Interview: Okinawa's land is for harvesting happiness, not bases: ex-Gov. Ota

"It is absolutely unacceptable to have a replacement for the Futenma airbase in Henoko, as the U. S. side detailed that the new base could be used for 200 years. That means the Okinawa people will live with a 'permanent' base," Masahide Ota, former Okinawa Prefecture governor, told Xinhua Friday in an exclusive interview at the Okinawa International Peace Research Institute.

The 89-year-old Okinawan once served as a soldier in the battle of Okinawa during World War II and the horrific experience encouraged him to fight against those who are trying to make Okinawa a victim of war again.

"The land of Okinawa is for harvesting happiness, not for constructing bases for waging wars," Ota said after keeping quiet and staying behind the scenes for some time. Friday marked the 43rd anniversary of Okinawa's reversion from the United States to Japan.

Ota's remarks were directed at a Japan-U.S. agreement which allows the U.S. Futenma airbase, currently stationed in Okinawa's crowded residential area of Ginowan city to be moved to the island prefecture's coastal Henoko area in Nago city, as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stands by his conviction that this is the only method to resolve the thorny issue, despite strong local resentment against the U.S. bases and a longtime call for removing of the Futenma base outside Okinawa.

Ota is deeply dissatisfied with the central government's position over handling the U.S. base issue. He said the central government is so powerful that it has begun to disregard the Okinawa prefectural government. "The Japanese government brushes Okinawa aside from negotiating with the U.S. side, regarding the base issue. But how could the problem progress without Okinawa's involvement? However, both the Japanese and U.S. governments have downplayed Okinawa's role."

"The Okinawa people are considered as pawns, or a political tool that could help mainland Japan achieve political goals. The central government's policy toward Okinawa is a discriminative policy. They construct the new base at their will and are resolute in doing so. But if they maintain such a hardline strategy in Henoko, there could be a disastrous result," Ota warned.

In 1970, following an unpunished drunk driving incident by a U. S.soldier, more than 3,000 local residents took to the streets of Okinawa and attacked U.S. service people, their vehicles and successfully entered military premises and burned buildings.

Okinawa's fury also exploded after the brutal rape of an elementary schoolgirl in Okinawa by three U.S. servicemen in 1995 and other incidents such as in 2004 when a Marine CH-53D Sea Stallion heavy assault transport helicopter plowed into the Okinawa International University in Ginowan.

For Ota, mistrust between Okinawa and the mainland has increasingly deepening over the past 70 years. He recalled his own nightmare during the war, saying that the past Japanese army killed many Okinawans and forced many of them to commit mass suicide, and stated that the current Self-Defense Forces (SDF), which claim they will protect Okinawa, cannot help Okinawa as the island still remembers that during the last war, the Japanese forces sacrificed Okinawa.

The retired governor said that Okinawa was the only Japanese place that was not protected by the pacifist Constitution for nearly 30 years due to its occupation by the United States since the end of WWII, adding that the Okinawa people finally acquired their rights given by the country's supreme law through their tough fight for their rights and therefore, the Okinawa people resolutely oppose any attempts to revise the war-renouncing Constitution.

Abe will set about enacting a series of security-related bills in the current Diet session that is due to run through June 24 in line with the newly-revised Japan-U.S. defense guidelines, which permit the SDF to play a greater role worldwide.

The defense guidelines support the SDF to exercise the right to collective self-defense, which allows the Japanese defense forces to engage in conflicts overseas even if Japan is not being attacked, but collective defense runs contrary to Japan's war- renouncing Constitution which bans the SDF to fight abroad.

Ota worries about Abe's efforts to enact the "war legislation" as such a policy will lead Japan in the wrong direction again. " Okinawa suffered astonishingly so as to protect mainland Japan during the war. Therefore, we must cherish the pacifist Constitution and prevent Japan from going into war."

"During WWII, to protect the mainland, Okinawa was abandoned by the government as the only Japanese territory that was sacrificed for the war," said the former governor. "Okinawan people will not allow their homeland to become a battlefield again," Ota added. Endi