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Japanese in Tokyo protest against US military presence

Sunday, 12 June 2016 6:06 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 12 June 2016 6:07 PM ]

Protesters in Tokyo hold a demonstration against the US military presence on the southern island of Okinawa, Japan, June 12, 2016. (AFP photo)

In Tokyo, about 100 people took to the streets Sunday in protest against the military presence of the United States on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa and the crimes committed by US soldiers there.

The demonstrators marched through the streets of downtown Tokyo to denounce a plan by the government to relocate a contentious US military base on Okinawa.

The angry protesters chanted slogans against the plan holding banners that read, “no more base.”

A major demonstration with a similar objective is planned on Okinawa for next week.

A US base employee was recently arrested following the rape and murder of a local woman. The move prompted recent anti-US protests.

Police found DNA matching the dead woman's in a car belonging to Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, a former US Marine who works at the US Air Force's Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. The man is suspected of having murdered the victim and disposed of her body.

In early June, a US sailor was arrested for drunk-driving the wrong way down a street in the region injuring two people.

In 2013, two American sailors admitted to raping a woman in Okinawa a year earlier in a case that sparked huge anti-US sentiments in Japan.

The gang rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three US servicemen in 1995 also sparked mass protests.

Okinawa has become known as the site of enduring tensions with the US forces deployed there. Pacifist inclinations as well as security and safety concerns have prompted the Japanese to protest against the deployment.

Protesters in Tokyo hold "no base, no more base" placards while staging a demonstration against the US military presence on Okinawa, June 12, 2016. (AFP photo)

More than half of the 47,000 US military forces in Japan are stationed in Okinawa.

The United States and Japan agreed in 1996 to relocate the US Marines’ Futenma base, currently in a heavily populated area, to a new site in Okinawa.

However, many residents whose prefecture was the only part of Japan to suffer a bloody land battle during World War Two want the base and the US military off their land altogether.

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