FEATURE: A reopened nuke launch site in Okinawa reveals a dark legacy
The tranquil village of Onna is one of Okinawa's most beautiful spots. Scenic beaches, dramatic rock formations and lavish seaside resorts dot the coast. But there's a dark legacy here -- a former nuclear cruise missile launch site built during the postwar U.S. military occupation.
The Mace B cruise missile launch site is the last remainder of four that were constructed in the 1960s. Opened to the public for the first time this spring, the large concrete building, roughly 9 meters tall and 100 meters wide, sits on a hill facing the East China Sea.
The United States occupied Okinawa from 1945 to 1972. As Cold War tensions increased, it accelerated its deployment of nuclear weapons on the main island despite anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan following the radioactive contamination of a Japanese fishing boat in the mid-1950s.
The Fukuryu Maru No. 5 was exposed to fallout from the U.S. Castle Bravo nuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll in 1954, killing one crew member and sickening the other 22.
Following Okinawa's return to Japanese rule in May 1972, Soka Gakkai, a major Japanese Buddhist organization, purchased the lot that included the Onna launch site in 1976.
With this year marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the group restored the interior and opened the base to the public in March. Some 3,000 people have visited so far.
"It gave me goosebumps. I was aware of problems involving U.S. military bases, but I had no idea about the deployment of nuclear weapons (in Okinawa)," said a 41-year-old woman who was visiting the site from Sapporo, northern Japan, with her parents.
"Okinawa might not exist now if any nuclear missiles had been fired," she said.
Isao Kuwae, 61, secretary general of Soka Gakkai in Okinawa, suggested that when the missile base was being erected local contractors may not have known what they were building.
He added the Onna site is "the only place where you can see with your own eyes the past presence of nuclear weapons in Okinawa."
A Mace B cruise missile was said to have a payload 70 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that the U.S. military dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people by the end of the year.
With a range of over 2,000 kilometers, the missiles, deployed at the bases in Okinawa in the first half of the 1960s, could strike China and parts of the Soviet Union. They were reportedly made ready for war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
But with the subsequent development of new missiles, the need for Mace B missiles diminished. They were removed from Okinawa starting in 1969, when the Japanese and U.S. governments agreed on Okinawa's return to Japan without nuclear weapons.
Although Japan regained sovereignty and independence in 1952 under the terms of the San Fransico Peace Treaty, Okinawa continued under U.S. military rule for the next 20 years.
In 1967, Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato declared the so-called three non-nuclear principles -- not producing, not possessing and not allowing any nation to bring nuclear weapons into Japanese territory. At the time, the U.S. had some 1,300 nuclear weapons in Okinawa.
"The three principles came into existence because there were nuclear weapons in Okinawa," said Masaaki Gabe, 70, professor emeritus at the University of the Ryukyus. "The Japanese government felt assured because of U.S. protection."
Despite occupying approximately 0.6 percent of Japan's total land area, Okinawa still hosts some 70 percent of U.S. military facilities in the country, Gabe noted.
In Yomitan, another Okinawa village where Mace B missiles had been deployed, Junshi Toyoda, 65, a local government official involved in compilation of the village history, said that present fears about the possible deployment of long-range missiles still exist.
Threats from contemporary missiles with a firing range of several thousand kilometers overlap with those caused by the presence of nuclear weapons in the past.
"The fact that nuclear weapons exist today makes it easier to feel the crises that was close to home during the Cold War era. I hope people will first learn about the deployment history of nuclear weapons in Okinawa," Toyoda said.
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