Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

142 Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa
the airport construction project and to develop a policy to protect coral in Shiraho,
which the Union regarded as world heritage. The Environment Agency representatives
joined the meeting, but abstained from the IUCN resolution on Shiraho.
Muzik, Takaesu, and a Shiraho resident, Yamazato Setsuko, travelled to Costa
Rica to attend the meeting. At the meeting, the three lobbied for the resolution by
distributing pamphlets, titled The Heart Dyed in Ocean Colour (Chimu ni Umi
Sumiri), to attenders from all over the world. Muzik translated the pamphlet text
into English. The pamphlet included colourful photographs of the Shiraho coral
and explained the airport construction project and the need to stop it. Makishi
Yoshikazu, an architect and member of the Naha-based Okinawa, Yaeyama, and
Shiraho Ocean and Life Protection Group, and the author of the pamphlet, was
told by the three Okinawa delegates that the conservation campaign targeting local
delegates with hand-made pamphlets was a novel introduction to the IUCN meeting,
with a potent visual appeal (Makishi, Interview, 20 April 1999).
The IUCN resolution in Costa Rica had the decisive effect of undermining the
legitimacy of the airport construction plan in Shiraho. The government moved the
construction site 4 kilometres to the north of Shiraho, to the east of Karadake
Mountain. However, the opponents in Shiraho and external supporting organizations
continued the protest against the airport project. In August 1990, an IUCN delegation
conducted another investigation on the coral reef ecosystem of the newly proposed
airport construction site and visited the prefecture government to request another
change of the construction site (Ryūkyū Shimpō 30 August 1990). Consequently,
another IUCN resolution on Shiraho coral was made at the Eighteenth General
Assembly in Perth, Australia, in 1990. This resolution recommended the prefecture
government ‘find an alternative solution to the problem, including extension of the
present airport to ensure optimal conservation of the coral reef ecosystem at Shiraho’
(IUCN – The World Conservation Union 1990: 51).
Later in 1992, the president of the World Wildlife Fund and the Duke of
Edinburgh visited Shiraho, as part of the campaign to protect the Shiraho coral.
The support from intellectuals and a British royal put pressure on the Okinawa
prefecture government to prepare a second Environmental Impact Assessment and,
finally, to give up the airport construction in Shiraho.
Litigation was another common and more traditional strategy of protest of the
Shiraho struggle. 28 As activists rather than as lawyers, the attorneys specializing
in residents’ protests against the government undertook these cases. One of the
Naha-based lawyers who represented the Shiraho fishers was Ikemiyagi Toshio,
also involved in court cases of the Kin Bay Life Protection Group, and for the
Kadena residents against the US aircraft training noise. Court cases are part of
the ‘anti-base movements, just like other protest activities such as demonstrations
and handing out flyers. Struggles in courts and other protest activities against
the bases and the Japanese government are like two wheels of a cart’ (Ikemiyagi,
Interview, May 1999).
Compared to other activities, however, the court cases did not result in
revitalizing the momentum of protest, and the role of the local residents tended to
be much smaller because of the highly technical and time-consuming specialization