Beyond the fence is the U.S.A -- Akahata 'Current' colomn, October 24I recently had a chance to look around the U.S. Yokota Air Base through a fence in an excursion organized by a Tokyo co-op.
First, we went around the base in a minibus. Although rain hampered us from seeing into the base site well, we could understand how big it is because one circuit of the base took us about 40 minutes by bus. To begin with, it's about 157 times larger than the Tokyo Dome, and it's even larger than Komae City of Tokyo.
On the surface, it seemed to be nice and calm with people jogging on the base. But at the same time, we found a signboard saying, "Armed Response to Terrorists and Guerrillas." A person in the excursion who had visited here just after the September 11th incident last year said, "Last time when I came here, police officers were standing around the base gates at about 10-meter intervals."
Then, we saw facilities developed and strengthened in recent years, a junior high school with small class sizes of only 18 students, a gigantic shopping center only for U.S. personnel, and a rest house for U.S. soldiers. These were all constructed using Japanese tax money. Furthermore, our public funds were used for a construction project to intensify the endurance of a 4,000-meter runway. Someone says that roaring noise of military aircraft stopped only during this construction.
Beyond the fence is the United States of America. The U.S. Forces in Japan is headquartered there. It's a satellite base for transit to the Asia-Pacific region and a sortie base for U.S wars. Still now, construction projects to improve operations are under way at Yokota base.
Just a little south of the base, there is a children's playground of Akishima City. It used to be the main downtown area of the city until 1968, with 800 houses, 50 shops, and 5 hospitals, but they moved out to somewhere else after repeated sufferings from the sonic booms of U.S. bombers aircraft.
A woman on the excursion stared at the vanished-downtown site and said, "If wartime bills are enacted, more towns may be forced to be abandoned again." (end)