BoQ77
BANNED
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2012
- Messages
- 8,704
- Reaction score
- 0
- Country
- Location
Japan and China Dispute a Pacific Islet
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: July 10, 2005
TOKYO, July 9 - The smaller of the two is roughly the size of a twin bed and pokes only 2.9 inches out of the ocean. The larger, as big as a small bedroom perhaps, manages to rise up 6.3 inches.
Enlarge This Image
Issei Kato/Reuters
The governor of Tokyo raised the Rising Sun over an islet in the Pacific.
Okinotori lies between Taiwan and American bases on Guam.
The Japanese government has already spent $600 million to keep the two barren islets in the western Pacific above water. Collectively called Okinotori and located 1,082 miles south of here, the islets have long allowed Tokyo to claim exclusive economic control over an ocean area larger than all of Japan.
But a threat potentially bigger than typhoons or global warming emerged last year when China challenged Japan's exclusive rights to the economically and militarily important waters, describing Okinotori as just a "rock."
Rock or island, Okinotori lies in a three-square-mile coral reef, most of which is under water even at low tide. A few decades ago, the area was dotted with half a dozen islets, but by 1989, only two were still visible. To protect its claim, the government in Tokyo encased the tiny protrusions - some 1,400 yards apart - in 82-foot-thick concrete, an effort that cost $280 million. Workers later covered the smaller islet with a $50 million titanium net to shield it from debris thrown up by the waves.
Finally, slits were made across the concrete casing, so it would comply with the United Nations law that an island be "surrounded by water."
As with some of Japan's other territorial disputes, a patriotic organization with right-wing roots has taken the lead in rebutting the Chinese challenge to Okinotori's status. The organization, the Nippon Foundation, has drawn short-term plans to build a lighthouse and long-term ones to increase the size of the islets by breeding micro-organisms known as foraminifera. The government last month installed a radar, repaired a heliport and placed an official address plaque, "1 Okinotori Island, Ogasawara Village, Tokyo."
Shintaro Ishihara, the tough-talking governor of Tokyo, under whose jurisdiction the islets fall, took reporters to Okinotori recently and raised the Japanese flag on it.
"That's an island," he said later. "A tiny island. Territory."
"Got a problem with that?" he said with a grin.
The Chinese do. In a meeting with Japanese officials last year, they said Okinotori could not be regarded as an island under the United Nations Law of the Sea.
According to the law, an "island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide." Furthermore, it adds, "rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone."
Okinotori lies at a militarily strategic point, midway between Taiwan and Guam, where American forces are based. Chinese vessels - whose increasing forays into this disputed exclusive economic zone have been drawing Japanese protests - are believed to be mapping the sea bottom over which Americans warships might pass on their way to Taiwan.
Washington supports Tokyo on the island versus rock issue. But a visit to Tokyo in February by John R. Bolton, then an under secretary of state, no doubt left the Japanese scratching their heads: With friends like these, who needs the Chinese?
An American reporter unable to pronounce Okinotori shima, which means "Offshore bird island," asked Mr. Bolton about "Otokono shima," a nonexistent island that would mean, "Man's island."
"The rock," Mr. Bolton said.
"Yeah, the rock," the reporter said.
No one has ever lived on Okinotori, and the islets have yet to show any sign of economic life. Workers are deployed twice a year to make repairs to the casing that sits atop Okinotori, and this year, after China's "rock" declaration, the Ministry of Land raised the budget for it to $5.6 million, from $2 million.
Last fall, fearing that inaction would mean losing out to China, the Nippon Foundation focused its considerable resources on the issue.
"If someone doesn't do it, this country would drag its feet and nothing would be decided," said Yoshihiko Yamada, who oversees the Okinotori project for the foundation.
The foundation led teams of researchers and reporters on two boat trips to Okinotori. Mr. Yamada, something of a romantic, waxed poetic about the "moonlit sea," the "mysterious natural environment" and the flyingfish jumping merrily around the ship.
"We made it into sashimi and it was delicious," he said.
The foundation now wants to build a $1 million lighthouse, which would constitute economic activity by guiding ships. "If the government can't do that, we are asking them to let us do it," Mr. Yamada said.
Other proposals include opening up Okinotori to divers or ecotourists. Masazumi Nagamitsu, an executive director at the foundation, is partial to an international coral research center and a 6,500-foot runway. An even more ambitious proposal would reverse the land erosion by attracting foraminifera - hard-shelled organisms that would attach themselves to the islet.
"Well, I wonder what their intention is with these proposals," said Katsunori Kadoyu, an official at the Ministry of Land, which administers Okinotori. He has yet to step foot on Okinotori but watches live images of it from a camera set up there in February. "It is a bit difficult to answer."
Part of the difficulty lies in the history of the Nippon Foundation, which was founded by Ryoichi Sasakawa, a World War II war-crimes suspect who built a gambling empire around motorboat racing.
Yukio Hori, a retired professor at Tohoku Bunka Gakuen University and author, said the government and nationalist groups often had a collaborative relationship. Those groups would typically push a project that government officials were hesitant to do openly.
In another territorial dispute with China, over the Senkaku Islands, Japan's largest right-wing group, Nihon Seinen-sha, built a lighthouse there 27 years ago and traveled to it regularly for repairs. After the government and Nihon Seinen-sha engaged in negotiations last year, the government finally took over control of the lighthouse early this year.
On Okinotori, the government may let the foundation build its lighthouse. Doing so on its own could be too provocative to the Chinese.
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: July 10, 2005
TOKYO, July 9 - The smaller of the two is roughly the size of a twin bed and pokes only 2.9 inches out of the ocean. The larger, as big as a small bedroom perhaps, manages to rise up 6.3 inches.
Enlarge This Image
Issei Kato/Reuters
The governor of Tokyo raised the Rising Sun over an islet in the Pacific.
Okinotori lies between Taiwan and American bases on Guam.
The Japanese government has already spent $600 million to keep the two barren islets in the western Pacific above water. Collectively called Okinotori and located 1,082 miles south of here, the islets have long allowed Tokyo to claim exclusive economic control over an ocean area larger than all of Japan.
But a threat potentially bigger than typhoons or global warming emerged last year when China challenged Japan's exclusive rights to the economically and militarily important waters, describing Okinotori as just a "rock."
Rock or island, Okinotori lies in a three-square-mile coral reef, most of which is under water even at low tide. A few decades ago, the area was dotted with half a dozen islets, but by 1989, only two were still visible. To protect its claim, the government in Tokyo encased the tiny protrusions - some 1,400 yards apart - in 82-foot-thick concrete, an effort that cost $280 million. Workers later covered the smaller islet with a $50 million titanium net to shield it from debris thrown up by the waves.
Finally, slits were made across the concrete casing, so it would comply with the United Nations law that an island be "surrounded by water."
As with some of Japan's other territorial disputes, a patriotic organization with right-wing roots has taken the lead in rebutting the Chinese challenge to Okinotori's status. The organization, the Nippon Foundation, has drawn short-term plans to build a lighthouse and long-term ones to increase the size of the islets by breeding micro-organisms known as foraminifera. The government last month installed a radar, repaired a heliport and placed an official address plaque, "1 Okinotori Island, Ogasawara Village, Tokyo."
Shintaro Ishihara, the tough-talking governor of Tokyo, under whose jurisdiction the islets fall, took reporters to Okinotori recently and raised the Japanese flag on it.
"That's an island," he said later. "A tiny island. Territory."
"Got a problem with that?" he said with a grin.
The Chinese do. In a meeting with Japanese officials last year, they said Okinotori could not be regarded as an island under the United Nations Law of the Sea.
According to the law, an "island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide." Furthermore, it adds, "rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone."
Okinotori lies at a militarily strategic point, midway between Taiwan and Guam, where American forces are based. Chinese vessels - whose increasing forays into this disputed exclusive economic zone have been drawing Japanese protests - are believed to be mapping the sea bottom over which Americans warships might pass on their way to Taiwan.
Washington supports Tokyo on the island versus rock issue. But a visit to Tokyo in February by John R. Bolton, then an under secretary of state, no doubt left the Japanese scratching their heads: With friends like these, who needs the Chinese?
An American reporter unable to pronounce Okinotori shima, which means "Offshore bird island," asked Mr. Bolton about "Otokono shima," a nonexistent island that would mean, "Man's island."
"The rock," Mr. Bolton said.
"Yeah, the rock," the reporter said.
No one has ever lived on Okinotori, and the islets have yet to show any sign of economic life. Workers are deployed twice a year to make repairs to the casing that sits atop Okinotori, and this year, after China's "rock" declaration, the Ministry of Land raised the budget for it to $5.6 million, from $2 million.
Last fall, fearing that inaction would mean losing out to China, the Nippon Foundation focused its considerable resources on the issue.
"If someone doesn't do it, this country would drag its feet and nothing would be decided," said Yoshihiko Yamada, who oversees the Okinotori project for the foundation.
The foundation led teams of researchers and reporters on two boat trips to Okinotori. Mr. Yamada, something of a romantic, waxed poetic about the "moonlit sea," the "mysterious natural environment" and the flyingfish jumping merrily around the ship.
"We made it into sashimi and it was delicious," he said.
The foundation now wants to build a $1 million lighthouse, which would constitute economic activity by guiding ships. "If the government can't do that, we are asking them to let us do it," Mr. Yamada said.
Other proposals include opening up Okinotori to divers or ecotourists. Masazumi Nagamitsu, an executive director at the foundation, is partial to an international coral research center and a 6,500-foot runway. An even more ambitious proposal would reverse the land erosion by attracting foraminifera - hard-shelled organisms that would attach themselves to the islet.
"Well, I wonder what their intention is with these proposals," said Katsunori Kadoyu, an official at the Ministry of Land, which administers Okinotori. He has yet to step foot on Okinotori but watches live images of it from a camera set up there in February. "It is a bit difficult to answer."
Part of the difficulty lies in the history of the Nippon Foundation, which was founded by Ryoichi Sasakawa, a World War II war-crimes suspect who built a gambling empire around motorboat racing.
Yukio Hori, a retired professor at Tohoku Bunka Gakuen University and author, said the government and nationalist groups often had a collaborative relationship. Those groups would typically push a project that government officials were hesitant to do openly.
In another territorial dispute with China, over the Senkaku Islands, Japan's largest right-wing group, Nihon Seinen-sha, built a lighthouse there 27 years ago and traveled to it regularly for repairs. After the government and Nihon Seinen-sha engaged in negotiations last year, the government finally took over control of the lighthouse early this year.
On Okinotori, the government may let the foundation build its lighthouse. Doing so on its own could be too provocative to the Chinese.
