Amerasian Diet member wants Futenma relocated off Okinawa

[unhappycamper]

Amerasian Diet member wants Futenma relocated off Okinawa
By David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, December 12, 2009

OKINAWA CITY, Okinawa — The Diet member who represents the area where a new Marine Corps air station is planned says he’s against the project and that any new facility must be built outside Okinawa.

“It’s the only way to prove to the Okinawa people that both countries are serious about reducing the U.S. military presence here,” Denny Tamaki, the only Amerasian in the Diet, said through an translator during a recent interview at his office in Okinawa City.

Tamaki sees himself as representing the best of both worlds. He loves his American heritage — especially rock ’n’ roll — but as an Okinawan he resents the U.S. military’s large footprint on his island home.

And as the first Amerasian representative in Japan’s House of Representatives — he’s the equivalent of a U.S. congressman — Tamaki hopes he can help the two nations find a middle road on the thorny issue of closing Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

Tamaki, 50, who speaks little English, is the son of an Okinawan waitress and a U.S. Marine who left the island shortly before he was born. He never met his father, but he inherited many of his features — enough so that he had to deal with racial prejudice as a child.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66600