JAPANESE FARMERS HALT LITTLE JOHN ROCKET TESTS
U.S. troops are finding it harder to get away with firing practice missiles in Japan. In fact, on October 7 the U.S.Army command bowed to popular pressure and made a significant concession,
Some 2,000 farmers and other local residents had gathered amid drizzle and fog at the missile impact area in the Higashifuji firing range (eastern foothills of Mt. Fuji) to protest scheduled firings of Little John rockets. They had driven thirty bulldozers onto the range to make it more difficult for police to dislodge them.
As the demonstrators waited courageously for the police to open their expected attack, Raizo Matsuno, director of the Defense Agency, met with Lt.Gen.Maurice A, Preston and officially asked him to stop the firing practice for the time being. The representative of the Pentagon acceded,
When the news came of the postponement, cries of "Banzail" went up from the farmers. .
Meanwhile in another impact area, Kitafuji (northern Fuji), about 500 women broke through police lines to stage a demonstration
against the missile firings. One of them suffered a broken shoulder bone as the crowd rushed onto the practice range. A number of others suffered minor injuries.
Mayor Shunichi Katsumata of Gotemba, in Shizuoka prefecture where residents are spearheading the opposition, said that people were opposed to the firing of the rockets because they were frightened at the thought of nuclear warheads which can be attached to the Little Johns,
On October 9 the Defense Agency of the Japanese government announced that it would fire rockets of its own on the same firing range on November 25 and 26. Japanese officials claim that the rockets are incapable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Despite this claim, farmers and other residents of the range are expected to protest against the firings exactly as they did in the case of the American rockets.
On October 10, representatives of a local labor federation at Mito handed U.S. authorities a written protest against the accidental shelling of farm houses in Katsuta September 23,
The note declared that it was “highly regrettable that the U.S.Forces should continue to cause accidents involving erroneous firing despite frequent protests and petitions."
LUIS DE LA PUENTE