JCP promises Uruma citizens cooperation in struggle against government plan to construct new U.S. base

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

JCP promises Uruma citizens cooperation in struggle against government plan to construct new U.S. base

A group of Uruma citizens on April 5 visited the Japanese Communist Party office in the Diet Building and asked for its cooperation in their struggle opposing the government plan to construct a new U.S. base in Uruma City.

As another option for a relocation site of the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station, the Democratic Party of Japan-led government has reportedly been examining the feasibility of a plan to construct a new U.S. base on reclaimed land off the sea on the Katsuren Peninsula in Uruma City, Okinawa.

The Uruma City Assembly on March 19 unanimously adopted a resolution opposing the government plan. Uruma citizens on March 25 held a rally in protest against the new U.S. base construction proposal.

In the plan, the government will develop a 1,020 hectare artificial island by reclaiming the shallow waters on the coral reef about 1,300 meters off the coast of the Katsuren Peninsula in order to build a new U.S. base with two 3,600-meter runways and a 3,000-meter runway.

Even at the U.S. Kadena base, the largest U.S. base in the Asian region, there are only two 3,600-meter runways.

The area of the new construction site in the sea off the Katsuren Peninsula of Uruma City is six times larger than the 160 hectare site for the planned construction of a base in the sea off the Henoko District in Nago City and two times bigger than the Futenma base.

The former government had proposed a plan to reclaim the coral reef off the coast of the Katsuren Peninsula in order to build a U.S. base twice in the past, but both times, Uruma residents rejected the government proposal.

- Akahata, April 5 & 6, 2010