page_title: Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan
section_title: Opposition
hierarchical_section_title: Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan / Opposition
caption_attribution_description: English: 1960 Protests against the United States-Japan Security Treaty日本語: 60年安保闘争
context_page_description: The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, also known in Japan as Anpo jōyaku or just Anpo for short, is a treaty establishing a military alliance between the United States and Japan. The treaty was first signed in 1951 at the San Francisco Presidio after the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. Then, the Security Treaty was amended further in January 1960 between the US and Japan in Washington, DC.
  When the treaty was first signed, it contained provisions that permitted the United States to act to maintain peace in East Asia and even to exert its power on Japanese domestic quarrels. The latter part mentioned has been deleted in the revised version of the treaty. In the amended treaty, articles that delineate mutual defense obligations and the US obligations to inform Japan before US forces mobilized were included to alleviate unequal status suggested in the 1952 treaty.
  The treaty established that any attack against Japan or the United States perpetrated within Japanese territorial administration would be dangerous to both countries' peace and safety.
context_section_description: In May and June 1960, mass demonstrations took place outside the Diet building, opposing forced adoption of the revised treaty in 1960. An umbrell organization, People's Council to Stop the Revised Security Treaty (安保条約改定阻止国民会議, Anpo Jōyaku Kaitei Soshi Kokumin Kaigi), co-ordinated the actions of various citizen movements involved in opposing the revision. It formed with 134 organizations as members in March 1959 and grew to have 1,633 affiliated organizations by March 1960. The groups included labor unions, farmers' and teachers' unions, poetry circles, theater troupes, student and women's organizations, mothers' groups, and groups affiliated with the Japan Socialist Party and the Japan Communist Party.
  A University of Tokyo undergraduate and student activist, Michiko Kanba, died in clashes between protestors and police at the South Gate of the Diet Building in the evening of 15 June 1960.
  A central issue in the debate over the continued US military presence is the concentration of troops in the small Japanese prefecture of Okinawa. US military bases cover about one fifth of Okinawa and serve around 75% of the US forces in Japan (Packard, 2010, Sumida, 2009). That has left many Okinawans feeling that the security agreement may be beneficial to the United States and Japan as a whole, but it is burdensome to the residents of the small subtropical island.
  Another contentious issue to many Okinawans is the noise and environmental pollution created by the US forces in Japan. Excessive noise lawsuits in 2009 filed by Okinawa's residents against Kadena Air Base and MCAS Futenma resulted in awards of $59 million and $1.3 million to residents, respectively (Sumida, 2009). The tourist attraction of Okinawa's coral reef has suffered from continuous runoff of live fire exercises from the military bases (JCP, 2000). The most powerful opposition in Okinawa, however, stemmed from criminal acts committed by US servicemembers and their dependents, with the latest example being the 1995 kidnapping and molestation of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by two Marines and a Navy corpsmen (Packard, 2010). In early 2008, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apologized after a series of crimes involving American troops in Japan, including the rape of a girl of 14 by a marine on Okinawa. The US military also imposed a temporary 24-hour curfew on military personnel and their families to ease the anger of local residents. Some media cited statistics that the crime rate of military personnel was consistently less than that of the general Okinawan population.
  In a 2006 agreement between the George W. Bush administration and the Japanese government, MCAS Futenma was to be relocated to the northern Okinawa city of Nago, and 8,000 Marines and their dependents were to be relocated to Guam (Packard, 2010). The agreement, however, received very little support from Okinawans. After spending several months deliberating over the new location of the base would move, Yukio Hatoyama conceded to allow the original agreement to go forward and immediately resigned after he stated that he had failed to fulfill one of his promises.
caption: 1960 protests against the United States-Japan Security Treaty
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