LETTER FROM TOKYO
A paradise of unspoilt nature, rich in endangered species. At least that is what butterfly entomologist Akino Miyagi thought she would find when, in 2016, 4,000 hectares of the Yanbaru jungle in the north of Okinawa's main island, home to the US army's largest local training area – the Jungle Warfare Training Center – were handed back to local authorities.
Instead, she was horrified by what she discovered: bullet casings from automatic weapons and shells, unused cartridges and grenades, barbed wire hedges, tattered parachutes hanging from tree branches, cans and plastic bottles... From an entomologist, Miyagi transformed herself into a determined activist. On several occasions, she has been arrested for throwing volleys of shell casings, collected from the area handed back by the Americans, at the feet of politicians from Tokyo: "This is what you let happen!"
Under the terms of the agreement on the status of military bases, the US Army is not required to return the land it has used to its original state. It is up to the Japanese Defense Ministry to clean up the Yanbaru jungle. By 2023, it had already recovered 15,000 shell casings and 8 metric tons of explosives. Tokyo's ambition is to have the jungle declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but this may take some time.
The state of the Yanbaru jungle is an example of the heavy toll that the American military presence in Japan has taken on the people of Okinawa since the defeat of 1945. Three-quarters of the 50,000 GIs deployed in the country are based on this archipelago, which occupies 0.6% of Japan's land area. And Okinawans feel victimized by a government that seems indifferent to their plight. And so it was with suspicion, too, that they greeted the strengthening of the alliance between the United States and Japan, announced at the recent meeting between US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington. "Okinawa is, once again, hostage to decisions based solely on regional strategic issues," wrote Ryukyu Shimpo, one of Okinawa's two daily newspapers.
American bases make the Okinawa archipelago, located between Japan and Taiwan, a target in the event of confrontation in the East China Sea. In peacetime, however, their presence is also reflected in the various problems affecting the inhabitants: accidents, violence and pollution, to name a few.
In February, contamination by forever chemicals, so called because of their persistence in the environment, was detected in the bases' vicinity. These per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have largely been banned in France by a recent vote in the Assemblée Nationale.
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