Tokyo – Thousands of demonstrators demanded that U.S. military withdraw its troops from the Japanese Island of Okinawa on Wednesday, hours before U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in the country.
About 4,000 people gathered in front of U.S. Kadena Air Base to commemorate the death of an Okinawa woman and to call for the withdrawal of the U.S. military, organisers said.
The demonstration came six days after the arrest of a former U.S. marine in connection with the death of the 20-year-old woman in the city of Uruma.
“We have suffered from the US military bases for 71 years since the end of World War II, let’s mobilise anger and change that,’’ Nago Mayor, Susumu Inamine said.
The 32-year-old former marine, who now works at the US air base, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of dumping the woman’s body. He has admitted to strangling her, Japanese media reported.
Obama, who arrived after a three-day trip to Vietnam, later held talks with Abe in the coastal city of Shima, where a summit of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations will start on Thursday.
“I asked the president to carry out effective measures to prevent a recurrence of such a crime,” Abe told a joint news conference after the meeting.
Obama expressed his sincerest condolences and deepest regrets for the incident.
“The U.S. will continue to cooperate fully with the investigation and ensure that justice is done under the Japanese legal system.
“We want to see a crime like this prosecuted here in the same way we would feel horrified and want to provide a sense of justice to a victim’s family back in the U.S.
“I think the Japanese people should know how deeply moved we are about what has happened,” the president said.
The protesters also urged Washington and Tokyo to abandon the construction of a new U.S. military base in Nago city in northern Okinawa, which will take over the functions of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, located in the middle of the residential areas on the Island.
In 1996, the U.S. and Japan agreed to close Futenma to ease islanders’ anger after a 12-year-old schoolgirl was raped by three U.S. servicemen.
The two countries’ governments have tried to build a new facility in exchange for the closure despite strong opposition from locals and environmental groups.
However, nothing has materialised so far.
Around half of the 53,000 US military personnel in Japan are stationed on Okinawa, 1,600 kilometres south-west of Tokyo, which is less than 1 per cent of the country’s total land mass.
After the summit meeting on Friday, Obama will travel to Hiroshima, where the US dropped an atomic bomb in the closing days of World War II.
He will become the first sitting US president to visit the western Japanese city.
“I told the president that I wholeheartedly welcomed his decision to visit Hiroshima,” said Abe, who will accompany Obama to the city.
The president said their visit to Hiroshima “will honour all those who were lost in World War II and reaffirm our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons.”
The White House has stressed that Obama will not apologise for the bombing on behalf of the U.S. during his visit, despite appeals by survivors and anti-nuclear activists. (dpa/NAN)