Shortly before the protest started, a U.S. I couldn’t remember ever seeing so many people packed into one protest site.Ī light plane and a helicopter for media coverage circled over the site. In the sky overhead rose the huge cumulus clouds found in southern latitudes, and, although it was late September, a powerful sun beat down on us. In this way, a ring grew countless links and expanded into a gathering of 110,000. Among those I’d recognized coming from Tokyo were several reporters covering the protest along with national Diet members. At Haneda Airport in Tokyo I’d met people in various citizen reform movements, and, on the plane, participants in today’s protest happened to be sitting in the seats on both sides of me. Chibana Shoichi, known for his protest burning of the Japanese rising sun flag, was supposed to be here, too, but it would have been impossible to locate him. We stood near the entrance, so, in a very short time, many people I knew passed by, including Makishi Yoshikazu, an architect in the movement opposing base construction at Henoko, Sakima Michio, Director of the Sakima Art Museum, and Hoshikawa Jun of Green Peace. I’d come here to report on that protest, but did not participate. The park where we arrived had also been used for the mass protest in 1995 following the rape of an elementary school girl by American soldiers. I recalled the scene in Odessa from Eisenstein’s film “Potemkin” in which the townspeople are hurrying through the streets to grieve for a sailor killed by the army. ![]() The atmosphere was bright and lively, as if they were going on a picnic. On the road below my bus window, young people shouldering banners with slogans and insignia, and families with children were making their way toward the protest site. Leaving it in the parking lot of a fishing port about a mile away, we got into the long line there to board a shuttle bus. The village had used two local buses to bring participants to the protest. Kinjo said with the obvious pride of a Yomitan resident. “A boy and a girl from the high school in Yomitan Village will speak today,” Mr. The families were seeking an end to mandatory enshrinement at Yasukuni of civilians killed in the battle as “spirits of fallen heroes who gave their lives for the nation.” As a spokesperson for families bereaved by the Battle of Okinawa, he was helping to prepare a case for trial. Above him a light blue flag with the words “Stop enshrinement at Yasukuni” fluttered in the wind. ![]() Kinjo, with his white hair and white beard, sat on a small wooden stool with a look of unperturbed composure. ![]() Kinjo, made her way through the crowd to find me. I’d arrived late, so Asai Mayumi, an editor at Labor Report magazine who had come earlier with Mr. I’d been standing at the entrance to Ginowan Seashore Park, site of the “Okinawa Citizens’ Protest Demanding Cancellation of Textbook Revisions.” The crowd was so big I got tired of looking for him. “I’m over by the gym,” my friend Kinjo Minoru told me on his cell phone. Shattering Jewels: 110,000 Okinawans Protest Japanese State Censorship of Compulsory Group Suicides
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