TOKYO – Almost 100,000 people rallied on Japan’s Okinawa yesterday to demand a US air base be moved off the island, deepening Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama’s woes as he struggles to resolve a feud over the base by an end-of-May deadline.
Crowds of residents, many wearing yellow as a symbol of protest, gathered in the town of Yomitan on Okinawa a day after a US newspaper said Tokyo was moving towards accepting a 2006 deal to relocate the base’s functions from the centre of a city to a less populous part of the island. – (Reuters)