Okinawa Environmental Justice Project

日本語記事と書簡の和訳は下にあります。 On September 7, 2022, 87 groups and organizations from Okinawa, Japan, and beyond sent a letter of request to 32 legislators selected from the U.S. Senate and House Armed Service Committees.  The Letter asks the legislators to take the initiative to stop the military base construction in Henoko-Oura Bay, close the dangerous U.S. Futenma Air Station in Ginowan City, and draw up a new realignment plan.  Encouragingly, The Intercept has published an article , which discusses the Letter in some detail and the increasingly tense East Asian context in which the Letter was created and sent.  The 15 page Letter is embedded in the article! The Letter supports and provides complementary information to Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki’s decision to disapprove the Japanese government’s application for seafloor reinforcement work, which would be necessary for the Japanese government to continue the military base construction.   It highlights the Japanese gov...

日本語は下にあります. In April this year, the article " Trajectory to local extinction of an isolated dugong population near Okinawa Island " was published in Scientific Reports. The article is a revised version of the article " Local extinction of an isolated dugong population near Okinawa Island ," submitted to Scientific Reports and uploaded to the Research Square site for comments in April 2021. Five Japanese scholars wrote it, and four of them have a close relationship with the construction of a U.S. military base at Henoko-Oura Bay.  While I appreciate that the authors have incorporated into the revised version the references that I had suggested for inclusion in my comments on the original version, I find that the revised version is still peculiar in many respects.  So, like I did with their original article , I have submitted my comments on the revised version to Scientific Reports.  Let's see how Scientific Reports and the authors react to my comments. Hideki Yos...

More update (March 30, 2022) (日本語は下です） Thanks to your attention and support, we were able to get the Okinawa prefectural government to upload information regarding Governor Denny Tamaki's disapproval of the Okinawa Defense Bureau's application for changes in the design and work of Henoko base construction on its Washington D.C. office's website. https://dc-office.org/post/1606 We still don't know and are puzzled why it took the prefectural government such a long time. Anyway this is a critical tool to challenge and stop the Henoko base construction project. Share and spread the information! Hideki Yoshikawa Director Update information March 25, 2022 I am happy to update my last post with a positive note. In my last post, I raised concerns about the lack of information on the Okinawa Prefectural Government Washington D.C. Office’s website about Governor Denny Tamaki’s decision to reject the Okinawa Defense’s application for changes in the design and work of the U.S. mil...

Being true to the maxim "make the Yambaru Forest a genuine World Heritage site," civil society members have taken a new step.  (日本語は下のプレスリリースをご覧下さい） First, on February 17, 2022, thirty civil society groups in Japan sent a letter of concern to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the IUCN World Heritage Programme. See the letter below. RBC News covers our press conference on sending of the letter                     The letter explains that, despite the inscription of the "Northern Part of Okinawa Island" (part of the Yambaru forest) as a World Natural Heritage in July 2021, the Japanese government is still reluctant to address critical issues the Yambaru forest faces. The U.S. military's Northern Training Area sitting next to the World Heritage site threatens the World Heritage sites and the forest as a whole. Numerous discarded U.S. military materials such as bullets and chemicals are still scattered in the "returned area" (formerl...

日本語は英語文の後にあります Disappointing Result: Kishimoto Yohei Defeated by Toguchi Taketoyo On January 23, 2022, in a closely watched Nago mayoral election, the incumbent mayor Toguchi Taketoyo defeated Kishimoto Kohei (former Nago city assembly representative).  With a 68 percent voter turnout rate, Toguchi gathered 19,524 votes, while Kishimoto gained 14,439 votes. Toguchi has secured his second term in the Nago mayor's office.  As a Nago citizen and an environment NGO member, I was disappointed with the result and surprised by the wide margin.　 Kishimoto Yohei and his supporters wait election result I rooted for Kishimoto because, among other things, he showed his firm stance against the construction of a U.S. military at Henoko-Oura Bay on the city's east coast as the replacement facility for Futenma Air Station in Ginowan City. In contrast,  Toguchi took a mimamoru (見守る) stance : He would "keep his eyes" on how the dispute over the Henoko issue between the Okinawa prefect...

Happy New Year! On January 1, 2022、I went to the Setake beach and saw the sabani sailboat "Kibo no Umi (Hope Spot) against the backdrop of large construction ships in Oura Bay. My friend Takuma Higashionna salvaged an old abandoned sabani boat and renovated it to commemorate the designation of the Henoko-Oura Bay Coastal Water as a Hope Spot.  Very symbolic, I thought. These construction ships are enormous and overwhelming, and this sabani sailboat is so tinny in comparison. But the Kibo no Umi is supported by the vast oceans and people worldwide who wanted to protect them. Greenpeace sent the iconic Rainbow Warrior to Okinawa in protest against Henoko base construction in 2015. Mission Blue designated the Henoko-Oura Bay area as Japan's first Hope Spot in 2019.  U.S., Japanese, and Okinawan NGOs and individuals fought hard and long the "Dugong vs. U.S. Department of Defense" in the U.S. court from 2003 to 2020. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and ...

On November 25, 2021, Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki officially disapproved of the Okinawa Defense Bureau’s (Japanese government’s) application for changes in base construction design and work . With that, the Henoko base construction plan has entered a whole new phase.  Without approval from Governor Tamaki, the Bureau cannot proceed with ground reinforcement work required due to the extremely fragile seafloor at the construction site in Oura Bay. The Japanese government has admitted that, even if obtained Governor’s approval, the base construction would require at least 13 more years and would not be completed until the mid-2030s. The feasibility of the construction plan is in question. And now, the media report that the Japanese government had known the presence of the fragile seafloor by 2015 or earlier; it did not make it public until 2019 . Of course, “manipulating the release of information to the Okinawa public” has been a strategy of the Japanese government to push forward ...