Co-leader of Anti-Helicopter Base Council
29/10/2015, at Mr. Ashitomi’s house, Nago City, Okinawa

Hiroshi Ashitomi, 69 years old. Originally, he was a public officer of welfare and medical service of the Okinawa prefectural office. He retired 9 years ago, and has been trying to work against building a military base in Henoko for 18 years.

He was born in Tokyo in 1946. His father is originally from Okinawa, and moved from Tokyo to Okinawa when he was 16 years old. At that time, Okinawa had been occupied with U.S. Military. When he was a high school student, there had been a growing movement of the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese administration. To coincide with the movement, Vietnam War had been happening.

In the U.S. military bases in Okinawa, there were defoliants that had been used for the Vietnam War. The defoliants were discarded around Okinawa, but U.S. government does not admit that at all. Such a country is not a country that cares and protect the environmental issues properly.

Human beings are just one of the members of Mother Nature, and it is not good that the human being dominates the nature. Okinawa people take pride that their culture has been developed by the nature. It may be that Asian people have such a kind of feeling rather than people of Europe and America. We can see that ‘lands’ of Native Americans were deprived in American history. Also, black people were enslaved as " labor force " to U.S. This is not a country that considers deeply about the nature.