90,000 rally against US base in Okinawa

Tens of thousands of Okinawans swarmed to a sports complex at the Yomitan village center Sunday to express their opposition to constructing any new military base on Okinawa. More than a third of the crowd wore yellow, a color suggested by the rally organizers to show their support of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly's call for immediately closing Marine Corps Air Station Futenma and moving the air units outside Okinawa. Yellow, organizers said, represents a yellow warning card used by soccer referees. The rally began at 3 p.m., and traffic into the area along Highway 58 was still bumper to bumper two hours later. Organizers estimated 90,000 people eventually took part. Okinawa police did not release a crowd estimate. Sunday's event had the support of Okinawa's political spectrum. Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, an independent backed in the last election by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, shared the stage with the members of more left-leaning parties, including Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan. It was the first time members if the LDP–the ruling party for more than 50 years before Hatoyama took office–attended an anti-base rally on Okinawa. Just after Hatoyama took office in September, he initiated a review of a 2006 agreement with the U.S. to close Futenma and build a new airstrip for the Marine units on Camp Schwab and on reclaimed land in Oura Bay. The ministerial committee reviewing the plan scrapped the idea, and Hatoyama is studying alternatives.