Okinawa Environmental Justice Project

Informative, Forthcoming, and Reluctant? On March 23, the East-West Center in Washington hosted a virtual seminar, "Assessing the Benefits and Costs of the U.S. Military Presence in Japan and South Korea. " Six experts from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) discussed their latest report,  Burden Sharing: Benefits and Costs Associated with the U.S. Military Presence in Japan and South Korea , and they answered questions from the audience from the U.S., South Korea, and Okinawa/Japan. Okinawa Environmental Justice Project participated in the seminar.  GAO Experts and East-West Moderator  Image Source: East-West Center in Washington For OEJP, the seminar was very informative, and the GAO officers were overall very forthcoming with their answers to the audience's questions, including ones from us. The moderator did a good job navigating the seminar.  We learned a lot about the GAO's report itself, the contexts in which the GAO gathered information and creat...

December 17, 2020, Japanese environmental NGOs, including the Nature Conservation Society of Japan and Okinawa Environmental Justice Project, met with officials of the Ministry of Defense to discuss the impacts of Henoko base construction on the environment, especially on the dugong and corals. The meeting was set up with the help of Diet Councilor Fukushima Mizuho , and Mizuho-san herself participated in the meeting.  Click here to watch the meeting ! The meeting was as frustrating as ever, however. While reiterating its dubious stance that base construction has not impacted the environment, the ministry officials gave more dubious answers to our requests and questions. Unsatisfied, we sent in late December 2020 to the ministry a set of follow-up requests and questions. And, in February 2021, we received similar answers in writing.  Below, we introduce two examples from the ministry's responses to show how unconvincing and suspicious they were. We also discuss critical infor...