Okinawa Kaiho - "Free Okinawa!"

The recent rape of a 12 year-old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen has put into an international light the problems of the U.S. military presence in Okinawa. Yet while this incident has proven heinous indeed, it is important to realize that the problems of U.S. Military forces exist not only on the small island of Okinawa, but globally as well.

Yet in order to understand the situation, it is important to understand that the problems on the Okinawan islands began not with U.S. occupation, and not even with the bloody battle of Okinawa during W.W.II (where over 1/3 of the native population died) but rather during the late 19th century when Japan colonized and annexed the small independent island nation.

With the forced assimilation of the native population, the people were forced into an uneasy second-class Japanese citizenship.

In terms of the American occupation of these islands, however, the history has proven much more recent in nature. For since the end of the second World War, the U.S. continued to control the Okinawan islands as the spoils of war, using them as a strategic jumping point for military interventions in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Even with the reversion of control over the islands to Japan in 1972, the problems of U.S. Military occupation continue to exist.

Currently, nearly 30,000 troops are stationed in Okinawa, representing 75% of the total number of troops stationed in Japan. With the U.S. occupying 20% of the island's geographical area and 40% of its available farmland, Okinawan economic self-sustenance has been disrupted, and many native Okinawans were forced to relocate in order to find work.

Yet Okinawans have continued to raise their concerns and anger over the American occupation forces, and have pointed out the problems of the vice-towns that have sprung up to provide for the "entertainment" needs of the servicemen, the deafening and choking pollution of the military presence, and also the problems of American training and paratroop maneuvers which have gone awry with often deadly results to Okinawan citizens.

The rally on October 21st amply demonstrated Okinawan resistance to the U.S. presence with a showing of 58-85,000 Okinawans voicing outrage at the situation.

The rape of the 12 year-old girl, followed by another incident where an American sailor was suspected of exposing himself to a different school girl while in port, ironically comes at a time when the U.S. Status of Forces Agreement is coming up for review in Japan. Part of the new agreement involves the Japanese government's payment of $5.5 billion a year to help support the U.S forces. Many Japanese and Okinawans have been critical of both the bases and the increasing financial burden of subsidizing U.S. troops.

But U.S. Military crimes against the civilian population are nothing new. Incidents of bar fights, rapes and beatings instigated by U.S. Military personnel abound, and were starkly exemplified by a 1950s incident, known as the Yumiko-chan Jiken, where an Okinawan girl was killed by a U.S. officer. Protected under special legal procedures, military personnel often elude punishment in Japanese courts. Yumiko-chan's killer, for instance, never served a single day in jail.

The occupation of lands in Okinawa, however, represents just one of many examples of U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other nations.

In the Philippines, for example, it took the explosion of a volcano and the destruction of its military bases by a lava flow to bring about the removal of the U.S. Military presence at Subic Bay. For years, Filipino grass roots organizations had been voicing opposition to the U.S. Military, whose presence stood in direct contradiction to the 1986 Constitution of the Philippines which called for the removal of all foreign military from the islands. Yet despite this assertion of national self-determination, the bases remained, and so did the problems they created.

U.S. Military presence in the Philippines transformed military-related provinces from decent towns to red-light districts. Filipina women living around these bases were oftentimes forced to choose between starvation or prostitution, with the deterioration of the health and economic options of these women creating a vicious cycle of poverty.

In southern Korea, the U.S. Military presence of over 40,000 troops has continued to divide families and a nation along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Currently there is strong national sentiment for a unified Korea and an end to U.S. Occupation

In 1980, in Kwangju, for example, Korean protests for the removal of U.S. forces were so great that the U.S.-backed South Korean army was sent in to quell any form of protest. The end result was the infamous Kwangju massacre, where hundreds of Koreans were slaughtered, with the tacit approval of the U.S. Military command.

Despite the glaring nature of these crimes and the immensity of the Koreans' demands for sovereignty, the U.S. continually refuses to scale back or remove its presence from South Korea, citing the need to maintain its military control in these countries against an invisible "communist" threat.

Although Okinawa, Subic Bay, and Korea's DMZ are half way around the world, the issue of American intervention affects each of us here in Los Angeles on a daily basis by providing a tremendous economic burden to this country.

Over 50% of our taxes go to finance past, present and future wars. This year that figure will top $260 million. (Approximately another $100 million in the form of Foreign Aid often goes to support foreign armies and military police forces of American allies.)

With the maintenance of the military industrial complex in America, fewer funds have been available for domestic investments such as education, job training, health care, and public housing.

Together with corporate job flight, cutbacks to the public safety-net and regressive tax initiatives like Proposition 13, all working people have seen their spending power decline while the rich-poor gap increases.

Yet public tax dollars and technical research continues to produce weapons of destruction in order to kill, maim, and coerce in the name of "American interests," or rather, corporate interests.

Considering that U.S. history was largely founded on war and violence, America is morally and ethically bound to reconsider the current world situation. It is never too late to change roads and work towards the recognition of the basic rights of sovereignty and humanity.

And while the small island of Okinawa gets caught in the middle it allows us here in the America to critique our own country's involvement in islands such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Samoa. Even the current sovereignty movement in the Hawaiian islands needs to be examined.

The Okinawan, Filipino, Korean and many other people's long fight to end foreign military and economic control sets an example for us all.

More than ever, we, the American people cannot sit back and allow our government to continue forcing itself upon countries overseas.

It is time to bring the troops home, for good.

Kaiho Okinawa, it's time to move forward.

Written by Tony Osumi, Ryan Masaaki Yokota, Myra Dumapias, Ken Choe, Jason Nawa, Yuko Yamauchi, Johann Diel, Edwin Habacon, Jenni Kuida, and Sunny Le.

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