Relocating occupation: A critical environmental justice analysis of the US military migration from Okinawa to Guåhan

Abstract

Spanish

The US military buildup across the Pacific is an ongoing colonial project reproducing oppressive power structures, human rights violations, and systemic environmental injustices. As the United States bolsters its Pacific presence, islands and peoples living on them are particularly vulnerable. However, not all places face overtly growing military-colonial occupations. Following decades of substantial military presence in Okinawa, 2024 marks the beginning of a precarious troop withdrawal from the Japanese prefecture. This significant reduction in Marine Corps personnel is the result of decades of political activism by Okinawans, who have continually resisted occupation and longstanding patterns of violence and oppression. Yet these military forces are not just leaving, they are relocating. The withdrawal coincides with 5,000 Marines and a new base coming to Guåhan (Guam), a territory where about 30% of land is under military control. This article examines these processes of military buildup and relocation through a critical environmental justice lens. We expand upon research on these issues by centering the critical environmental justice pillars concerning intersectionality, multiple scales, state power, and indispensability. We analyze the interconnections between Okinawa and Guåhan and argue that environmental justice scholarship must consider global geopolitics, interconnectivity, and sovereignty to adequately approach environmental movements in the Pacific region. In addition, we demonstrate that environmental justice victories in non-self-governing territories remain vulnerable to reversal and we advocate for inter-island coalition-building to avoid passing environmental harms from one island to another.

Keywords

militarization decolonization environmental justice pacific islands Guåhan (Guam)Okinawa

Introduction

The Pacific is home to thousands of islands, nations, and cultures—many with colonial pasts, and some still struggling with colonial presence. This collection of peoples varies widely in identities and political statuses, but is united by the Pacific Ocean and its many associated environmental justice challenges (sea level rise, ocean warming, and military-related pollution, to name a few). These pressures can catalyze instances of environmental injustice that appear distinct to each island, but are similar in that they threaten communities’ public health, local economies, self-determination, and ways of life. This article takes as its main focus the Pacific region's inadvertent embroilment in the mounting geopolitical tension between the United States and China, and the environmental justice issues that result.

When an island community successfully rallies together to advocate for environmental justice, the powerful institutions behind the problem may ultimately arrive at the point of promising mitigation of harm. Far from celebrating victory, this embattled community is now tasked with critically analyzing the validity of the proposed solution. Is the empowered institution's commitment to mitigation enforceable and if so, has the community achieved a level of sovereignty and/or government participation that would enable it to ensure this enforcement? Does the mitigating measure actually solve the environmental problem on a long-term and wide-ranging scale, or is it offering a band-aid solution? Does the mitigating measure simply pass the buck, endangering other communities in the short-term and leaving open the possibility of the problem's return in the long-term? Complications arise when attempting to mitigate an instance of environmental injustice particular to a single island; the island community remains uniquely, inextricably bound to other island communities across the Pacific, as they share the ocean (both its resources and its pollution) and they share the burden of superpowers’ war games. In other words, the overall effects of the mitigation effort—whether positive or negative—will also be shared. In these many ways, the Pacific presents a unique geographical and geopolitical context that illuminates complex problems that are under-researched by scholars of environmental justice and need to be further explored.

Using the Japanese and American governments’ 1996 agreement to remove US Marines from Okinawa and relocate them to Guåhan as a case study, we will show how government plans that ostensibly mitigate environmental injustice suffered by marginalized communities may actually continue to harm these communities while reinforcing dominant power structures. We define environmental justice (EJ) as the attainment of distributive, procedural, and transformative forms of justice. Distributive justice is defined as the equitable allocation of both environmental resources and negative impacts across different communities and within communities. We define procedural justice as the implementation of decision-making processes that are fair and inclusive to all impacted participants. Lastly, we understand transformative justice as a process of dismantling the systems (be they social, political, economic, or otherwise) that continue to reproduce marginalization and create solutions using methods beyond those systems (Newell et al., 2021; Rudge, 2023; Schlosberg, 2013). The integration of these three concepts enables EJ research and activism frameworks to support change in both inequitable conditions and the systemic forces that reproduce those conditions.

Historical background

In order to situate modern-day militarism in Okinawa, the Marianas, and the greater Pacific, it is necessary to understand the geopolitical history of the region. The CHamoru (Chamorro) people are Indigenous to the Mariana Islands, an archipelago of 15 islands located about 120 miles west of the Marianas Trench. They are estimated to have lived on the archipelago for at least 4000 years. Spain made first contact with the archipelago when Ferdinand Magellan landed in the Marianas in 1521, eventually violently annexing the islands (Hezel, 2015). After losing the Spanish-American war, Spain ceded the southernmost island of the archipelago to the United States. This island, which is the largest of the Marianas, was referred to as “Guam” in the Treaty of Paris, a misnomer which has stuck ever since, at least in international forums. In solidarity with the CHamoru people and their right to define themselves, in this article we choose to call the island by its original CHamoru name, “Guåhan.” Further, we use the spelling “CHamoru” rather than “Chamorro” in alignment with Guåhan's Commission on the CHamoru Language, although both spellings are commonly used by peoples throughout the Marianas.

All of the Mariana Islands north of Guåhan (now known as the Northern Mariana Islands) were purchased by Germany in 1899 (Hiery, 2020). After World War I, the League of Nations decreed that the Northern Mariana Islands be administered by Japan (Quimby, 2013). After World War II, the newly formed United Nations grouped the Northern Mariana Islands, along with thousands of other Micronesian islands previously under Japanese control, into the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, administered by the United States (Camacho, 2011). In 1976, representatives of the Northern Mariana Islands and the United States negotiated the Covenant to Establish a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Political Union with the United States of America (Willens and Siemer, 2002). Since then, the Marianas archipelago has remained entirely under the US flag, albeit Guåhan constitutes a non-self-governing territory (a modern colony in the eyes of the United Nations) whereas the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) ostensibly operates as a sovereign member of the “U.S. family” under the CNMI Covenant (United Nations, 2022). However, it is notable that the Covenant is now arguably interpreted and enforced unilaterally by the United States, throwing into question whether the CNMI is truly sovereign or, like Guåhan, functions as a modern-day colony (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana v. United States, 2009; Saipan Tribune, 2009).

Much like Guåhan, Okinawa has a long history of colonial presence. Okinawa's Indigenous Ryukyu people began paying tribute to Japanese conquerors in the early 1600s. The Okinawa Islands were officially annexed by Japan in 1879, and the next half century would see the passage of laws and policies that severely limited the power of the Okinawan people to exercise political will, practice their culture, and speak their language. One-third of the residents of the main island of Okinawa were killed in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa during WWII. Following the end of the war, the United States took interim control over Okinawa and began constructing military bases including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. Administrative rights over Okinawa were returned to Japan in 1972, with the expectation that the United States’ extensive military footprint in Okinawa would remain. Currently, 70% of US bases on Japanese soil are located in Okinawa (Chanlett-Avery, et al., 2019; Pajon, 2010; Kerr, 2000).

Notably, in Okinawa, Guåhan, and islands across the Pacific, US military bases come in many different forms with unique impacts from the operations of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force (Vine, 2020). Here, we focus primarily on the relocation of Marines due to the immense impacts that their base development and continued operations have had on these communities and environments. Military activities in both Guåhan and Okinawa have historically led to environmental and social consequences that cause resentment among the local civilian community. Training ranges and military bases on Guåhan have contaminated the islands’ main aquifer, required the destruction of the islands’ old growth limestone forests, introduced invasive species like the brown tree snake which in turn destroyed Guåhan's bird population, made inaccessible or outright destroyed ancient CHamoru sites where historical artifacts could have been collected and studied, and allegedly exposed the islands’ residents to Agent Orange and Agent Purple (Mitchell, 2020; Na‘puti and Bevacqua, 2015). In Okinawa, land grabs, processes where the colonial state forcibly strips local communities of land rights and controls ownership, have severely strained relations with local populations. These post-WWII land grabs where the US state has taken ownership over public or locally owned land and the continued US hold over Okinawan land after the 1972 reversion agreement demonstrate a key method used by the United States to maintain a military colonial presence on Okinawa (Kim, 2022). In addition to land grabs, dangerous training activities—like the infamous 1959 incident in which a fighter jet crashed into Miyamori Elementary School have resulted in civilian casualties. The safety of Okinawans living around military bases has been further jeopardized by reckless and violent behavior by US servicemen, including drunk driving, rape, and murder (McCormack and Norimatsu, 2018).

In 1995, decades of military-civilian tension in Okinawa culminated into mass protests after two US Marines and one Navy sailor stationed at Camp Hansen were arrested for the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. It is reported that anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 Okinawan people took to the streets protesting the unilaterally enforced US military presence and its history of harm and violence. The sheer size of the outcry and its international news coverage forced a response from US and Japanese officials, who in 1996 publicly agreed to take steps to minimize the military footprint in Okinawa, including closing Air Station Futenma and giving back 12,000 acres of land (McCormack and Norimatsu, 2018).

While this public promise temporarily assuaged the Okinawa population and appeared to bookend the international controversy, 10 years passed before Japanese and US officials made any real progress toward delivering on their agreement. The 2006 “Roadmap to Realignment” constituted a more detailed plan presented by the United States and Japan. This relocation plan promised the removal of roughly 9,000 US Marines and their families from Okinawa, but this was to be achieved only through transferring them to other locations, with about 5,000 Marines going to Guåhan, which would require the installation of a new base, Marine Corps Camp Blaz (currently under construction). Notably, the Roadmap to Realignment not only expanded the military presence on Guåhan, but muddied the 1996 land back promises and outlined the construction of an entirely new base on Okinawa that would require the dredging of the highly biodiverse Henoko Bay. This new development has prompted a renewed round of protests and resistance efforts in Okinawa that continue today.

The Realignment Plan was met with staunch opposition from various Guåhan activists, legislators, and government agencies, who expressed concerns about the potential consequences to the island community's culture, environment, health, and already strained public utilities (Department of the Navy, 2010). Several methods have been used to push against the relocation and its associated construction of bases, training ranges, and other military facilities. Residents of the 10-mile-long island of Tini’an sued the US military over plans to fire howitzers and stage ship-to-shore shelling exercises within three miles of the village of San Jose. In addition to protests and lawsuits, Guåhan has sent several delegations to testify before the United Nations General Assembly about their concerns regarding the US military presence in the Marianas and also how the lack of sovereignty and access to standard US democratic systems have disabled the people of Guåhan when attempting to advocate for EJ. In the context of these military colonial histories and present-day processes, we use a critical EJ lens to better understand the complex structures of marginalization that are reproducing harm and advocate for interisland coalition-building to avoid passing environmental harms from one island to another (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1.

Map of US military-controlled land in Okinawa. Select sites are labeled. Rather than a comprehensive list of all military installments we identify prominent sites used by the US Marine Corps.

Figure 2.

Map of US military-controlled land in Guåhan. Select sites are labeled. Rather than a comprehensive list of all military installments we identify the largest bases and those with particular relevance for the US Marine Corps relocation.

Theoretical approach and objectives

In this article, we center the theoretical framework of critical environmental justice to provide a unique perspective on militarization across the Pacific. EJ activism and scholarship has historically focused on the distribution of environmental hazards and resources, as well as procedural justice issues regarding decision making that shapes environments people are connected to in myriad ways (Mascarenhas, 2021). Much early EJ work focused on hazardous waste and the disproportionate prevalence of toxic pollution sites in communities of color, but both activism and scholarship in the field has addressed a variety of other environmental issues, understandings of diverse demographics, and expanded beyond site-specific studies toward analyses of larger systems reproducing injustices (Bullard, 1996; Mascarenhas, 2021; Taylor, 2014). Further, EJ approaches have been applied to understand harms related to multiple areas of interest to this article, such as small islands, non-self-governing territories, colonialism, and militarization (Kajihiro, 2023; Thomson and Samuels-Jones, 2022).

The specific theoretical framework we center here, critical EJ, seeks to build upon questions that the broader field of EJ studies has grappled with by introducing four pillars concerned with, (1) intersectionality, (2) multiple scales, (3) state power, and (4) indispensability (Pellow 2016; Pellow and Brulle 2005). Here, we use the term “pillars” to describe core components of the theoretical framework that serve to guide analysis. This article will build upon the framework of critical EJ by examining connections between two archipelagic islands and the populations that are marginalized by the US military in each place.

The first pillar of critical EJ, intersectionality, provides novel insights into the connections between different groups of people and nonhuman species who are marginalized in distinct ways but connected by similar power structures. Intersectionality as used in critical EJ builds upon the fundamental ideas of the concept, which emphasize that particular marginalized groups of people lie at the intersection of a multitude of identities and therefore experience compounding subordination from structural and political systems (Crenshaw, 1998). Through critical EJ, Pellow incorporates an acknowledgement that nonhuman species have been devalued and marginalized through similar processes, so analysis must consider these interconnections. Using this lens in the study of militarization brings together important insights into the coalescing oppressions of people and nature, and how the colonial construction of that divide reproduces differentiated harm.

Second, by emphasizing the consideration of multiple spatial and temporal scales, we seek to demonstrate how ameliorating the environmental injustices of military occupation in one location can reproduce environmental injustice elsewhere, thereby reinforcing the treatment of marginalized populations as expendable. This pillar of analysis emphasizes historicization, in this case of military buildup and relocation processes, to understand how ostensible “events” are not isolated in one moment in time or space but rather are components of deeply connected processes across temporalities and geographies.

Third, critical EJ calls for a greater focus on how the power of the state reinforces inequalities. This pillar addresses an area that is undertheorized in EJ studies but is often a central focus of critical research on militarization and human rights. By emphasizing how inequalities and environmental injustices are concomitantly reproduced and reinforced by the state and military colonial structures, our analysis here will demonstrate the unique value that a critical EJ perspective brings to researching how state power is operationalized.

Fourth, we emphasize the indispensability of marginalized communities that are treated as expendable by military colonial processes. This critical EJ pillar is introduced to specifically counter racializing and hierarchical ideologies that render Black, Brown, and other minoritized bodies expendable. We apply this call to treat ostensibly expendable groups as indispensable when challenging the ideological structures of military colonialism that marginalize island communities. By incorporating this pillar we again build connections to research emphasizing human rights and self-determination, and we center island communities who are often disregarded as “small” or “insignificant” in the “grand scheme” of global geopolitical and military priorities.

By studying any issue of injustice through the lens of all four of these pillars, the critical EJ frame enables unique understandings of complex power structures and processes of marginalization. Through this article, we aim to demonstrate the value of applying a critical EJ approach to studying militarization, specifically as these processes impact islands and the communities who live on them. We argue that in the case of the Okinawa-Guåhan relocation, a critical EJ lens enables deep understanding of interconnectedness between different processes of marginalization and between communities seeking justice and self-determination. We argue for three proposals for researchers that align with this theoretical framework: (1) that EJ scholars incorporate greater analysis of global geopolitics and power, (2) that their’ analyses of solutions to injustices consider the potential for harms to be diverted from one community and place to another, and (3) that EJ research accounts for questions of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Lastly, this work emphasizes a fourth proposal designed to more directly support activists and community members: since we demonstrate that environmental justice victories in non-self-governing territories remain vulnerable to reversal, we advocate for inter-island coalition-building for peoples across the Pacific to foster greater bottom-up power and sovereignty.

Critical environmental justice analysis

The four critical EJ pillars serve as the foundation of our analysis of the US military relocation from Okinawa to Guåhan. This analysis is used to demonstrate the importance of our proposed solutions in the context of militarization across the Pacific and the histories that continue to impact present conditions and power dynamics.

Pillar 1: Intersectionality and nonhuman species

A method of intersectionality is crucial to truly understanding the complex forms of marginalization at play with any EJ issue. This is particularly true for systemic injustices that are reproduced outside of the context of the domestic United States where much of EJ scholarship has been conducted and has primarily focused on race as an isolated variable (Mascarenhas, 2021). Still, in the cities of the continental United States and in the island geographies we are centering here, racialization and marginalization operate beyond a Black–White binary and are inextricable from identities related to Indigeneity, gender, political status and forms of citizenship, and other variables. Further, in both Okinawa and Guåhan it is evident that nonhuman species are marginalized by the same structures that certain groups of humans are oppressed by, and therefore analysis that includes consideration for how these different living beings are treated reveals a fuller picture of how marginalizing structures are reproducing systemic injustices.

Interconnected feminist and Indigenous demilitarization activist movements demonstrate a strong example of how the fight for EJ and the systems that reproduce injustice relate to diverse identities and groups beyond an ostensibly isolated factor such as race. In Okinawa, the local community that identifies as Ryukyuans or Okinawans holds a complex relationship with the identity of “Indigenous peoples” with many members of this group identifying more strongly with the concept of an “ethnic minority” while some emphasize that they belong to the “Japanese race,” differentiated from other ethnic minorities (Abe, 2023). Even with this complexity, the Okinawan Indigenous movement has made progress in having the United Nations recognize Okinawans’ Indigenous status, which proponents of the movement argue is essential for decolonial work and protection of Okinawan land rights (Nishiyama, 2022a; Nishiyama, 2022b). However, scholars have demonstrated that the Japanese and US governments have pushed back against the Okinawan Indigenous movement and its goals by emphasizing the disagreement among Okinawans concerning the “Indigenous” label (Nishiyama, 2022a). This follows the same colonial logics that have been used to divide and marginalize many island communities through processes of gendering and racializing them as “other” and producing hierarchies based upon those labels (Ginoza, 2015).

An intersectional lens toward these complex constructions of Indigeneity and race is necessary particularly in the context of self-determination under international law, which provides greater emphasis on the rights of “Indigenous” peoples to undergo processes of decolonization (Abe, 2023). In this example, if the self-determination of Ryukyuans/Okinawans is tied to their identification with the term “Indigenous” and many of these group members do not align with that idea, then the peoples of these islands have less power to justify that they are a non-self-governing territory and to gain self-determination. Through an intersectional analysis that brings the ideas of Indigeneity and race into conversation, along with questions of gender-based violence and other concerns, researchers, activists, and legal advocates can better emphasize the systemic injustices that the Ryukyuans/Okinawans are facing. Notably, in this context and many others, the importance ascribed to the term Indigenous is derived from the systemic oppression brought on by outside colonial power structures that remove the rights of local communities and stir division to maintain that state (Nishiyama, 2022a). Locals’ self-determination over their own identities and the environments they call home is deeply connected to environmental injustice, as powers like the US military and the Japanese government are able to exert relatively unchecked decision-making power over the lands, seas, and peoples of non-self-governing islands, which threatens their agency and the health of their social-ecological systems.

An additional insight brought on by an intersectional EJ perspective is the power that activists can and do generate by coalescing movements across identity groups and issues. In both Okinawa and Guåhan activists have been fighting for women's rights, demilitarization, and Indigenous/local self-determination together (Davis, 2011). These activists, as well as local governments and scholars, aim to deconstruct colonial legacies that have marginalized Indigenous peoples and have also imposed patriarchal structures that further harm women who traditionally held greater power. For example, in Guåhan, decolonization of the territory by attaining the political status of an independent nation or a nation in free association would enable the CHamoru people to develop their own constitution that establishes tenets of mutuality and reciprocity not only between different genders, but also in the relationships shared between humans and nonhuman species (Corbin, et al., 2021). This potential exertion of self-determination would subvert longstanding colonial practices that were established by the Spanish upon colonizing Guåhan and are still reproduced by the United States. Systemic environmental injustices were enforced through oppressive legal systems such as with the severing of matrilineal land holding systems and the restriction of land rights to only serve males under a Western private property regime (Corbin, et al., 2021). In this context, CHamoru feminist activism can be a force to subvert dominant military colonial systems by transforming power dynamics in favor of Indigenous and marginalized communities (Alexander, 2016). By looking at the past through an intersectional lens we can reveal the necessary steps for deconstructing systems of environmental injustices now; here we see that the fight for Indigenous rights is deeply important for all CHamorus and this struggle is deeply important for the attainment of women's rights in unique but related ways.

Activist groups such as the Tini’an Women's Association (TWA), which is based in the CNMI but also fights against the military buildup in Guåhan, and Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence bring together the issues of human rights, environmental protection, prevention of sexual violence, and demilitarization. These groups have channeled their activism through multiple avenues such as protests, international meetings to build coalitions, appeals to international governing bodies like the United Nations, and lawsuits. For example, in 2017 the TWA sued the US Department of the Navy in US federal court. In this case they argued that the federal government violated the National Environmental Protection Act by failing to produce an environmental impact statement that evaluated the combined impacts of the new Marine Corps Camp Blaz on Guåhan and the training ranges on Tini’an and Pågan. The TWA sought to protect not only the women in their communities but also challenged the Navy to protect land value and cultural value and prevent human and nonhuman communities from being exposed to great risk from firing ranges and land degradation (Manglona, 2020). While the federal district court ruled against the TWA, they did state that the US Navy failed to consider the combined impacts of construction on both Guåhan and the CNMI and must do so moving forward. Further, after this lawsuit, the TWA and other groups, such as Prutehi Litekyan (Save the Ritidian) increased public pressure on the federal government, which resulted in the firing range plans being scaled back to exclude large-scale bombings (Frain, 2018).

As with the activists in Tinian Women Association v. U.S. Department of the Navy, plaintiffs in a related case, Center For Biological Diversity (CBD) v. U.S. Department of the Navy, aimed to demonstrate the intersecting needs and rights of human and nonhuman species. This case demonstrates the value of using an intersectional lens that considers multispecies justice for two main reasons (1) nonhuman species should be protected from environmental injustices in their own right and (2) considering how a multitude of species are being marginalized by dominant systems can help to more clearly identify how these injustices are reproduced and how they can be subverted. CBD v. U.S. Department of the Navy was filed in 2023 and is ongoing. This case centers on the claim that the federal government violated the Endangered Species Act, as well as the Freedom of Information Act and Administrative Procedural Act. CBD, along with the community-based organization Prutehi Litekyan, are arguing that the firing range and associated construction and activities adjacent to Camp Blaz will devastate endangered species in the ecologically vital limestone forest in Northwestern Guåhan (Camacho et al., 2023). The processes underway to construct Camp Blaz are clearly harming humans and nonhuman species in similar, often identical ways (Frain et al., 2024). By understanding these issues of military colonialism and associated systemic environmental injustices through an intersectional critical EJ lens, researchers, activists, and legal advocates can protect ecosystems and the peoples who have been deeply connected to them for centuries. This interconnectedness is evident in the challenges against Camp Blaz, as the proposed construction will almost certainly degrade ecosystems that are vital for CHamoru traditional ecological knowledge and healing practices. By harming nonhuman species, people are harmed in many ways with cultural impacts to members of Indigenous communities, such as healers who are often women, being notable.

Similarly to movements in Guåhan, some antimilitarization activism in Okinawa has organized around the protection and rights of nonhuman species. In Dugong v. Rumsfeld, environmental groups from both Okinawa and the United States brought suit against the US Department of Defense arguing that the new base construction for the Marine Corps’ Futenma Replacement Facility was threatening environments that included habitat for the endangered Dugong (Dugong v. Rumsfeld, 2005). The activism surrounding this case demonstrates how island communities in Okinawa have built antimilitarization coalitions with nonhuman species being symbols of their movements (Kim, 2021). While this case initially resulted in a victory for antimilitarization interests, the results were eventually appealed and overturned in favor of the Department of Defense, enabling the construction of new military infrastructure (Kim, 2021). However, this example and others demonstrate how centering the rights of nonhuman species and even extending personhood to these entities can bring about positive change for myriad marginalized groups. In a related context that provides a potential guide for future directions, through the work of the Indigenous Māori communities of Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Whanganui River was granted legal personhood (Hsiao, 2012). This charts a framework for extending rights to nature as its own agent rather than just extending rights to humans to exploit those environments (Charpleix, 2018). These moves toward recognizing legal personhood and rights of nature serve as alternative frameworks to anthropocentric environmental justice positions (Edirisinghe and Suchet-Pearson, 2024). This legal pathway could support the attainment of a multitude of island community priorities when examined through an intersectional lens that shows how interconnected systems of marginalization operate and aims to foster coalition building rather than pitting different marginalized groups, whether human or nonhuman against each other.

Evidently, an intersectional lens also reveals that the processes of militarization that are occurring across Pacific Islands are serving to break the interconnectedness between peoples, lands, oceans, and ecosystems. Understanding and centering how systemic injustices operate to harm diverse communities presents opportunities for coalition-building and interest convergence. We build upon previous research to argue that coalition-building can be an immensely powerful process towards achieving environmental justice in the face of dominant systems of marginalization which exert power across multiple scales (O’Byrne, 2020).

Pillar 2: Multiple spatial and temporal scales

By incorporating multiple temporal and spatial scales into our analysis of environmental concerns and military posturing in Guåhan and Okinawa, we can better understand how EJ comes to be refused, at times enacted, and often subsequently redacted in colonial territories across the Pacific.

Even in marginalized territories like Guåhan and Okinawa, local EJ efforts have yielded hard-won victories by generating and leveraging public outcry—at times on the international stage—formidable enough to compel colonial administrations to promise mitigation. However, these “victories” have proven to be vulnerable and can collapse easily into mere lip service, as mitigation can be delayed, negligently performed or overturned at any point by colonial administrations that have unilateral power to decide what constitutes damage, what proper remediation looks like, and how and when it is executed, if at all. The Japanese and US governments’ responses to Okinawa's internationally covered 1995 protests offer insights on the temporal elements of this method of feigning cooperation with a colonized population in the short term, while maintaining colonial control long term.

The 1996 public promise to minimize the military footprint in Okinawa did not translate into a detailed plan until 2006 when some elements of the past promises were referenced in the “Roadmap to Realignment,” that would move roughly 9000 Marines and their dependents off of Okinawa (McCormack and Norimatsu, 2018). However, despite the initial intention to reduce the military footprint on Okinawa, the Realignment Plan included plans to build a “Futenma Replacement Facility” for US Marines on Okinawa, to be located near Henoko Bay. Additionally, while some military facilities on Okinawa were designated to be under consideration for partial return, few plans actually resulted in giving any land back to Okinawans (McCormack and Norimatsu, 2018).

At the start of construction of the new Futenma Replacement Facility in Henoko Bay throughout the early 2010s, Okinawans took to the streets yet again. They were now protesting the required dredging of Henoko Bay, home to one of the most biodiverse coral reefs on the planet (Okubo, 2023). A symbolic referendum was ultimately held in which 70% of Okinawan residents expressed their disapproval of the base. Nonetheless, neither the US or Japanese government expressed interest in revising their plans (McCormack and Norimatsu, 2018; McCurry, 2019).

At a glance, the 1995 and 2015 movements in Okinawa may seem to be separate incidents; the 1995 protests appear to be more human rights-related, while the 2015 ones appear to address environmental concerns. The 1995 protests appeared to bear fruit as per the resulting agreements, whereas the 2015 ones seemed ineffective in that they did not catalyze any negotiations with the United States or Japan. But by adopting a wider temporal scale, we can see that these protests are largely part of the same movement for sovereignty and EJ in Okinawa, and that the movements’ successes were similarly limited by Okinawa's colonial administrations. The 1995 “victory” never fully materialized, meaning the supposed moment of Indigenous sovereignty in Okinawa never truly actualized. Accordingly, history repeated itself in 2015, and despite 20 years of supposed liberal development and virtual communication across the globe, Okinawa's more recent protests were unable to reach international media in the same way as 1995, and were ultimately deemed unworthy even of lip service.

The original 1996 agreement's illusion of humanitarian compromise can be further dismantled through adopting multiple spatial scales to the lessening of the military footprint in Okinawa. The 2006 Relocation Plan promised the removal of roughly 9,000 US Marines and their families from Okinawa, but this was to be achieved only through transferring about 5,000 of them to Guåhan, which would require the installation of a new base on Guåhan, Marine Corps Camp Blaz.

The Realignment Plan also sparked protests from Guåhan's private and public sectors, including the Environmental Protection Agency, which in 2010 wrote a strongly worded letter asserting that the plan would “significantly exacerbate existing substandard environmental conditions on Guam” (U.S. EPA, 2009). Of the nearly 80,000 new residents who would flock to Guam either temporarily or permanently under the plan, the military's plan provided direct services for only 23,000, presumably leaving Guåhan's already overwhelmed utility systems to support the rest. The new base and influx of military personnel and thousands of civilians to support operations also necessitated the creation of additional training ranges on Guåhan and in the Northern Mariana Islands. Many installations catalyzed mass protests due to their proposed location over ancient CHamoru villages that had yet to be excavated or in proximity to wildlife refuges and aquifers. The 2015 plans for the construction of additional live-fire training ranges on the Northern Mariana Islands of Tini’an and Pågan were presented as indisputable despite public outcry about heavy artillery training that was to occur 3 miles from an elementary school (Arriola, 2020).

Guåhan-based activists, lawyers, and legislators have sent repeated delegations to the United Nations to testify about the forced military development in their homeland. Guåhan-based law firm Blue Ocean Law filed a 2020 submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that prompted the Special Rapporteurs to send a letter to the Biden administration expressing concerns that the military developments constituted a violation of the people of Guåhan's human rights (Blue Ocean Law and the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, 2020).

By refusing to limit the temporal spatial scale at which the 1995 Okinawa protests are understood, and instead widening our analytical scope to encompass the whole Pacific, we can see that Indigenous sovereignty and EJ are not served by supposedly humanitarian “compromises” like the 1996 agreement between Japan and the United States. Without Indigenous sovereignty across the Pacific, agreements like these can appear to respond to Indigenous communities’ concerns, but ultimately repeat the same offense against the same people, pass the buck of environmental injustice to a different Indigenous group, or both.

Pillar 3: State power reinforcing inequalities

The third pillar of critical EJ analysis focuses our attention on how the power of the state reinforces inequalities. The growing militarization in Guåhan and Okinawa exemplifies the use of state power to exploit the land and marginalized communities in order to reinforce domination and control. This section will examine the United States’ use of political power to strengthen its military presence, and how the military complex simultaneously perpetuates inequalities and environmental injustice, which benefit the state.

Guåhan has historically and still remains advantageous to the US military because of its location at the edge of Asia near Japan and China. The United States preserves political domination via policy that maintains Guåhan's status as an unincorporated territory. As an unincorporated territory, Guåhan's ability to restrict the US military is extremely limited. Since Guåhan is not a foreign nation, it does not have the ability to limit the activities of the US military in its borders, as other countries do. As residents of a territory instead of a state, the citizens of Guåhan cannot vote in US presidential elections, and they lack adequate representation in the federal legislative branch. No US territory has representation in the US senate and even though each one sends a delegate to the house of representatives, these members cannot vote on any legislation, even if it pertains to their islands. The United States' political domination over Guåhan creates strategic possibilities in terms of the flexibility and freedom the military bases have on the island. In essence, Guåhan's value lies in its ambiguous political status as a colony because it has no formal ability to control and limit the presence of the US military (Bevacqua and Cruz, 2020). The United States predominantly frames the necessity of their military presence on Guåhan and Okinawa through the lens of China's and North Korea's threats toward Western nations and the Pacific region, drawing on fears from similar geopolitical tensions with imperial Japan in the mid-1900s to project their colonial power over these islands (Grydehøj et al., 2021).

On a localized scale, the United States maintains oppressive power structures through the presence of their military resulting in land dispossession, food dependency, rising cost of living, and environmental pollution (Marsh and Taitano, 2010). By 1958, the federal government had seized ownership of 58% of the land in the name of national security, crippling the agriculture sector and displacing the CHamoru people from their ancestral land (McCracken, 2022). Although some of the land has since been returned, roughly 30% of Guåhan remains occupied by at least 46 permanent military units including three major installations: Naval Base Guam, Anderson Air Force Base, and now Marine Corps Camp Blaz (Tilghman, 2023). The loss of valuable land and continued occupation has meant the CHamoru can no longer live self-sufficiently and their spiritual and cultural connection to the land has been significantly impacted. Guåhan is now a net importer of processed foods that are high in fat, salt, and sugar. This has had a measurable impact on the health of the population, as adult diabetes rates amongst Guamanians are around 15.4%, significantly higher than the US median. With traditional food systems disrupted by land seizures, and environmental degradation, the reliance on imported goods and food cannot be disentangled from Guåhan's position as a militarized colony (Lovell, 2022).

The presence of the military has also created a demand that has pushed the overall cost of living exponentially high. In addition to basic pay, subsidies are offered to “alleviate” the price of living, enabling servicemembers to have higher spending power for everything from rent to groceries, which further compounds inflationary pressures (Lovell, 2022). Subsidies vary depending on rank and the presence of dependents, but most military personnel stationed in Guåhan have access to various programs including the Overseas Cost of Living Allowance (OCOLA), the Overseas Housing Allowance (OHA), and the military commissary and exchange system. The OCOLA is a federally nontaxable allowance for nonhousing goods and services for servicemembers stationed outside the United States where the cost of living is higher than in the continental United States. The OHA is for housing expenses and includes three separate components: rent, utilities/recurring maintenance, and a move-in housing allowance (Defense Travel Management Office, 2024). Further, both military exchanges and commissaries provide products and services accessible to servicemembers that are tax-free and often cheaper than local stores.

With Guåhan's high cost of living, these subsidies motivate many young people to enlist in the military so they can become eligible for subsidies that allow them and their family to continue to afford living on their home island (Lovell, 2022). This contributes to the historically high enlistment rates in Guahan, which are higher than any US state per capita, and consistent with the higher rates of enlistment are the disproportionately high mortality rates (Natividad, 2021). Additionally, the military has spent decades polluting the land, resulting in a number of native plants and animals going extinct, and uninhabitable, toxic areas across the island. Most recently, due to the realignment agreement with Japan, the United States built a Live Fire Training Range Complex on Camp Blaz. In order to build the firing range, 1,200 acres of native limestone forest was destroyed and the operation of the base is threatening endangered species (Camacho et al., 2023). Additionally, an aquifer that supplies 85% of the population with drinking water is threatened by lead contamination from the firing range, further demonstrating the exertion of state power to meet military goals at the expense of local populations and environments (Faa, 2023).

Similar to Guåhan, Okinawa is a strategic military location for the United States. Okinawa makes up roughly 0.6% of Japan's landmass, yet hosts 70% of United States military bases in Japan (Chanlett-Avery et al. 2019). The presence of the United States military has reinforced inequalities through environmental destruction, and through unequal policies. Over the years there have been a number of environmental and human rights violations that have been committed by the State and Military personal, the most well-known incident is the 1995 rape of an Okinawa girl by three US servicemen resulting in the Realignment Agreement that is currently underway (O'Shea, 2019). Military bases have also polluted the environment, putting the health of Okinawans at risk. A significant issue has been the high concentration of PFAS chemicals found in the soil and drinking water, which was first discovered in 2016. PFAS chemicals are used on military bases as fire extinguishing agents. The chemicals—known as “forever chemicals”—are slow to decompose so they accumulate in the environment and human body. PFAS chemicals are strongly linked to a plethora of cancers, developmental disorders, immune dysfunction, and infertility (Mori, 2022). To avoid accountability for human and environmental violations, the United States operates under the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA). The Japan-US SOFA is an international treaty which offers US military personnel certain exemptions from the laws of Japan, and limits intervention of environmental agencies and local governments. This means Japan has little control over how crimes are dealt with when it involves the US military. The SOFA is considered by many as unfair and impinging on Japanese sovereignty, which has resulted in 14 prefectures filing a request to revise the SOFA (Pajon, 2010). Since Okinawa hosts the vast majority of all US military bases in Japan, the consequences of the SOFA are most obvious in Okinawa. Due to the SOFA, any local environmental pollution considered to interfere with military operations won't be disclosed to the public, and the US military can refuse entry to national and local agencies seeking inspection of the bases. As a result, PFAS contamination caused by military bases occurs in combination with the strategy of concealing the use of these chemicals on the bases. This practice has been referred to as security blocking which is the strategy to politically cover up the actual operations of the US military (Kawana, 2021).

Through a series of examples we can see the United States reinforces inequalities through unfair and oppressive political policies. These include maintaining Guåhan's status as an unincorporated territory and operating under the use of the SOFA in Japan. On a localized scale, the US military colonial structure maintains inequalities through land dispossession, environmental pollution, and human rights violations. A focus on state power reinforces the importance of our proposed solution for EJ researchers to put greater emphasis on issues of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. These processes further demonstrate how communities across Okinawa and Guåhan are faced with parallel struggles when confronted with powerful states, and therefore coalition-building is a logical step to address cross-cutting processes of marginalization. In light of these parallel processes of marginalization, communities across militarized islands have continually shown the effectiveness of decentralized but organized activism to challenge colonial power structures and challenge the legitimacy of dominant states (Davis, 2012). We argue that the structures of environmental injustice harming these communities can only be successfully dismantled through challenges to state power.

Pillar 4: Indispensability of populations often treated as expendable

The fourth pillar of critical EJ suggests that marginalized, and often Indigenous groups, are treated as expendable, inferior, and less valuable to society than others. Global powers have historically used military-driven processes in particular to systematically disregard Pacific island communities, rendering them as proportionally insignificant in the larger context of military ventures and geopolitical struggles. Colonial ideologies and masculinist military politics serve as catalysts for oppressing island communities by coding them as expendable. However, critical EJ argues that these expendable communities are instead indispensable, being crucial to the flourishing and enrichment of future societies and environments (Pellow 2016). By viewing these island communities as indispensable we are addressing and recognizing their unique systems of environmental knowledge and sustainability practices. Adopting, acknowledging, and incorporating local epistemologies into research frameworks is one way that this recognition of indispensability can be practiced and realized. Further, by examining the history of militarism and systemic political mistreatment in Okinawa and Guåhan it is possible to trace how Indigenous Pacific island communities and their environments have been marginalized by state powers and viewed as expendable. This critical EJ framework challenges systemic mistreatment by state powers and argues for recognition of island communities as indispensable.

The US military buildup across the Pacific region, particularly in Okinawa and Guåhan, serves as a contemporary manifestation of colonialism that perpetuates oppressive power structures, violates the rights and sovereignty of communities, and incurs systemic environmental injustices. Analyzing several examples employing a critical EJ framework to unravel the complexities surrounding the militarization of these territories reveals the inherent connections between power, marginalization, and environmental ravaging. The Okinawa-Guåhan troop relocation sits atop the shoulders of a robust swath of historical examples revealing the US military's role in perpetuating colonial power dynamics. The history of Okinawa and Guåhan contains a pattern of colonization under Spanish, Japanese, and American rule, where local populations have faced continuous dispossession and exploitation while being treated as expendable to the larger missions of those dominant states (Natividad and Leon-Guerrero, 2010).

In 2010, when the Final Environmental Impact Survey was released by the Department of Defense detailing the military buildup on Guåhan, the plan estimated an influx of roughly 80,000 new temporary or permanent residents to support the process by 2014 with an estimated $1 billion allocated toward construction of bases and required facilities (Department of Defense, 2010). The Department of Defense's initial plan for military buildup, as outlined in the Draft Environmental Impact Survey was deemed by the US Environmental Protection Agency as “environmentally unsatisfactory” and was given the lowest possible rating of EU-3 (U.S. EPA, 2009). The plan failed to recognize the environmentally deleterious effect that the proposed population would have on the island, for example with regard to water supply needs and the overt destruction of 70 acres of live coral in Apra Harbor to create a wharf. In addition to the glaring environmental impact the plan included the “acquisition” of 2,200 land acres on Guåhan, bringing the total federal landholding to 40% and demonstrating the intent of colonial dispossession of Indigenous land. Further, the threat of global conflicts has been used to justify training activities such as amphibious assault and high-speed vehicle training exercises which would both be harmful to the local communities as well as ecosystems (Camacho et al., 2023). The relocation plan ultimately led to an outpouring of community resistance and activism with the proliferation of organizations like We Are Guåhan, Independent Guåhan, and Prutehi Litekyan which have aimed to mobilize and engage the community on issues of sovereignty and cultural preservation (Natividad and Leon-Guerrero, 2010). Notably, the US government continues to leverage their power over non-self-governing islands like Guåhan precisely because they are largely able to circumvent constraints to military buildups in these locations s (Davis, 2011). This works to reinforce military bases as instruments of power projection, leading to the continual marginalization of Indigenous communities (Viernes, 2007).

Island communities have also been treated as expendable and insignificant through human rights violations such as being denied access to environmental necessities like clean air and water. Similarly, recent studies have revealed that veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange is to blame for higher infant mortality rates due to congenital anomalies to infants born 1970–1989 on Guåhan (Noel et al., 2015). This highlights the blatant disregard for the wellbeing of communities by US military powers. Further, the common dumping of toxic waste into waters exemplifies the systemic environmental injustices inflicted upon these islands (Cagurangan, 2017). As a result of the 2016 Valiant Shield exercise on Guåhan and around the CNMI, several tons of toxic material including “heavy metals, motor gasoline, and chemicals that are harmful to humans and marine life” were left behind by the military (Cagurangan, 2017). Of course, the US military's practice of dumping toxic material into the ocean is infamous, and has been ongoing for decades, continually ignoring EPA and international waste management regulations. This pattern reflects the disregard the US military has shown in Okinawa as well with the previously discussed impacts of PFAS chemicals harming land and human life and immense damage done and proposed upon coastal areas through dredging. The history of US military presence, bases, and training activities on Guåhan and Okinawa showcases how Indigenous communities are treated as expendable and insignificant by the US government. The military's imposition on these territories not only disregards the cultural heritage and autonomy of the local populations but also subjects them to various environmental hazards and health risks.

In spite of the pattern of colonial regimes and oppressive military and environmental conduct, in arguing for the indispensability of local communities on Guåhan and Okinawa, a critical EJ perspective emphasizes that building socially and environmentally just and resilient futures requires recognizing the agency and rights of these communities. In Okinawa, this problem concerning recognition of agency and rights can be seen again through the lens of the United States and Japan disregarding local rights by citing the disagreement over the concept of Indigeneity. Alternatively, a framework of indispensability seeking to enable self-determination would recognize local land rights regardless of how those communities discursively define themselves under internationally developed conventions of group identity. Further, these communities possess unique knowledge frameworks that coalition activists and researchers can learn from to contribute to more equitable and environmentally conscious futures prioritizing local self-determination. Local populations and the decolonial, Indigenous knowledge that they possess are indispensable to the preservation of island cultures. Indigenous research frameworks (IRFs) that center upon these knowledge systems are being used at the local and global level to foster transparency and communication (Reano, 2020). Reano describes multiple ways that IRFs can be integrated into research practices. These include holistic approaches emphasizing “interrelatedness” between Indigenous communities and their environments (place-based education), the centering of Indigenous perspectives in research, acknowledging multiple ways of knowing, and acknowledgement of the importance of spirituality to Indigenous research (Reano, 2020). These ways of thinking highlight the indispensability of local populations and foreground their knowledge systems. Learning from these knowledge frameworks, particularly when Pacific Islanders/Indigenous peoples produce research, fosters the longevity of the Pacific island network at large—their very existence challenges the colonial norms and epistemologies that have sought to displace Indigenous populations throughout the Pacific. Additionally, organization efforts and the creation of social and environmental advocacy groups demonstrate hope to protect sovereignty and ecosystems while also requiring the solidarity and allyship of global communities.

The critical EJ pillar concerning expendability and indispensability helps to illuminate how the US military buildup across the Pacific communities on Guåhan and Okinawa serves as an ongoing colonial project of marginalization. The analysis demonstrates how this militarization perpetuates oppressive power structures, human rights violations, and environmental injustices. Recognizing the indispensability of local communities on Guåhan and Okinawa becomes imperative for fostering socially and environmentally just futures that respect and celebrate the autonomy, rights, and contributions of these marginalized populations. When understanding the ways in which communities are treated as expendable and taking the perspective as researchers to treat those communities as indispensable, the importance of acknowledging the dangers of harms being passed from one island community to another becomes clearer. Our focus on indispensability underlines the unique systems of knowledge that island communities hold and calls for the preservation of the richness and wellbeing of these communities as they face destabilization and mistreatment by state powers.

Conclusion

The US’ militarization efforts on Okinawan and Guåhan are deeply rooted in systemic environmental injustice and structural forms of marginalization. The impacts felt in these islands and the communities who live on them are not anomalous but rather are indicative of how many peoples and environments are marginalized by processes of military colonialism throughout the Pacific. By conducting a critical environmental justice analysis of the military relocation from Okinawa to Guåhan, which misleadingly includes relocation within Okinawa as well, we have emphasized the value of thinking through lenses of intersectionality, diverse temporal and spatial scales, state power, and indispensability in the context of military colonial buildups. This critical EJ perspective reveals the immense impacts that power structures like military colonialism have on the marginalization of Indigenous island communities. Further, we have moved beyond a strictly damage-centered framework to articulate ways in which communities can and have gained power through activist movement-building despite limits on their self-determination enforced through formal law and violence.

Through this research our goal has been to demonstrate the importance of multiple solutions across research and activism and develop insight into how they may be operationalized. We have argued that (1) EJ scholars need to think more globally about geopolitics and power because historically this field of research has maintained a greater focus on the local. Our argument here contributes to larger trends of envisioning a global EJ and redefining what counts and EJ across diverse contexts. Further, we emphasize that (2) researchers’ analysis of solutions to injustices must consider whether and how that intervention may pass the burden of harm from one community and place to another, and that (3) analyses also need to account for the procedural and recognition justice aspects of whether there is adequate Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination to make any proposed solution an equitable and enforceable one. Beyond academia we have shown that (4) because environmental justice victories in non-self-governing territories can be vulnerable to reversal or inadvertently spread harm from one location to another, activists and local community members may benefit from stronger coalition building across islands. It is evident that by sharing experiences and collaborating on movements towards action across different marginalized groups, island communities in particular can target the powerful structures that reproduce marginalization across entire regions like the Pacific and generate collective power to exert greater local sovereignty.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the other members of the Critical Pacific Islands Studies Collective, Nathan Tilton and Kayla Cabrera, for their invaluable help in refining this work. We also thank Dr Clancy Wilmott at University of California, Berkeley for her support. Finally, we thank countless activists and scholars based in the Marianas for their work that we align with through this project.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix Research Teams Fund and The Green Initiative Fund.

ORCID iD

Kieren Rudge

Author Biographies

Kieren Rudge is a PhD student in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management at UC Berkeley and a cofounder of the Critical Pacific Islands Studies Collective. Their research focuses on environmental justice, climate change adaptation, and militarization primarily within the context of U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. Their work is informed by their positionality as a Singaporean American.

Sophia Perez is a Chamorro filmmaker, PhD student in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley, and a co-founder of the Critical Pacific Islands Studies Collective. Her research focuses on ongoing imperialism and militarization in the Pacific, particularly the U.S. military presence in the Marianas.

Georgia Cutter is a recent graduate of the Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley and an Island Justice Fellow at the Critical Pacific Islands Studies Collective. Her research interests focus on the dynamics of state power, U.S. militarization, and the ongoing struggles for Indigenous rights. With Kanaka Maoli roots on her father's side, her work is driven by a commitment to reconnect with and learn about the Hawaiian Kingdom and advocate for the broader Oceania community.

Viv Kammerer is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley with B.A.s in Art History, Ancient Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Film & Media. They are primarily interested in education and using art and film to research climate justice, colonialism, and US imperialism. They are white, Filipino and Kanaka with roots in Ewa Beach, Oahu, Kingdom of Hawaii.

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