Beachfront protesters mark year by blocking US air base in Okinawa

On Tuesday Toyama, along with other activists and fishermen will mark a full year of a dawn-to-dusk sit-in on the beach and in offshore rigs in this village on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Greenpeace is supporting the protest to protect these clear, emerald green waters on the Pacific coastline, which is a crucial feeding ground for the dugong, an endangered sea mammal also known as a sea cow. "We will block the construction whatever it takes. We will never let them build a base here," Toyama says, gazing warily at the four steel-pipe rigs which were set up to probe the seabed. "People on the rigs are nearing their limit of fatigue. It’s going to be a showdown in the next three months," says Toyama, who anticipates that Japanese authorities will soon try to evict the demonstrators.

The US Marines plan to construct a 2.5-kilometer (1.5mile) long air base on reclaimed land off the fishing village - ironically, in a bid to please Okinawans who want the troops relocated from the crowded city of Ginowan. Okinawa is home to 65 percent of the 40,500 US troops in Japan and residents have repeatedly called for a lesser burden, although other areas of Japan have resisted hosting US forces. In 1996 US forces and the Japanese government agreed to move the Futenma air station from Ginowan to Henoko, although in the face of protests there the US military stresses it is sensitive to local opinion and will build elsewhere if Tokyo asks.

But the dozens of men and women, many of them elderly, who are squatting under the scorching sun are not waiting for the government to keep construction at bay. "Marine reserves are not reserved for Marines. Save the dugong," read banners on the rigs. "No war. No base." "You’re asking if this is tough on us? You should have seen our battle in canoes last September when we blocked them from boring for the foundation," says one elderly woman on a rig. "I joined thinking it would be finished in a few months. Now it’s a year and I’ve had to borrow money and work at night to continue this daily struggle," she says.

Toyama stares into the ocean through binoculars and speaks to his fellow protesters on the rigs through a walkie-talkie to confirm government boats are not coming too close. "We dont want to be part of the act of killing innocent people by allowing Japan to host a US military base that sends soldiers to Iraq," says Toyama.

Okinawa was seized by the United States in a bloody 1945 battle and returned only in 1972, leading to resentment among some residents about being the base for US troops sent to fight in Korea and Vietnam. Local government workers say they are tormented as the Japan-US alliance has pitted them against their fellow residents. "We are angry because past prime ministers never tried to reduce the US military presence in Okinawa and made us shoulder the entire burden," says an official at the Okinawa prefectural government in Naha. "The ideal is to reduce the bases to zero in Okinawa, but as administrators we cannot say we will stop work at Henoko because there is a Japan-US agreement," he says.

The most recent opinion poll by a local newspaper conducted in August showed 80 percent of Okinawa residents were opposed to moving the Futenma air base to Henoko. Fishermen have also joined the protest, afraid of losing their livelihood of harvesting tropical fish and seaweed. They have been transporting protesters on their boats between the shore and the rigs and staying with them out on the water in the daylight to protect them in case the government tries to forcibly remove them. "I’ve been doing this for four months now and I’m getting close to a point where it is difficult to make ends meet," says fisherman Yoshikatsu Yamashiro, 61, tanned and muscular in a diving suit. "But its great to see younger people joining the protest," he says. Among the younger people joining the demonstrations is 23-year-old Ruka Nishihara who has never had a full-time job. He joined the protest in September with his mother, travelling from Kanagawa prefecture in eastern Japan, where US forces have both naval and air bases. "I came here because I learned about the dugong. I’m doing part-time jobs to feed myself while I’m here," he says.

Anti-US protests in Okinawa flared after the 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US Marines and new anger was ignited last year when a US helicopter crashed into a university campus near the Futenma air base.