lngtimewndr comments

As it has been said a number of times, not one uniformed individual (or civilian/contractor) on this island make decisions on where the bases will go. This may shock some of you who question why the base is going to Henoko, these decisions are made by the government in Tokyo. I cannot understand the attacks on military members and Americans that work on base, when all Okinawans have to do is complain to their own government. If the government in Tokyo does not listen, that is not on any American to have to deal with that wrath.

I also do not believe the statement that the majority of Okinawans want the bases gone, every time there is an open base event, it makes me think otherwise. Most people would like politicians who aren't afraid to speak about actual issues: childcare or the lack thereof here on island, unemployment, school test scores are still among the lowest in Japan here, etc.

@YuriOtani  "The Americans killed so many Okinawa people both during the war and after the war."

So....you are just going to act like the Imperial Japanese military did nothing wrong while they were on Okinawa? If you are going to bring up one side, let's not forget the lies that were told to Okinawans by their own fellow countrymen that made them think jumping from a cliff was better than being captured. But let's not talk about that right?

What happens during was is indeed ugly and brings out the worst in humankind, however American did not start the war. The reason the bases are here today is due to the actions of the Japanese military at that point and time in history. Again, any hatred towards any of us is misplaced and should be redirected.

@bertiewooster,

Your evidence that a large number of US military members are crazy and your active duty service dates in the US military or medical license to make such a claim.

Lets admire Onaga for saying American military members are crazy, but not speaking up about anything else.

Okinawa continues to be the worst prefecture for DUIs without American numbers added, the worst when it comes to education exam scores, unemployment, next to nothing when it comes to child-care options for single mothers and families.

But you are right, thats what all okinawans are thinking, You cant blame the bases that were already there before people built around them. Lets gloss over important issues to show our hate for the US bases!

@Wc626,

Is it wrong for Americans to be drinking in accordance with the restrictions? Because I am sure the izakayas here are losing money since every Okinawan on this island is not drinking and is mourning. The majority of people here have moved on.

Thousands of Okinawans are still getting visitor passes to the bases here and buying up the goods from the PX and shoppette. Many times the same products you see for sell in Naha market.

There is no way to stop a murder from occurring, American or Japanese. Base or not, this is a human issue that should not punish all Americans here, or have to be subject to special patrols and stereotyped as everyone being a criminal.

If the news agencies would take a try at reporting balanced news, maybe such hatred wouldnt rear its head on either side. The base issue has nothing to do with not one person on this island. Take complaints and protests to D.C. and Tokyo.

"The protest is not predominantly anti-american nor are the people using the crime against an Okinawa women for "political purposes".

So please do tell what yesterdays protest was about, because it surely was not about the senseless killing of a woman here on island. Did you count how many times "Henoko" or "Kichi" were thrown around by the speakers at the event?

"It is a simple truth but if Okinawa would share an equal burden in defending Japan there would be at most some hundred US military personal stationed in Okinawa and hundred of young Okinawan women would have been spared the terrifying experience of sexual abuse or rape and a dozen or so would be still alive."

So what about the hundreds of Okinawan women that are abused or worst by Okinawans? Not as important? There was a woman murdered in Nago about two years ago, and a school teacher killed by one of her students last year in Okinawa City. I guess those don't count as terrifying experiences because we can't blame the Americans.

"Even they criticize the US they almost never personally accuse any american for the suffering they have to endure."

Ever seen the videos of the protests at Camp Schwab and surrounding area? You might want to take a look at those before you spout that off. Damaging peoples cars, assaults on military members. What decisions has a 21 year old Marine made in regards to the current base situation or the current criminal incidents?

Everyone seems to be missing the point that the suspect (he is a suspect, like it or not) committed a deadly crime and attempted another. There is a small thing called the Use of Force continuum that is used by Police Departments worldwide. At that time, the boy committed a crime that was at the top level; Serious Bodily Harm/Death. This means that the officer is authorized deadly force, hence why his weapon was drawn and not a taser, stick or whatever non-lethal weapon people want to think up!

Great that the officer was able to complete the situation without bloodshed, however it seems like it is time for some department training on use of force and specifically how firing at the ground can cause more harm than good.

Before we play Monday morning armchair police officer and criticize U.S. cops who 99% of do their jobs just fine along with the Japanese police, we should put ourselves in their shoes. At the end of the day I want to go home, I am not going to take my chances wrestling someone who just attempted murder.

It's all fine and dandy to judge when you have never worn the uniform or badge.

If the end "goal" is going home to see your family in one piece, yep I believe any human being would react the same way. If you think any differently in protecting yourself, again you can't speak on someone else's actions until you have been in their shoes and that is perfectly your right to think that. But to look down on someone for doing what they believe in is in my opinion wrong.

I didn't see where anyone in the American military or media has said that anyone deserved the bombing at MSF. Now all you are doing is creating a story out of your own beliefs and ideas not based on facts. I completely agree that if the aircrew did in fact have the coordinates of the hospital and continued with the strike, they need to answer.

If believing what I want about defending a nation in today's times is a Hollywood testosterone fantasy land, I will gladly accept my place in that land. All I am doing is trying to move forward from people attempting to generalize one community of people because of the acts of a few.

We all know Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, we don't even know if Afghanistan did, but instead of pointing that out, again you only picked one side of the coin.

JSDF personnel were involved in a few skirmishes in Iraq and a few months ago a string of veterans committed suicide. No word on if there time in Iraq was linked, but they should be ashamed of themselves as well right? Maybe they should have just laid down their weapons and said they didn't want to fight like you suggest.

@cleo

At the end of the day defense of the nation at home will stretch into having to defend yourself on foreign lands. Unfortunately, the enemy will not post themselves up in the target country identifying themselves as that. We all understand that world leaders will send off men and women into combat while their own well off kids will never raise their hand for an oath of enlistment. Nobody cares why they are there or the reason they are in that country when they are being shot at. The only thing people want to do is ensure themselves and their comrades get home.

So because air support has gone wayward either because of the controller on the ground or due to bad information, does not put a black eye on the military as a whole. What happened with the MSF bombing was sad and should thoroughly be investigated. So if an attack were to take place, you would rather have the military sit on their hands and lick their wounds at home then start looking for who planned the attacks? How can you deal with it here, when more than likely the attackers are all dead?

That is the kind of fairytale world I am speaking of.

@cleo " In the meantime they should be filled with shame that they have this urge to go out and use tax-funded state-of-the-art technology to kill people they've never met and have no argument with."

I am sorry but everyone can't live in a fairytale that defense of the nation is not needed and that people all over the world will settle disputes with flowers and tea. That is not the world we live in today, the last issue of the ISIS magazine opened up the idea of attacking Japan not for hosting U.S. bases but for their own policies. What do you do when/if a terror attack takes place here. Those same people should be ashamed of defending the country and its citizens with tax payer money?

@Alex80

I don't believe I have been brainwashed into anything, you are trying to compare two totally different cultures. Just because something would be considered crazy in one country doesn't mean the rest of the citizens of the other are brainwashed (i.e. Sharia Law).

@Lucabrasi

Sorry I didn't know that moving to another country and avoiding military service was serving my country. Also didn't know I was uncivilized or not a value to society because everyone that joins the military is either too stupid for the real world or just trying to get their college paid for.

I would not rather be a heart surgeon as that is not what interests me. I would rather go and do what I am interested in instead of making comparisons between a doctor and a fighter pilot. Again, just because you know someone who has served does not mean you know the feelings of the whole.

It seems as if everyone is bashing the feelings of military men and women when I would guarantee a large percentage of you have never served. There are men and women who volunteer to fight and serve their country (no matter the president, policy or why) and do not complain. If someone joins the military wanting to protect their country and "get in the fight" of course they would be filled with shame and the anxiousness of wanting to help. That is what people in the military do. You can say we are brainwashed or robots or whatever, but when your security is threatened it will be the military you look to as why they haven't done more.

Before we bash someone in the military as wanting to be an adrenaline junkie or war monger, first put yourself in their shoes that they had the courage to go and volunteer to do this. People criticize to easily without looking from the other side.

"I would like to see the Americans protest against all their damn wars but I never see them doing it. "

Obviously you did not take the time to research the above before posting. You can easily find people who oppose the American military and its way of thinking in the U.S. There are even groups of U.S. veterans who make it their point to protest against the military and its wars, and military members who have illegally left service in protest of those policies.

@YuriOtani,

How is it that you keep posting about seeing armed Americans off base but you have no proof and this has nothing to do with the article and JT does nothing about it? I am pretty sure the leasing of the land is not done with a gun, but with a checkbook. Last time I checked, Satsuma had something to do with the breaking up of the Ryukyu independence, not the CIA.

@Stuart Hayward, "(It's true I've only been to Okinawa 16 times for surfing and visiting friends"

You just invalidated everything that you type after saying this, as there are plenty of people who actually are ten toes down on this island and have been for years. You would seem to define the arm chair professor that you speak of.

@bjohnson23,

Not sure what this has to do with the Obama administration, as there have been other areas of land given back under other President's and there was no fallout or problems then. Giving back land reduces the military footprint (no matter how small) in a country that has long had issues with its presence and if anything frees up military members to be placed elsewhere. How is the return of a few acres weakening the U.S?

This should be expected of a developed country, especially after the country was "called out" by ISIS in their magazine as a potential target. Being the hosts of the Olympics should also be another reason to start working with different agencies to protect against a potential attack.

If something were to happen, most of the same people here complaining about this would be the first ones to condemn Japan for not having intelligence services. Whether or not you like what intel services are doing in the wake of the Snowden leak, they are actively protecting their home countries from terror attacks.

@YuriOtani, What in the world does this have to do with anyone in Okinawa? Not every little thing that happens in Japan has to be traced back to Okinawa so that you can link it to how Okinawans have been dealt such a bad hand. Is this not trolling, in bringing up irrelevant information on a topic just to get a response?

If you were so for the fight to get the U.S. out of Okinawa and stop the Henoko construction, I would think you would come back to Okinawa instead of living in the country you seem so dead set against.

@YuriOtani,

What new base is being built? The construction only includes the building of a new runway in the waters and buildings on existing base property.

@nishinariku

I am pretty sure there are bases most likely on the West Coast whose job it is to defend that coastline. What does the US Dollar have anything to do with this? The Tokyo Government can easily refuse to sign the SOFA at anytime as the Philippines did with Clark AB.

@Fighting Viking,

What privileges do you think would be lost by the moving of one airfield? Obviously jobs would move, but there are other bases to go work at on island or mainland, or follow the airfield to Guam if it did move there. Not sure what privileges you think Futenma gives.

I was waiting for one of the usual commenters to bring Okinawa up in this story somehow and how the bases on Okinawa somehow make them a target to the Chinese and Russian.

Don't see how they would be making more enemies when this dispute is solely between the Russians and the Japanese, something that has been argued over for 70 years.

As always they try to pull in Okinawa to their sob story, and never once speak on the Japanese bases in Africa or the new bases being constructed in and around Miyakojima.

@JWTNSSN

So because you had a few bad experiences with Marines one island, that means that all of them across the Corps are bad and should not be armed in the completion of their duties? I can't imagine that you were in the military at all and did not that the Marines are a rowdy bunch.

@YuriOtani

So now this is about Okinawans seeing armed MP's and not about the actual article of the Chinese flying closely to Japan and administered islands? Again, that has nothing to do with the current news article. The only time an American is off base armed is when they are responding to an accident or law enforcement incident. Please tell me how many times you have seen armed military members off base in the last five years. I don't believe "many" Okinawans believe everything you say, as posted above a lot of commenters here like to think they know how every one on this island thinks and that they are the voice of them.

Back to the actual topic though, the Chinese military probably circled those islands not in a show of force against America but probably against Japan. After all, it is Japan who took over those islands that has caused many encounters with the Air Force and Coast Guard the past few years. The JMSDF does the same thing in international waters near those disputed islands, what "war" are we in that is not yours?

I would think there would be an incident in the waters between China and Japan before China and the U.S.

YuriOtani,

I think we can agree tn disagree on this one. I still have no idea what you are talking about in regards to what the article states. How have the Americans bolstered fear? You make comments and cite stories with no supporting evidence. There was also no mention of an example of how Okinawa is a target.

Is the story you are referring to from WW2? If so, what does this have to do with anything? If not, do you have any evidence? You believe that law enforcement because they are Americans, should not be able to protect themselves even on base? I'm sorry, but I am more afraid of the keystones here than the occasional MP off base or on base.

It takes an act of God for us to go off base to incidents. When we do we are always accompanied by a Japanese speaker. Not sure what this has to do with the article or if its just an attempt at fear mongering.

The claims that the bases make Okinawa a target are baseless. When is the last time a country showed aggression towards Okinawa for hosting the bases? Even in the new magazine by ISIS or whatever they go by, they named Japan as a potential target not for hosting American military but for their own policies that have nothing to do with the bases. Go figure this made little coverage on the news, gotta keep the people up to date with the "kawaii" news.