Okinawa Base Construction Continues...
From Close the Base:
More than a week after the country’s worst natural disaster in a hundred years, the Japanese government has not been able to resolve a long-predicted nuclear catastrophe. Millions of people are living without running water or power in temperatures that fall below freezing at night. Half a million homes are without power in northern Japan and 2.5 million have no access to water. Food is critically short and bottled water is running low in many cities. Gasoline is scarce and homes are running out of kerosene to power heaters.
Yet, Tokyo is still using monetary and military construction labor resources to forcibly build a U.S. mega-base at Henoko, an environmentally sensitive coastal area in northern Okinawa, despite the prefecture’s unanimous democratic opposition. The base’s ostensible purpose to protect Japan from an attack from North Korea. However the long-feared nuclear attack on Japan has already come—accidentally, but predictably from within. The resulting radioactiive fallout of the nuclear plant failure has been likened to an explosion of a dirty bomb.
Forced construction in Henoko began the morning after U.S. Marine amphibious tanks disembarked on the beach in the middle of the night on Jan. 27 of this year. Since the disaster, construction has intesified as the media and Japanese NGOs that were supporting Okinawan resistance have, understandably, turned their attention to the disaster survivors and the nuclear crisis.
More than a week after the country’s worst natural disaster in a hundred years, the Japanese government has not been able to resolve a long-predicted nuclear catastrophe. Millions of people are living without running water or power in temperatures that fall below freezing at night. Half a million homes are without power in northern Japan and 2.5 million have no access to water. Food is critically short and bottled water is running low in many cities. Gasoline is scarce and homes are running out of kerosene to power heaters.
Yet, Tokyo is still using monetary and military construction labor resources to forcibly build a U.S. mega-base at Henoko, an environmentally sensitive coastal area in northern Okinawa, despite the prefecture’s unanimous democratic opposition. The base’s ostensible purpose to protect Japan from an attack from North Korea. However the long-feared nuclear attack on Japan has already come—accidentally, but predictably from within. The resulting radioactiive fallout of the nuclear plant failure has been likened to an explosion of a dirty bomb.
Forced construction in Henoko began the morning after U.S. Marine amphibious tanks disembarked on the beach in the middle of the night on Jan. 27 of this year. Since the disaster, construction has intesified as the media and Japanese NGOs that were supporting Okinawan resistance have, understandably, turned their attention to the disaster survivors and the nuclear crisis.
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