For 20 years the American and Japanese governments have been trying to close a Marine base in crowded Ginowan, a city on Okinawa’s main island, and to build a bigger one in a northern, less populated area, Henoko Bay. Okinawa, the poorest and most put-upon of Japan’s prefectures, has long chafed under the American military presence, and many Okinawans argue that the Henoko Bay plan perpetuates their burden. They say it will just shift the dangers, noise and environmental degradation of militarization to another part of the island. They are particularly alarmed at the plan to build giant runways on landfill dumped into a pristine ocean bay, home to coral reefs and an endangered population of a manatee-like creature, the Okinawan dugong.
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