Okinawa University who passed away on March 31, 2018.
For many years in Okinawa, Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Futenma in the heart of Ginowan City has been synonymous with danger. In 2003, when surveying the controversial installation from the air, United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld remarked that this, “base is the most dangerous in the world.” On this occasion, Rumsfeld's vantage point was that of someone in flight, such as a U.S. pilot or other flight personnel operating from the base rather than that of nearby residents in Ginowan City, then over 90,000. On the ground, the local people experience danger daily in intensely visceral ways.
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References
Notes
1 A reference in Japanese to Rumsfeld's observation about Futenma can be found here.
2 Given the crash into the main administration building and the resulting fireball, it is hardly hyperbole to describe the survival of the Marine Corps helicopter flight crew and the people on campus as a miracle.
3 C. Douglas Lummis. “Mission Creep Dispatch: C. Douglas Lummis,” Mother Jones, September 19, 2008 here.
4 Further details of the incident can be found here.
5 Details of the conference can be found March 6, 2018 Ryukyu Shimpo article, “普天間閉鎖、米に要請 元軍人の会国防長官ら１１人に” (p. 28).
6 The letter was addressed to Secretary of Defense James Mattis; Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford; Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer; Commander of US Force Pacific Admiral Harry Harris; Commander of US Force Japan LTG Jerry Martinez; US Ambassador to Japan the Honorable William Hagarty; the US Consul General to Okinawa the Honorable Joel Ehrendreich; and the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Senator John McCain.
7 Further details in Japanese can be found here. In early February 2018, “the headmaster and members of the parent's association of Midorigaoka nursery school visited Japanese government officials in Tokyo to deliver a petition with more than 10,000 signatures” (Lisa Torio, “Okinawans Demand End to US Military Flights Over Schools” Aljazeera, 27 February 2018). The Chair of Okinawan Educational Committee submitted a request to the Defense Ministry to end all flights above all primary, secondary and special educational facilities (“全学校上空の飛行禁止を要求 沖縄県教委、国に異例の要請 米軍機事故多発受け、入試や式典時の騒音防止も”” Ryukyu Shimpo, February 16, 2018) also, see “学校上空の飛行中止求める 相次ぐ米軍機事故､沖縄の大学学長ら｢異常事態｣”
8 Military Base Liaison Section, Department of Military Base Affairs Policy, the City of Ginowan, “Danger Posed by Futenma Air Operations” December 2009, Ginowan City
9 Further details of the incident can be found here.
10 Letter to General James N. Mattis, U.S. Secretary of Defense from Veterans For Peace-Ryukyu/Okinawa Chapter Kokusai (VFP-ROCK), “Impermissible encroachment at MCAS Futenma” (March 2018).
11 (OPNAVINST 11010.36c, 9 October 2008)
12 Department of the Navy, Air installations compatible use zones (AICUZ) program procedures and guidelines for Department of the navy air installations (Washington DC: 9 October 2008), A-3.
13 Department of the Navy. Marine Corps Air Station Miramar: AICUZ Update (Naval Facilities Engineering Command: CA, 2005), 11.
14 Letter to General James N. Mattis, U.S. Secretary of Defense from Veterans For Peace-Ryukyu/Okinawa Chapter Kokusai (VFP-ROCK), “Impermissible encroachment at MCAS Futenma” (March 2018).
15 Ibid.
16 Hideki Yoshikawa, “Dugong Swimming in Uncharted Waters: US Judicial Intervention to Protect Okinawa's ‘Natural Monuments’ and Halt Base Construction,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 6-4-09 January 29, 2009, 4.
17 Miyume Tanji, “U.S. Court Rules in the ‘Okinawa Dugong Case’: Implications for U.S. Military Bases Overseas” Critical Asian Studies, 40(3) 2008, 482, and United State District Court Northern District of California, No. C 03-4350 MHP., “Memorandum & Order,” Okinawa Dugong (dugong), et al., vs. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al., March 1, 2005.
18 C. Douglas Lummis, “Futenma: ‘The most dangerous base in the world’, The Diplomat, March 30, 2018.
19 “Remembering the tragedy of U. S. military Jet Crashing onto Elementary School,” Ryukyu Shimpo (English), July 1, 2011
20 Miyume Tanji and Daniel Broudy, Okinawa Under Occupation: McDonaldization and Resistance to Neoliberal Propaganda (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 122.
21 Personal interview with the author, March 5, 2018.
22 For example, at the Futenma Daini Elementary School, various teachers have received phone calls as well as emails from people in mainland Japan accusing the teachers in Okinawa of deliberately ‘fabricating the accident’ and for ‘not moving’ the school or teaching activities. 沖縄中傷にも苦しむ 基地そばの学校「動かせばいい」 (“Hate speeches against Okinawa also taunt schools near military bases: ‘just move it‘”). Tokyo Shinbun, December 22, 2017.
23 On the post-war ‘Okinawa struggle’, see Arasaki Moriteru, Okinawa Sengo Shi (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1976), Arasaki Moriteru, Okinawa Gendai Shi (Tokyo: Iwanami, 2005), and Miyume Tanji, Myth, Struggle and Protest in Okinawa (London: Routledge, 2006)
24 Courthouse News Service, “9th Circuit Revives Fight for Endangered Dugong on Okinawa” August 21, 2017
25 Center for Biological Diversity, “Court Affirms Right to Sue U.S. Military Over New Base's Threats to Endangered Okinawa Dugong” 21 August, 2017
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