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Paper short abstract:

Militarism in Okinawa is a controversial issue, especially when looking at accompanying environmental problems. Activists pushed this topic into the focus of anti-base protest in the last two decades. The paper examines relations between military sites, endangered species and anti-base activists.

Paper long abstract:

Okinawa Prefecture hosts roughly 70% of the U.S. military presence, most of it on Okinawa Island. As a response to China’s growing economic and military power, the Japan Self Defense Forces are additionally increasing their presence throughout the Ryukyu Archipelago, by detaching new weapon systems and by building military facilities on islands like Yonaguni, Ishigaki and Miyako. At the same time, the loss of biodiversity on a global level pushes the fate of endangered species more and more to the centre of national and international attention. In the case of Okinawa, the habitat of such species often overlaps with already existing or planned military facilities. This is for example the case with the habitat of the Okinawa dugong, a critically endangered marine mammal, that was frequently spotted in the waters of Oura Bay, where the Japanese government is currently constructing a new military base for the U.S. Marine Corps. Another example of this overlap between military usage and endangered species’ habitat is the Northern Training Area, situated in the Yanbaru forest of northern Okinawa Island. Parts of this forest adjoining the Northern Training Area have been declared a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site, as it is home to rare species like the Okinawan woodpecker and the Okinawan rail.

The paper explores the connections between these endangered species, sites of military usage and local as well as international protest by environmental activists against these bases. In order to find strategies how to deal with the current extinction crisis our planet is facing, I argue, that close attention must be paid to specific sites and the specific relations endangered species have to these spaces. In the case of Okinawa, militarism (among other factor such as mass tourism and coastal armouring) plays an important role in understanding the threats to the entanglements between specific spaces and their human and nonhuman inhabitants. The paper builds up on multispecies ethnographic fieldwork conducted throughout the prefecture in 2021 and 2022.