Lockdown in Okinawa killing business
Another story coming through on Stars & Stripes, this time about how the base restrictions are killing business in the Chatan and Okinawa City areas of Okinawa. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you who live here in Okinawa and see how much the US military injects into the local economy.
OKINAWA CITY - Gate Two Street, normally a hub of activity on a Saturday night, was brightly lit but ghostly quiet.
The street runs a few blocks from Highway 330 to a Kadena Air Base gate and the sidewalks are usually crowded with young servicemembers visiting the bars and restaurants and other businesses that rely heavily on the military to sustain themselves.
But all people affiliated with the U.S. military were placed on restriction last week for an indefinite period of greflectionh in the wake of several alleged crimes by servicemembers.
No onefs allowed off-base except for medical or religious reasons, unless he or she lives in the community. Even then, people living off-base have been told to restrict themselves to their homes.
Many of the entertainment districtfs bars were closed. The only business activity seemed to be a few teenage girls in a clothing store looking over the latest in stateside hip-hop fashions.
At 9 p.m. Saturday at Paddy Macfs, an Irish pub on Park Avenue, three Okinawans shared a few pints of Guinness and orders of fish and chips and two others drank at the bar. Owner Martin McIntyre sat in a back booth and shook his head.
gThis is killing me,h he said. gAny other Saturday therefd be 60 people packed in here, with the regulars watching the football matches on the telly. And therefd be a bunch hanging around outside on the sidewalk.h
McIntyre said he understood the need for the U.S. military to send a message to the Okinawa community that it was taking the off-base behavior of its personnel seriously - geven if itfs punishing thousands of people for the acts of a few.h
gI just hope the restriction will be lifted soon,h he said. gThe thing Ifm worried about is the whole negative effect it will have on the parade and other events we have planned for St. Patrickfs Day.h
The parade is scheduled for March 15.
gBut wefve been hearing this restriction could last until March 25,h he said. gThat would kill it.h
Sitting with McIntyre was another Park Avenue bartender who had decided not to bother opening up his club.
gItfs been brutal dead, man,h he said, asking not to be named.
gMany bars decided to not open,h McIntyre said. gItfs the same story everywhere - therefs nobody there.h
The lack of the usual crowd of Americans at popular districts near other U.S. bases also was marked. The parking lots in gAmerican Village,h a collection of restaurants, bars, clothing shops and other businesses in Chatan, near camps Foster and Lester, had no cars with the distinguishing gYh license plates assigned to American owners.
gWe hope the restriction will be lifted as soon as possible,h said Naoki Tsukayama, manager of Kitaya, a restaurant near Camp Fosterfs Globe and Anchor. gWe cannot do any business - at all. We closed Friday, and opened Saturday, but closed again Sunday. Today, we are open only because we have a dinner reservation. If not, we would have closed today, too.
gI wonder how the American people are feeling about this,h he said. gI feel sorry for them because many good people are being punished because of the wrongs by a few people.h
A Marine spokesman said the indefinite gperiod of reflection,h ordered by Marine Lt. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer as the senior ranking officer on Okinawa, would be reassessed March 3.
Until then, spokesman Master Sgt. Charles Albrecht said, gtherefs been no change. All off-base activity is prohibited.h
Albrecht said people with emergency needs - such as being able to pick up children at off-base day care or at private schools - can apply for exemptions.
He added that there were no gcheckersh ensuring the restriction is being followed off-base.
An assistant manager of a Starbucks, across Highway 58 from the main gate to Camp Lester in Chatan, said otherwise.
gA Japanese man working for military police came in this morning asking us to let them know if Americans visit our shop,h said Taeko Yonamine.
But therefs been no American coffee drinkers at the shop since the restriction went into effect, she said.
Albrecht said there have been no reports of restriction violations.
Elsewhere, several Americans reported Japanese police were stopping Americans at random and demanding to know what they were doing off-base.
Okinawa police denied making any such stops
gPolice will not stop people for questioning only because they are non-Japanese looking,h said a spokesman for Okinawa prefectural police in Okinawa City.
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Well it seems that both authorities (i.e. the PMO on base and the Okinawan Police) may be bending the truth a little here. I sincerely doubt the staff at Starbucks will be making this up (although I am one of their regular customers and they know me well so I’ll ask them when I next visit) about police checking to see if Americans are visiting for coffee. And I have heard of numerous reports of people being stopped by Okinawan police for being foreign, and being asked where they are going and why. Which brings me nicely onto the next email that’s dropped into my inbox, and which was forwarded to some departments employed by the Department of Defence:
Please let your staff know that even when they are going to an off-base location with waiver exemption in hand, they may run into a similar problem that one of our ******** experienced when she went to a Family Mart to pay a bill. The clerk delayed her in the store and called the Okinawa Police. It took 45 minutes before she was finally released, even after she showed them her exemption letter. Please advise your staff to exercise calm and restraint if they run into a similar situation. With only what they read or hear in the news, the local folks are also apprehensive about dealing with Americans and do not want to get in trouble. We are working on a Japanese-worded explanation to go with the exemption letter to alleviate any confusion.
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I’m not sure what the Japanese is for “racial profiling” but it might be a nice word to know in the forthcoming days and weeks. What it means we are looking at is staff of shops calling the police when foreigners are entering their store as they are not being given detailed information by the Okinawan authorities or the media. See - if they’d come visit my site they would know!
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Fascinating reading, from a Guam perspective that is. Is this our future??
Please keep blogging from your on the spot perspective. It’s not something you can read in a newspaper, at least not in English.
If you want the latest on the B-2 crash on Guam, go to http://www.kuam.com — they have video on it.
Margaret. Thanks for your encouraging comments. I certainly will keep reporting all the news I hear from my sources here in Okinawa. I’m trying to capture all the news feeds, along with some rumours and them my comments on it all.
Not sure if it’s Guam’s future, but rumours abound that people high up in the military here in Okinawa want 8,000 Marines transferring to Guam ASAP.
Am going to read more about that B2 crash now…