voiceofokinawa comments

Yubaru,

You’ re obfuscating.

Answer simply why the construction of the new house (

new base) is needed. We re shouldering the construction cost. So, we have the right to know about it.

Yubaru,

Is it just an addition to your old, dilapidated house? Besides, what are your reasons why the new house must be built when I say it’s the waste of money without any meaning.

Yubaru,

The construction and the landfill in Henoko started to build the so-called replacement of Futenma. But is it a mere replacement, with so many innovations added which Futenma doesn’t have, such as port facilities? It is a white elephant both financially and strategically. Answer this clearly and succinctly.  Don't obfuscate.

There were at least four Mace B launch/storage sies in Okinawa before it was returned to Japan in 1972: Bolo Point in Yomitan, White Beach and at Kin just north of Camp Hansen, where a new base is under construction, Onna Point, Was this the end result of Okinawa's liberation through the war? Ignorance indeed is bliss.

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There were at least four Mace B launch sies in Okinawa before it was returned to Japan in 1972: Bolo Point in Yomitan, where a new base is under construction, Onna Point, White Beach and at Kin just north of Camp Hansen* Was this the end result of Okinawa's liberation through the war? Ignorance indeed is bliss.

Yubaru,

It is a sad history, and sadder still is those who use it to further their own agenda.

OK. What is our agenda? It's to liberate ourselves from oppressing bases, whose owners and users pretend to think they are liberators of locals from vicious pre-war Japanese militarism.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are like two peas in a pod

yubaru.

You yourself have stated here that you were born after the war.

When and where did I say I was born after the war?  I was born in 1937. Don't make things mixed up.

Yubaru (Today  01:31 pm JST),

Indoctrinated or not, the majority of the people believed they were true Japanese. I, for one, like many other military -minded boys at the time, dreamed to become an Imperial Army general when grown up,

Okinawa was an independent kingdom until the 19th century when Japan forcefully amalgamated it in 1879. Its kings had been crowned by Chinese emperors under a system known as the tributary system. So, in a way, Okinawa belonged to both Japan and China.

However, Okinawans fought World War II as true Japanese nationals. Many of them lost their lives in the name of the emperor and the regime.

In order to be impartial, all these U.S. bases and facilities should be withdrawn for starters. As some USFJ-related poster pointed out, they are planted here as watchdogs against Japan going back to pre-war day militarism, shedding off the pacifist constitution, even nuclear-armed itself. These are the problems that must be dealt with internally by us, but Washington's policy line seems to be in a diagonal opposition to it, instigating Japan to increase its defense budget more and buy more U.S.-made arms, etc.

Why should Japanese taxpayers build Futenma's replacement in Henoko, Okinawa, and offer it to USFJ for free?

Japan flexes defense ambitions at arms show

 How does this conform to Japan's pacifist constitution? Art. 9 of the Japanese constitution says:  Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

Some people may say these weapons are only defensive. But there is no clear-cut demarcation line between defensive and offensive weapons. The same weapons can be used both ways.

Koizumi, who is to replace Eto, is a city dweller and seems knowing nothing about farming and farm produce. Hope he will make no such faux pas like his predecessor.

The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 1945, So isn't it too early for them to visit Hiroshima in June?

The cause of PFAS contamination in some parts of Tokyo is unknown, but when U.S. bases in mainland is suspected Tokyo takes no time to inspect them. Why doesn't it take similar measure in Okinawa? Is it because Okinawa is being left occupied by US forces?

Xamo,

An atomic bomb destroys everything on the surface but not things earthen underground.

80 years since the end of WW II. And yet here in Okinawa it's said it will take 70 to one hundred more years to dispose of all these WW II duds.

The post-war Japanese constitution is a precious gem, that could no doubt be a world heritage. Why then do PM Ishiba and his cohorts think the constitution should be done away with so that Japan could engage in international wars just like other mediocre countries.

Rather, Japan should make efforts to export the spirit of the pacifist philosophy embedded in the constitution to the world community.  Period.

To whom that has given a negative credit to my post above:

Do you insist China has every right to lay claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands despite this contention of mine?

There's no doubt that U5FJ are stationed here as watchdogs for a cabal of people like Nishida and his ilk. The irony is that these people are the most pro-American and ardent supporters of the Futenma-to-Henoko relocation plan as well as the U.S. military presence in Japan in general, citing China, North Korea and Russia as threats to Japan.

There's no doubt thaU5SFJ are stationed here as watchdogs for a cabal of people like Nishida and his ilk. The irony is that these people are the most pro-American and ardent supporters of the Futenma-to-Henoko relocation plan as well as the U.S. military presence in Japan in general, citing China, North Korea and Russia as threats to Japan.

During the war, the Japanese people were kept being told, thus indoctrinated to the nail to believe, that chemical and biological weapons had nothing to do with Great Imperial Japan. Those are weapons only used by the diabolical U.S.A. and Great Britain.

Seiichi Morimura's best seller book "Unit 731: the Devil's Military” was an eye opener for most people　I want to see the film first and for all.

Here's my reasoning why China can't claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islnds so nonchallently, historically:

 Common nouns in a language are very ad hoc in naming objects. There's no reason why things are called as they are in languages. However, proper nouns are different from common nouns in that there's always reasons behind -- why they are called by such and such names.

 Kubajima (久場島）or Huangwei Yu （黄尾鱮）in Chinese in the Senkaku/Diaoyudao Islands was an important landmark for ancient Ryukyu (Okinawa) seamen and traders navigating on the Okinawa-Fuchuan sea lane. These seafarers, who were thoroughly familiar with the Senkaku waters more than anyone else, called this landmark "Kubajima" because, according to one theory, the island was covered full with “kuba” (or Areca) palms. But I think it was called by that name because the island's shape is quite similar to that of another island called Kubajima, that is located about 40 km west of Naha, Okinawa Island, on the same sea lane. When necessary, the former was called "Iigun Kubajima" to distinguish it from the latter.

Wasn't Chinese "Huangmao (Yu)" （黄毛）as recorded by Chen Kan （陳侃, 1534）and "Huangwei (Yu)" recorded elsewhere, meaning yellow hair or tail, a phonetic conversion of Kuba(-jima)? Note that the k-sound of Japanese (and Okinawan) ordinarily corresponds to the h-sound in Chinese. Or did the Chinese think the island was inhabited by mythic animals with yellow tails or hair and so named it as such?

The easternmost island in the chain is officially called Taishojima in Japan, but historically it used to be called Kumi-Akajima by Ryukyu seamen. Here, too, we see the same mechanism of nomenclature as in the case of Kubajima. There's an island called Akajima in the Kerama Islands whereby Kumi-Akajima in the Senkakus must have been named after this with Kumi added to differentiate it from the original.

 The Chinese call this island Chiwei Yu (赤尾鱮), meaning "red-tailed island." Does it mean the Chinese believed the island was inhabited by animals with red tails? Isn't it a semantic conversion of what Ryukyu seamen called Kumi Akajima (久米阿嘉島）, which could mean "Kume Red Island" if interpreted in folk etymology?

The name "Senkaku" comes from English "Pinnacle Islands." The HMS Samarang made a port at Ishigaki Island three times and on its second port calling in May, 1845, it launched out upon an exploration of the "hitherto unheard-of" island group which the islanders called Iigunjima. Approaching the islands northward from Ishigaki Island on May 8, they must have been struck with the similarity of the first approaching island to Bartolome Island in the Galapagos, which is famous for its Pinnacle Rock, therefore calling the island group Pinnacle Islands. The Japanese name "Senkaku" was coined after this by a natural history teacher named Hisashi Kuroiwa, in 1900, who hailed from Kochi Prefecture in Shikoku and taught at Okinawa Normal School.

 The Meiji government called the largest island in the chain "Uotsuri-jma", which is an apparent translation from the Chinese "Diaoyudao". It also called the adjacent islands lying southeast of it "Kita Kojima" (North Islet) and "Minami Kojima" (South Islet) respectively. The Chinese names "Bei Xiaodao" and "Nan Xiaodao" definitely come from these Japanese names.

Ancient Ishigaki fishermen called the island (group) "Iigun-jima." "Iigun" the initial part of the word rhymed with "eagle") means the head of a spear used in dive-fishing, a fishing method probably unknown to the Chinese. The reason why it is called so is similar to why the highest mountain in the Japan Alps in Honshu is called "Yarigadake." The top of the rugged mountain reminds one of the head of a spear ("yari"). Probably, Chen Kwan must have thought of Diaoyu Castle back home when he heard of the Ryukyu seaman's description of it.

Shame on China!　On what legal and historical grounds does China claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands?

In the past, "made in USA" articles were status symbols for their users. But the times seem to have changed quite a lot. Only gangsters drive big made-in-USA, luxury cars in Japan. Do American cars appeal to Japanese customers that they have to drive through narrow streets with left-sided steering wheels?

Poor Japanese people,

Thinking that U.S forces are here to protect them, they offer many swaths of lend for free as bases and shoulder a significant amount of the operating cost of the bases and facilities.

OssanAmerica

The loudest voices for the removal of US troops from Okinawa (and Japan) are coming from the CCP supporters.

i assume a comment like this is addressed to me. 

He says, immediately below it, that if U.S. forces withdrew from Japan, Japan would be remilitarized like it was before WW II, shed off the war-renouncing constitution, and go nuclearized. 

If this is a common opinion shared by many U.S. citizens, then, I declare that the U.S. forces Japan are not here to protect Japan but to watch out the rebirth of Japan's berserk militarism, and nuclearization.

In other words, my contention that the USFJ is occupation forces by nature, never defense forces of Japan, has proven correct.

When did Tokyo and Washington agree to transfer Okinawa-based Marines to Guam in the face of China's new missiles? It was in 2013 that they did so. Thus, the Guam transfer is long overdue.

I discussed in a local newspaper that the Marines' Guam transfer is one of the three reasons why the construction of a new base in Henoko for the Futenma air station is nothing but a white elephant both financially and strategically. 

The other two reasons are: Tokyo and Washington have agreed that primary responsibility to defend Japan's

outlying islands rests with Japan, not with the U.S.; a future war will be fought mostly with the exchange of missiles and unmanned drones.

Without mentioning, MAGA stands for “make America great again.” But when was America great? To my mind it was several years after the end of WW II that America was the most prosperous and greatest. The “ｍade in USA” logo meant high quality, prestige and reliability.

But other countries seem to have caught up with the U.S. in everything from toothpaste to high-end technological products Does Trump. notice that?

(Correction)

Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said on another article that the tariff issue and defense issue are separate matters. It's turned out, according to this article, though, that this stance is shared by PM Ishiba.  

Trump may be pleased to hear them say that and use the tariff issue as a card to perpetuate U.S. military presence in Japan, a.k.a. occupation, forever.