Organizers plan large protests for USS George Washington arrival

Stars and Stripes ^ | 25 Sep 08 | Hana Kusumoto and Allison Batdorff

[GATOR NAVY]

TOKYO — Groups opposed to Thursday’s arrival of the USS George Washington to Yokosuka Naval Base say demonstrations will grow in size and number in upcoming days.

"We want to express our opposition to America," Masahiko Goto, a lawyer and leader of a Yokosuka citizen’s group, said Tuesday. "We want a withdrawal of the deployment."

On the day of the ship’s arrival to its new forward-deployed base, a rally will be held at 6 a.m. at Kannonzaki Park near Uraga station, where protesters can watch the carrier as it approaches, organizers said. Protesters also will embark on boats to follow the ship in.

Base officials said Carney Gate, or the main gate, will be closed to pedestrians and outbound vehicles from 7:15 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. All traffic will be routed through Womble Gate during that time, officials said.

Goto said throughout the day others will stay near the base, handing out English-language fliers citing safety concerns with the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and calling for peace. Another group will gather at Yokosuka Chuo station to urge opposition to the aircraft carrier’s arrival, he said.

The largest rally starts at 6:30 p.m. at Verny Park, next to Daiei Mall, organizers said. About 3,000 protesters are expected to march down Route 16 toward Yokosuka Chuo Station around 7:30 p.m., organizers said.

Other protests Thursday include a rally at Umikaze Park at 7:30 a.m. Opposition leaders said rallies will also be held at Yokosuka Chuo station on Friday and Oct. 3 from 7 to 8 p.m.; Sept. 29 from 11 a.m. to noon; and Sept. 30 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

[OldNavyVet]

The best defense is good offense, and maintaining military alliances overseas is good policy — especially with Japan, which was overwhelmingly disarmed as a consequence of WW-II and remains so.

[Pylon]

GO AWAY AND NEVER COME BACK!!!!!!!

Unless we need help, then come back please.

[PapaBear3625]

Do they WANT to be another wholly owned subsidary of China?

Yes

The protesters are with the Japanese Communists

[magslinger]

Since the 70s.

They only predict 3000 moonbats for their protest. A couple of American sailors helping pack the trains at a rush hour Tokyo train station can draw a bigger crown than that.

[Locomotive Breath]

Forget both of those guys.

“Before we’re through with ‘em, the Japanese language will only be spoken in hell.”

William Halsey, Jr.

[goresalooza]

LOL..true! I was thinking how 3000 bodies is easily the count inside any Tokyo subway car. In other words, no big deal at all.

[CPOSharky]

If the USN left Japan just think about all those poor bar owners and hookers who would be out of business. Not to mention all the other businesses.

[magslinger]

I was just counting onlookers, not sardines.

[Brookhaven]

How many of these groups are backed by China?

Useful idots, Japanese style.

[denydenydeny]

Organizers plan large protests for USS George Washington arrival

Community organizers, no doubt.

[Joe Boucher]

As was Germany.
It has been 60 years since WWII.
Don’t ya think it is about time the U.S.A. quits subsidizing these countries defense?
Don’t ya think it is about time they use their own citizens in defense of their country?
Don’t ya get tired of paying for Germans and Japanese defense?
If not, how the hell long should we be responsible for theise freeloaders defense?

[InterestedQuestioner]

“The best defense is good offense, and maintaining military alliances overseas is good policy — especially with Japan, which was overwhelmingly disarmed as a consequence of WW-II and remains so.”

Nice post. To back up what you have said, Japan has been a good ally over the last half century. We have about 80 military installations in Japan, and the Japanese government pays directly or indirectly for about 75% of the cost of maintaining our military presence there. (I believe their share of the cost is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 billion dollars a year.) Japan has been officially pacifist since the end of WWII, but North Korean saber rattling has motivated discussion about that status. Our ambassador recently urged Japan to boost defense spending, and Japan has bought and seeks to buy American weapons for self-defense.

The Japanese have sometimes referred to their country as America's unsinkable aircraft carrier. Okinawa has been called the “Keystone of the Pacific.” Taipei, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Manila, and Tokyo all lie within a 1,500 km radius of the Okinawa.

While many Japanese probably have mixed feelings about the American military presence in Japan, these protesters are probably a motley mix of communists, pacifists, environmentalist and a few young guys wanting to hang out with babes at protests. Maybe there are a few nationalists thrown in to the mix. The Japanese tend to be pretty busy people on a day to day basis, and don't necessarily go in real big for taking a day off from work or school to stand around holding card board signs protesting the guys who protect them. Japan is a small country with little room for error vis a vis some of it's occasionally belligerent and ambitious neighbors. Given their history, the Japanese have a much keener appreciation of Darwin than your typical American leftist.

[InterestedQuestioner]

“They only predict 3000 moonbats for their protest. A couple of American sailors helping pack the trains at a rush hour Tokyo train station can draw a bigger crown than that.”

Yeah, Willie Nelson or Wayne Newton could probably draw a bigger crowd in Tokyo than this protest..

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Any “Fat Boys” left over from the Big One?

[sergeantdave]

For Pete’s sake. The Japanese whiners have been protesting us since Gen. MacArthur gave them a constitution.

Once on leave in Japan, I’m pretty sure I met a Japanese Marine who wanted to re-fight the Mt. Suribachi flag raising. I told him my uncle was nearby on the island, it’s his fault and I wasn’t born yet. Didn’t matter. He waved his fist, got in his wheelchair, spit out some nasty words (I think) and wheeled himself away.

The mama-san who witnessed the matter said don’t worry. He does that to all American Marines. Then she gave me a thumbs up, offered me a plate of pickled octopus and a glass of saki.

I still burp thinking about it.

[InterestedQuestioner]

"The Japanese whiners have been protesting us since Gen. MacArthur gave them a constitution."

MacArthur has plenty of admirers in Japan. General MacArthur is seen by many to have been the de facto leader of Japan during the critical post war recovery years. My sense is that many Japanese have a tremendous amount of respect for General MacArthur as someone who knew how to fight a war and someone who knew how to rule a country. IIRC, we had an agreement with the Soviets that they would control the northern part of Japan after WWII. MacArthur never honored that agreement, and thereby kept Japan from civil war and a North vs. South Korea type of partition. He was a general who ruled, and that was a form of leadership the Japanese could understand, given their history of having been ruled by generals during different phases of their history. He also expressed confidence in the Japanese people at a time when they had lost confidence in themselves.

[rlmorel]

I lived in the Yokosuka Naval Base for several years when I was a kid between the ages of 8 and 11 (1967 - 1970)

Suffice to say that for an eight year old Naval dependent gaijin kid, Japan was a very strange place. Odd toilets that you had to squat over...open sewers...the smell of fish...large groups of people walking around wearing face masks, pachinko ball machines...restaurants with bizarre plastic food in the front windows...

But one of the oddest things to me was that whenever an aircraft carrier came into port, there would be these HUGE demonstrations outside the base.

At around 9:00 AM several hundred Japanese riot police would assemble in a field near my house, then on cue shortly thereafter, the crowds would assemble outside the fence near the main gate with banners and megaphones...I seem to remember large groups, but it might have only been 500 or even a thousand. They would get vocal and demonstrate for a while, then again, on cue, some of them would go over and begin climbing the fence. The fire trucks inside the base parked nearby would begin spraying the demonstrators on the fence with fire hoses, knocking them off, then they would begin spraying the other demonstrators through the fence.

Shortly thereafter, the demonstrators would disperse, the area would be quickly cleaned up, and when the water evaporated, there was no indication that anything had transpired.

When I think of it now, it seemed like one big, huge, ritualized kabuki dance. Everyone knew their roles on both sides, the whole thing went down like clockwork, and then it was over until the next time.

I remember my brother and I going over and talking to a bunch of the Japanese riot police, and inviting them back to our house after the demonstration was over. We went into the cabinets and opened up a bunch of cans of stuff and poured them into bowls. I recall that we had maybe ten bowls of things like chick peas, corn, whatever.

My mom came home, and politely told the Japanese guys to leave, which they did. I have no idea what my mother thought of that. I think she must have thought we were just crazy.

[Butterfickle]

My father fought in Leyte. After they won he went to Yokosuka in victory. I wish he was alive today to sail into YKS again. He hated [japanese].

[rlmorel]

I read an interesting account recently, where the submarine USS Archerfish visited Yokosuka at some point after the war and had to be serviced in a dry dock.

They put her into the largest drydock available which apparently was the only one available to take care of her.

It also just happened to be the same drydock that the IJN Shinano was fitted out in before she joined the fleet, and was (I think) the largest and heaviest warship in the world at the time (she was originally to be a Yamato class battleship, and was the largest warship built at 72,000 tons until the US built the USS Enterprise in 1961.

So, here was the Archerfish, who had sunk the Shinano, now in the same drydock the Shinano had been born in, only a few years after the war.

The Japanese shipworkers who were to do the repairs were the same men who had built the Shinano. They knew who the Archerfish was and what she had done, and were all sitting up there silently, eating their lunch of rice and who knows what.

It was apparently pretty tense...so the Captain of the Archerfish offered tours of the submarine to any one of them who wanted to come aboard. Many did, and that broke the ice, or so he said...:)

[rlmorel]

Another interesting story about that particular drydock...

I had a kid I chummed around with whose father was a very talented plastic surgeon, some said one of the best in the world at the time. He was doing a lot of work on the young men coming back disfigured from Vietnam, and had a lot of practice because Yokosuka was one of the first places many of them came. I used to watch those olive colored helicopters with the red cross in the white square come marching along the sky to the heliport...one every fifteen minutes (or so it seemed) As a kid, they seemed to me like huge tadpoles with rotors that chewed their way forward. I watched them for hours.

They would land, people would run out to them, unload blanket covered men on stretchers with iv poles and stuff, then load those men into ambulances and drive them away. The helicopters would refuel and take off again. Anyway, this plastic surgeon had a huge German Shepherd named Siegfried. Just huge. To this day, it was still the largest one I have ever seen...and it wasn't just because I was a kid. My parents verify it. That, and they used to walk the dog on occasion by tying the leash to the side mirror on their station wagon and drive around the neighborhood.

Well, one day this surgeon is out walking this enormous dog, and all of a sudden for no reason, it broke out into a run. The guy had his hand twisted in the leash, and the dog dragged him unheedingly along the ground on his stomach, screaming and yelling.

He managed to get his hand out of the leash just as the dog reached this drydock and leaped into it. (This is a Google Earth image of the Dry Dock...the one with the ship in it)

The next day, on the front page of the Stars and Stripes, they had a picture of this huge, empty drydock with this little speck of a dog just standing in the middle of it. How it survived that fall, nobody knows.