Japanese police this week arrested a protester opposed to the U.S. military presence on the island with a suspected pipe bomb outside the U.S. Consulate.
Concerns are growing in Okinawa Prefecture that it could become embroiled in military conflict as the Self-Defense Forces bolster missile deployment in the sprawling southwestern Nansei Islands against a more assertive China.
In October 2019, the Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center (NMCPHC) produced a report detailing widespread, severe soil contamination at Camp Kinser, Urasoe City, concluding it posed a danger to the health of children and local national landscapers. The NMCPHC conducted surveys at sports fields, around clinics and next to an elementary school in November and December 2018, discovering contaminants in excess of US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) screening levels which included polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), total 2,3,7,8-TCDD TEQs as dioxins, and the pesticides, DDD and dieldrin.
After the US Department of Defense complained about the inclusion of a description of
the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the Hollywood movie, Godzilla (2014), the
scene was removed from the script. The DoD criticized the monologue, which would
have been given by a character acted by Watanabe Ken, as “totally irrelevant and
gratuitous.” The DoD even threatened to withdraw its cooperation from the production;
“If this is an apology or questioning of the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
that will be a showstopper for us,” wrote one senior DoD member.