Background Briefing:

Okinawa in 2004 : Peace and Environment Movements Coming Together on the Henoko U.S. Base Issue
YUI Akiko

Reversion Anniversary Day in the Midst of Crucial Struggle
In Okinawa, the period from April to June is a time when people cannot avoid thinking about war and peace, and a time for renewing one's resolve in the struggle for peace. In this three- month period are concentrated a series of anniversaries symbolizing the last 60 years of our history: the war and the postwar period. Right in the middle of this period is April 15, commemorating the day Okinawa was reverted to Japan after 27 years of U.S. military rule. Every year many events and peace actions are planned around this date.But this year during just this period we have been forced against our will into a crucial and bitter struggle that will determine whether Okinawa will continue to serve as a foothold for American wars, or whether we can choose peace and protect the rich environment that has been the blessing of our livelihood.

The problem begins with the U.S. Marine Corp Futenma Air Facility, which sits smack in the middle of the city of Ginowan in the central part of Okinawa Island. (With a 2,800-meter runway, it occupies 480 hectares, or 24.5%, of Ginowan City.) The removal of this base is long overdue, but the U.S. and Japanese governments, instead of removing the base from Okinawa altogether, are planning to build a replacement for it offshore from the fishing town of Henoko, in Nago City in the northern part of the island. In preparation for this, the Naha Defense Facilities Administration Bureau (the local office of the National Defense Facilities Administration Department) wants to begin an investigation of the ground by boring the sea bottom for soil samples.

At the Henoko fishing port, just south of the fence surrounding the U.S. Marine Corp's Camp Shwab and next to the sea shining emerald green and cobalt blue, a sit-in has been continuing around the clock since April 19. Altogether more than 3,000 people have participated, counting local residents and their supporters – labor union members, political party representatives, ordinary citizens and peace activists, and some people from abroad. Inside the sit-in tent there is a signboard that is changed every day: 2,689 days [8 years] plus n days. This is the time that has passed since April 12, 1996, when the U.S. and Japanese governments announced that the Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma would be entirely removed within 5 to 7 years.

The April 15 Peace March has been a custom since 1978, so this year's was the 27th time it has been carried out. It is divided into three routes. Those taking the eastern route started down the coastline on the 14th, stopped on the way to meet with the local people opposing the construction of a new facility for urban warfare training inside the U.S. Marines' Camp Hansen, continued walking south (being increasingly astounded at Camp Hansen's sheer size), and on the 16th joined in the main event planned for this period, the human chain surrounding Futenma Airbase.

The people who chose the southern route began at the Cornerstone of Peace monument, where the names of the more than 240,000 people – Okinawan civilians, Japanese and American troops, plus some Korean and Chinese conscripted laborers – who were killed in the Battle of Okinawa are engraved in stone. (This is said to be the only war monument that memorializes the dead on all sides.) From there they walked north to the Futenma human chain, passing through the old battlefields of the “Steel Typhoon” of 59 years ago, when it was said that not one but many hells gathered here. The people who chose the northern route began from a place in Nago near where the G8 summit was held in 2000, visited Yomitan Village, where the U.S. military made their initial landing on April 1, 1945 and where shortly after that the people taking refuge in Chibichiri Cave committed mass suicide?From there the marchers continued south to join the others at Futenma.

Coming from the north and from the south, they walked altogether 120 km along this island that has lived under the curse of war from the Battle of Okinawa to the present day. This group of some 3,000 people, including 1,500 from mainland Japan, almost all from the generation that has never experienced war, adopted as their themes, “opposition to amending the Constitution” [the government is campaigning to remove the clause renouncing war], “immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and Japanese Self-Defense Forces from Iraq,” “consolidation and reduction of U.S. bases on Okinawa,” and “revise the Status of Forces Agreement” [which partially protects U.S. GIs who commit crimes off base from prosecution under Japanese law]. These themes fairly well summarize the main problems faced by Japan and Okinawa in the fourth year of the 21st Century.

The peace march and the human chain were sponsored by the labor union-supported Okinawa Peace Action Center, which also sponsored the All-Prefectural Rally for the Protection of Peace and Livelihood which followed. There the theme was “Opposition to Intra-Prefectural Base Relocation,” which means opposition to moving Futenma Airbase to Henoko, and opposition to the boring of the sea bottom in preparation for that.

The Okinawan progressive organizations, once a powerful force for peace, are hoping that these actions will become the detonator for an explosive new mass movement, sending out the message of the Okinawan people's deep desire for peace, and especially passing on to the younger generation the memory and the lessons of the war. Over the past 26 years, Japan has steadily moved to the right. During that period there was the time around 1996-7 when the Okinawan anti-base movement, led by women, was overflowing with energy, and people who came down from the mainland would go home feeling empowered. Then there was the time around 1999-2002 when Okinawa was being put under heavy pressure by the Japanese government, and we were rather being energized by our friends on the mainland.

This was the third time the movement has put a human chain around Futenma Base, the earlier times being in 1995 and 1998. It was a colorful event, with families bringing their children, and the 16,000 people succeeded in fully surrounding the 11.5 km airbase. In addition to the old demands to return Futenma Base immediately and to revise the Status of Forces Agreement there were some new ones aimed at the Japanese government: clean up the bases after they are returned; compensate the landowners; establish a jobs program for the Okinawan base workers.

The human chain was planned hastily and some were worried that it might fail; the fact that it succeeded shows the power of the anger of the Okinawans, and especially of the residents of Ginowan City, at the fact that the promise to return the base has not been kept. However one slogan, “No transfer of any base within Okinawa,” was dropped. This despite the fact that the Mayor of Ginowan is a member of the Okinawan Council Against Transfer of Bases Within the Prefecture, and under his regime the Ginowan City Office is fully cooperating with this position, taking such actions as setting up a corner for sending e-mail messages to U.S. President George Bush. But the organizing committee for the human chain and the march included representatives of the labor union Rengo, which does not oppose transferring the base to Henoko, and so the slogan was dropped in the name of getting as many participants as possible.

The Okinawan media, in reporting events related to the April 15 action, gave big coverage day after day to the march, the human chain, and the sit-in at Henoko. However the coverage in the Tokyo-centered national media was cool. And what it principally emphasized was the fact that the slogan opposing intra-prefectural base transfer had been removed from this year's events. Okinawa today is in a hard situation.

Status of Henoko Base Project
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came to Okinawa in November last year. He observed Futenma Air Station from the air, and was said to have been surprised to see such a run-down airstrip dangerously located in the center of a city, and expressed irritation that it was still there eight years after its return was promised. He also observed the sea at Henoko, and pronounced the plan to relocate the base there as outdated and in need of rethinking. It is said that the U.S. State Department began sounding out the Japanese Government on the review of the plan from that time. And they have begun moving toward the idea of returning Futenma Base without requiring any replacement. This was leaked by the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, and was made known to the Okinawan people on February 2 of this year.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. government's plans to reorganize its overseas bases are a matter of great interest in Okinawa, and a subject of much discussion. Partly underlying this discussion, especially since 2003, has been the hopeful view that this will be a good opportunity to reduce the bases in Okinawa. On the other hand, there are some who urge caution. In the past every time the Japanese government has given the appearance of giving in to Okinawan demands for return, removal, or reduction of the bases, it has, under U.S. leadership, ended up adopting a plan that turns out to be in the U.S. interest, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the bases. So isn't the same thing likely to happen again?

Thus, Rumsfeld's statement that Futenma Base can be returned without a replacement is said to mean that Futenma can be accommodated by expanding some base on the Japanese mainland such as the Marine Air Station at Iwakuni, or by relocating it within some Japanese Self-Defense Force base. Various rumors are circulating: they want to relocate it inside the Kadena Airforce Base on Okinawa; they want to move it to an SDF base outside the prefecture; they want to move it to Shimoji Island, a small island in the Ryukyu Archipelago; and so on. In any case, it is projected that the environmental assessment at Henoko will take three to four years, land reclamation will take nine and a half years, and the construction of the runway and the command and support buildings will take another two to three years, which means the whole project will take at least some 16 years to complete. And then Futenma is to be moved after that? The U.S. Defense Department can't wait that long.

And the Okinawan people can't wait that long. Especially the people of Ginowan can wait no longer. Immediately outside the fence surrounding Futenma Base are homes, shops and schools crowded together; inside are stationed 71 helicopters. Between the time of reversion in 1972 and the end of 2002 there have been 77 accidents there, including crashes, belly landings, and falling fuel tanks. People live in daily fear of a major accident on their side of the fence.

And then there is the noise. In addition to the huge helicopters on the base, there are also gigantic C-130 propeller- driven transport planes. In October, 2002 a group of 200 people took not only the Japanese Government's Defense Facilities Administration Department but also the base commander to court, in what has come to be called (if we directly translate the Japanese expression “bakuon”) the “Futenma Explosive Noise Case.” In April, 2003 an additional 204 people added their names to the case. In the past two years, despite the fact that 20 planes have been sent to “police” Iraq, the noise level has increased by a factor of three according to a survey of the prefectural government. The residents are at the limit of their endurance. Of course the same is true for the people living around the Kadena Airforce Base, but especially concerning the Futenma Base, where eight years have passed since the U.S. government promised to have it moved “because it's too dangerous,” the people are very, very unhappy.

In the midst of this, on April 27, 2003 Iha Yoichi, who ran on a platform with two clear planks – against relocation inside the prefecture, and unconditional removal within five years – was elected mayor of Ginowan City. This was a stunning result when you consider that his opponent, a Liberal Democratic Party candidate, campaigned for what surely must have sounded to many like the more “realistic” proposal: to move the Futenma Base to Henoko. (This was probably the first time in Okinawan history that a conservative LDP candidate campaigned for office by making speech after speech about how noisy and dangerous U.S. military bases are.) Mayor Iha, backed by the passionate hopes of the Ginowan citizens, is planning to go to the U.S. in July to appeal to the government, the Congress, and the public. The Futenma human chain has given him additional momentum.

There is also opposition even within the LDP to the transfer of the base to Henoko. In a gesture to sell his good image to Okinawans, Aso Taro, Minister Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, joined by a former Diet member from Okinawa, has proposed that the Futenma Base should be merged with the Kadena Air Force Base since its construction would be too expensive for the national coffers.

By now it should be clear to anyone that the plan for relocating the Futenma base to Henoko is unrealistic. But still the Japanese Government is stubbornly pushing ahead with the plan.

In the early morning of April 19 a team from the Naha Defense Facilities Administration Bureau (NDFAB), the Okinawa branch of the National Defense Facilities Administration Agency, set out with the intention of driving 63 stakes into the sea bottom off Henoko, as the first step in their plan to bore for soil samples under where the new base is to be built. The survey was originally scheduled for 2003 but was carried over into this year. On the Henoko shore the NDFAB officials were stopped by a group of residents and their supporters, who had learned the officials were coming and had been waiting for them since 5 a.m. The sit-in that began that morning has continued without letup to the time of this writing. Initiated by Henoko's “Society for the Protection of Life,” Nago's “Association to Oppose the Heliport Base,” and the “Okinawa Citizens Network for Peace” which comprises 32 peace, human rights, environment, and women's groups, this action spread rapidly, involving more and more citizens. These groups called upon broader public to come together to join the daily on-the-spot monitoring and surveillance on the Henoko shore. For this purpose, a newer action group called the “Okinawa Dugong Environmental Assessment Monitors Group” (A hard-to-translate name that seeks to answer the question, “Who will assess the assessors?” Monitors Group for short) was organized as the core of NDFAB watch in Henoko. This activity has been joined by quite a few prefectural and municipal assembly representatives and members of political parties who staged sit-ins in the Henoko beach.

The NDFAB has been adamant on the base building project. On April 28 it served notice to the public about the upcoming environmental assessment and announced that the assessment manual was open to anyone who wanted to come into the office to read it. The assessment referred to here is separate from the boring survey. It is the initial required procedure for the construction of the offshore base itself.

“Save the Dugong!” Movement Spreads Internationally
The coastal waters off the eastern shore of Nago City are recognized and valued worldwide as the northernmost habitat of the dugong, an endangered marine mammal species. The dugong has been designated a Natural Treasure by the government. For the past ten years environmental groups have been campaigning for its preservation, and on this basis opposing the base construction. These groups – the “Dugong Preservation Fund Committee,” “Dugong Network Okinawa,” the “Dugong Campaign Center,” and others – have a long history of activism and have networks that extend all over Japan and around the world.

But it is not just a matter of the dugong. The land and waters of Okinawa are at the southern boundary of the temperate zone that covers Japan, and at the northern boundary of the tropical zone that covers South and Southeast Asia. There are many plants and animals here that can be found nowhere else. Not only that, but before Okinawa became industrialized, its people had a long history of depending on the bounty of nature to maintain their livelihood. It was in that context that Okinawa's special culture, in which we take great pride, was developed.

Anything that destroys a natural environment such as that of Henoko must be called criminal. And to build a base there from which to dispatch troops out in the world to kill is simply out of the question. This is the perspective shared by action groups working on the Henoko base issue. While they were generally in solidarity with the traditional anti-base, anti-war movement, there have been subtle differences between the two types of movement. But on the issue of stopping the sea-bottom boring at Henoko, the two forces have come to work together. The said Monitors Group was organized in order to carry out a more proactive and effective action is a product of this new cooperation.

The NDFAB claims that the currently planned boring survey does not require an independent assessment of its effects on environment since it is merely a preliminary survey for the construction of a sea-wall that will protect the shore from the sea reclamation work for the construction of the airbase. The Ministry of Environment, which has told the National Diet over and over that the dugongs will be carefully looked after, has accepted this unconvincing explanation. To defeat it, the Monitors Group has heard expert views of as many scientists and legal experts as possible to establish that the planned boring survey is against the law.

First an application for arbitration was filed with the Prefectural Pollution Disputes Coordination Commission, signed by more than 900 complainants and requesting that a pollution arbitration procedure be launched. In fact, boring holes in the sea bottom requires the Prefecture's permission. The Monitors Group has appealed to all relevant departments of the prefectural government to refuse their permission, and has filed a demand that all government offices, national and prefectural, make public all documents pertaining to the case. To the Education Bureau it has stressed the necessity to protect the dugong as a natural treasure, and has inquired whether the government might not be violating the law that protects important natural assets.

Under this pressure, documents sent from the Agency for Cultural Affairs to the Prefecture, from the Ministry of Environmental to the Naha Defense Facilities Administration Bureau, from the Prefectural Environmental Protection Department to the River Engineering Section of the Civil Engineering Department were disclosed. What we learned from them was that the bureaucrats in our country's government puts the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty above all other considerations, and is powerless when it comes to protecting or defending the rights of its own people. In particular the Prefectural Pollution Disputes Coordination Commission rejected the Monitors Group's request for arbitration on grounds that U.S. bases were outside its jurisdiction. The Monitors Group also went through the Prefectural Assembly to put pressure on the River Engineering Section (which handles underwater engineering projects) to withhold its approval of the project. The pressure had some effect and the government wavered, but finally on the eve of the deadline, March 31, 2003, it decided to accept the protocol approving the DFAA use of public properties the DFAA had proposed in November last year. This protocol was approved by the prefectural office in April.

The DFAA thus appears to have gone through all necessary procedures for the project, but because DFAA rushed the process, the arrangement has many flaws which the opposition movement can use to undermine it. The Prefecture had asked for the opinions of nine scientists including marine biologists on the dugong, coral, and seaweed issues and geologists on soil and ground configuration, and had added to its statement of approval on the boring operation a list of 16 matters about which the DFAA will need to pay special attention in order to avoid damage to the environment. From the documents made public it was learned that eight of those nine scientists had stated that boring the sea bottom would cause very serious damage.

Among the matters listed by the Prefecture for special attention are cases where operations should be called to a temporary halt. But the DFAA has given no explanation as to how it would deal with such cases. All this slipshod rush at a time when the Henoko base plan itself may be scrapped depending on the U.S. policy of base “transformation.” What an irony it will be if the only thing these bureaucrats leave to the future is environmental destruction! As the old people sitting in at the Henoko fishing port say: “It would be inexcusable to our ancestors, and even more so to our descendents.”

Collaboration has also begun with the environmental movement in the United States. Four of the main Okinawan environmental groups plus three individuals have joined with the Biodiversity Center and the Turtle Island Recovery Network in the United States and – with the dugong as an additional plaintiff – taken the matter to a U.S. court. The claim is that the construction plan violates the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), and the demand is that the Government show what plans it has for avoiding any bad influence on the dugong.

The Biodiversity Center went to the Washington Federal District Court and persuaded it to issue an order that the noguchi gera (a breed of woodpecker found only in the forests of northern Okinawa) be added to the list of endangered species authorized under the Endangered Species Act. When a species is so listed then its habitat is also listed, which means that it becomes subject to environmental assessment. In fact much of the habitat of the noguchi gera is controlled by the U.S. military for jungle warfare training where new helipads are planned in connection with the Henoko base project. At minimum this court decision could hamper U.S. plans for building new helipads there. On the other hand in the 454 pages of the assessment guideline book made public by the DFAA, there is not a word about what type of aircraft is to be deployed to Henoko after the base is completed. This too has caused much concern. A group called Citizen Access Nago put the entire text of the book on its home page, and in the first three days some 5,000 people from around the country and around the world accessed it.

Of course, the movement against the Henoko base is not taking place in a vacuum. It represents a convergence of various citizens' movements and actions on diverse issues. Among its participants are the women who held a nine-day hunger strike in front of the U.S. General Consulate in Naha in protest against the invasion of Iraq; the group who visited Iraq just before and just after the invasion, delivering medical supplies; the group that is taking Prime Minister Koizumi to court for his unconstitutional visits to the Yasukuni war memorial shrine; women fighting against sexual violence against women by GIs; people supporting victims of Hansen's disease; people who put together a People's Tribunal to try war crimes carried out by the U.S. military in Afghanistan; people campaigning to support the Palestinian people; people working to pass the memory of the Battle of Okinawa on to the generations who did not experience it; people fighting to protect the endangered Japanese Peace Constitution: men, women, young, old. It is a rich and diverse culture of protest.

U.S. Bases, Tokyo Government, and Okinawa Politics
But at the same time, the case of Henoko is the first time in postwar Okinawan history that elected Okinawa officials, namely the Prefectural Governor and the Mayor of Nago, have invited the U.S. to build a new base. Until that time, U.S. bases in Okinawa were all imposed by outside forces, the U.S. and Japanese governments, against the will of the Okinawan people. Higa Michiko, a women's historian who lives in Nago, when asked by a newspaper to identify the worst event of the 20th Century for Okinawa, responded, “The acceptance of base construction at Henoko.” It amounts to a denial of one's own history, the history of the war and of the long post-war struggle for peace.

The U.S. military controls 10% of all Okinawan land; of the Okinawan main island they control 18%. They took this land first of all by the invasion itself, secondly in the early postwar period using bayonets and bulldozers, and thirdly a small part later by means of contracts with owners. No new base has been built for 40 years.

As is well known, Okinawa carries 75% of all the U.S. bases in Japan while it accounts for only 0.6% of Japan's land. In the limited space of the some 40 populated islands of the Ryukyu Archipelago the population density is second only to that of the metropolitan areas of Tokyo and Osaka; from this one can understand what a burden it is to have these huge bases jammed right in the middle of everything.

The agreement in 1996 between Prime Minister Hashimoto and President Clinton to return the 5,000 hectares of Futenma Airbase was their response to the decades-long anti-base movement that exploded in 1995 into the massive “Bases No!” movement of 1995. Or at least so it seemed on the surface.

The explosion that brought about this result began with the ugly and humiliating incident of a 12-year-old schoolgirl being raped by three GIs. On October 21, 1995 an all-prefectural protest gathering drew 85,000 people, whose pent-up resentment crashed against the Japanese and U.S. governments. But the outcome of this, the so-called SACO agreement between the two governments, contained the stipulation that all base relocations would take place within the prefecture.

The Japanese Government whose obligation in the Japan- U.S. military alliance is to provide the U.S. with stable, safe bases, began trying to force the people of Nago and Okinawans generally to accept the building at Henoko of a heliport as a substitute base, and to this end it has tried every stratagem and applied every sort of pressure. But despite their efforts, when, on Dec. 21, 1997, a referendum on the question was held in the city of Nago, a majority opposed the heliport (opposed 51.9%, in favor 8.1%, in favor if it brings economic benefits 37.2%).

The then Mayor of Nago, caught between the Japanese Government and the people of the city, announced that he accepted the project and immediately resigned his office. Then the Japanese Government and the ruling party used all the power and wealth they could muster to defeat Governor Ota Masahide, who had opposed the project, in the next election. They succeeded in removing the two leaders who stood in their way.

But the new Governor, Inamine Keiichi, did not immediately support the project. The Tokyo Government then offered virtually unlimited funds for public works (in fact it later granted 100 billion for projects in the northern region) on condition that Inamine give his approval, and on Nov. 22, 1999 he gave in. The new Mayor of Nago, Kishimoto Tateo, followed suit by giving his approval on Dec. 27. The government interprets this development as the Okinawan side's invitation to build the new base.

Governor Inamine set two conditions to his acceptance: 1) that the heliport would be for both civilian and military use, and 2) that it would be fully returned to Okinawa 15 years after it is completed. Mayor Kishimoto set as a condition the negotiation of an agreement on base use that would set out specifically how the military plans to avoid any influence on the local environment or the people's lives. In the absence of such an agreement, the Mayor has said, his approval might be withdrawn.

For their historic act of betraying the will of the Okinawan people developed over half a century of struggle against the bases, the government has rewarded the Governor and the Mayor lavishly, and has created a split in the public. While then Prime Minister Hashimoto's original proposal was for a floating heliport that could be moved from one place to another, what they are talking about now is filling in a part of the bay and building a permanent airport that will be connected to the land. The landing strip is to be 2,000 meters long, as compared to the 1,500 meters of Futenma Airbase. The excuse for the airstrip elongation is that this airport would eventually be used for civilian as well as military purposes.

In the meantime, a research group organized around architect Makishi Yoshikazu found out by meticulous study of U.S. military documents that as far back as 1969, even before Okinawa was reverted to Japan, the U.S. military, in planning an alternative site for the then Naha Airforce Base (now Naha Airport), identified the sea off Henoko as one of the favorable sites for a new airbase. The off-Henoko airbase plan had in fact been drawn up even before then, in 1965, the group discovered. It is clear also from documents dated after 1996 that the plan to return Futenma Airbase and build a new base at Henoko is actually a plan for rationalizing and strengthening the U.S. bases here, a plan the U.S. military has long kept on the back burner. The people's passionate desire to have the Futenma Airbase returned is being used by the U.S. military to help further its own very different purposes.

Henoko Struggle – from Setback to Roll-back
Okinawa, once dubbed the kingdom of progressive politics whose local government heads were elected on anti-war slogans and where opposition candidates would take most of the Prefecture's seats in the National Diet, has since 1998 changed in political climate, and now more ruling party candidates are elected here and local governments are increasingly coming to look like “branches” of the Tokyo Government. The ruling party has also been taking a majority of the National Diet seats allocated to Okinawa.

The Government's public work projects in Okinawa resembles the Japanese overseas development assistance (ODA) given to developing countries as is often pointed out. This aid, proportionally much more than is given to any other prefecture, mostly goes for construction of public facilities, tends to be very destructive of the natural environment, and contributes little to Okinawa becoming economically self-sufficient. At the time of reversion in 1972, when Okinawa's industrial infrastructure had hardly been rebuilt, the first ten-year plan was aimed at rectifying this and reducing the economic gap between Okinawa and the rest of Japan. But now in the third planning period of the Government's Okinawa Development Program, it has become painfully clear that the essence of the program is payoff for keeping the bases here.

The Okinawa tourist boom has produced a superficial festive atmosphere here, but the people who had fought so long and hard against war and against the bases felt exhausted. At least, that was the situation when Okinawa entered the 21st century. Protest actions (before the beginning of the Iraqi invasion) were dull; there was a sense of stagnation unthinkable in Okinawa in the past. For some time, it was the numerous small anti-war, environmental and other groups such as the informal group that holds vigil every Friday in front of the U.S. General Consulate and the Okinawa Citizens' Network for Peace that barely held out, grappling with the age.

But now with the war going on, with the government sending Self-Defense Forces to Iraq, it is becoming painfully clear that Japan is in real danger (or perhaps more accurately, is becoming a real danger), and the peace movement that had been carried along by small groups of people is steadily growing again. Probably it is the Henoko movement that is at the center of this. Protecting the home of the dugong is closely bound up with the movement for peace. This is the message that Okinawa must now send out to the world.

(Translated by Douglas Lummis)

YUI Akiko: Was born in Shuri, Naha City in 1933. In 1951, came to Tokyo using a passport issued by the U.S. military authorities. In 1955, began working at the Tokyo office of the Okinawa Times, covering Tokyo. In 1990, moved back to Okinawa after 30 years to work in the head office. Reported on changes in Okinawa and women's activities. After working in Tokyo from 1983 to 1990, worked as a chief editor and editorialist from 1991 to 1992. In 1997, retired and became a free writer. From 1997 to 2002, acted as chair of the Unai Festival organizing committee. From 2003 to the present, has acted as joint representative of the Okinawa Network on the Hansen Disease Problem. Her works include Okinawan Women Today [Okinawa onnatachi ha ima] (co-authored), History of Women of Naha, “Flowers, footsteps of women” [Hana onna no ashiato], contemporary history, postwar history (co-authored), and other words on the contemporary history of Okinawans.

reprinted with kind permission from: http://www.ppjaponesia.org/