TOKYO, June 23 (Xinhua) -- Hiroji Yamashiro, an anti-U.S. base activist in Japan's Okinawa, pledged here on Friday to continue his fights against the government's Futenma relocation plan and called for the scrapping of all the U.S. bases in Okinawa.
Yamashiro said at the Tokyo-based Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on the occasion of the 72nd anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa that with the memory of the tragic battle still vivid in mind "people in Okinawa do not want to go through that (war) again, and do not want to have conditions like those days again."
He said that at Henoko, a coastal area of Nago where the government intends to relocate the U.S. Futenma base, 200 to 300 people conducted sitting every day in an effort to prevent the ongoing construction activities for the new base, while the government sent a large number of riot police and regular police and made a large number of arrests on a daily basis to prevent demonstrators from these activities.
Having been arrested three times for blocking the construction activities, Yamashiro pledged to continue his fights against the U.S. bases along with the Okinawa people to achieve "peace and prosperity in east Asia."
He also called upon the U.S. government to pay heed to the Okinawa people's feelings and demands, saying that in the past 72 years the presence of the U.S. bases has limited the freedom and activities of the Okinawa people and it is time now for Okinawa to be relieved of these burdens.
With regards to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's statement at the memorial service for the war dead in Okinawa earlier in the day that he would work towards reducing the burdens of Okinawa, Yamashiro said that they were "just words."
"If he meant what he said, I would like to see that reflected in action," he said.
Yamashiro also expressed his opposition to the new conspiracy law which had been forcibly enacted recently, saying that the law is intended to have a chilling effect upon public demonstrations, especially those of a critical nature.
"Under the new legislation, even if you don't do what is against the law but just plan or discuss it, arrests could be made. For example, if I was outside the U.S. base and called upon people to conduct a sitting, those people around me could be co-conspirators, which could lead to a large number of people being placed in detention," he said.
Okinawa hosts the bulk of U.S. bases in Japan while accounting for only 0.6 percent of the country's total land mass. Criminal cases involving U.S. military men repeatedly happened in Okinawa.
The Japanese and U.S. governments have been seeking to move the Futenma base from Ginowan to the less-populated Henoko coastal area of Nago. The people of Okinawa, however, demand the Futenma base to be relocated outside the prefecture.
