Imagine building a set of twin military runways out into a pristine bay among the beautiful coral reefs and endangered sea mammals (dugong). Imagine 3.5 million 10-ton dump truck loads of landfill being dumped into the bay to build the runways. Imagine the howls of protests if this was being done here in Maine.

This story is real, and the plan is to do this on Okinawa at Oura Bay in order to build a new US Marine airfield. Few in America have heard about this calamity, but for more than 450 days people in Okinawa have been protesting by blocking the gates of a U.S. Marine base called Camp Schwab.

In early December, I co-led a national Veterans For Peace (VFP) delegation to Jeju Island, South Korea where a new Navy base is being built that will port US warships — including the Aegis destroyers built at BIW. Twelve members of VFP went on the trip — three of us from Maine. For the first week we sat with Gangjeong villagers on Jeju Island blocking the construction gate only to be picked up and carried out of the way by police several times each day.

During the second week of the trip our VFP delegation traveled to Okinawa where the U.S. today has 30 bases. One out of every four Okinawans was killed during the American invasion of the island in 1945. We’ve had bases there ever since. At two museums we visited I was astonished to see that since 1953 there have been regular protests against our bases.

On three occasions we went to the gates of Camp Schwab in order to join the daily human blockades. Most of the people being dragged off by Japanese police for sitting in the road were senior citizens. The women were particularly amazing as they held on to one another and cried aloud demanding that this environmental catastrophe be stopped.

The VFP delegation met with the mayors of two Okinawan cities that will be directly impacted by the new Marine airfield. One evening we were invited to attend an event inside a huge auditorium that drew 1,300 people. At this convocation Okinawan Gov. Takeshi Onaga and other leading politicians spoke out in opposition to the construction of the controversial runway. Gov. Onaga has pulled the airfield construction permit, but the right-wing government in Tokyo, which controls Okinawa, overruled him under the clear direction of U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy (she has repeatedly told the Okinawan people to get over it). Gov. Onaga has gone to the Japanese Supreme Court seeking a ruling that respects their local autonomy. In fact, 80 percent of the people of Okinawa oppose the new Marine airfield.

As the Obama administration “pivots” 60 percent of U.S. military forces into the Asia-Pacific region in order to “control” China, people in Okinawa and South Korea understand they are key targets if and when a war breaks out between Washington and Beijing.

Not only is a looming war causing such active resistance today, it is the U.S.’s utter disregard for local sovereignty and democracy that inflames people against Washington. The bases being built on Jeju Island and in Okinawa are environmental nightmares. The people are watching their life source — the ocean where their food and livelihood comes from — being torn apart to satisfy the Pentagon’s demand for “one more base.”

When our VFP delegation left both of these islands the people asked us the same questions: What are you going to do when you go home? When are the American people going to stand up and stop this madness that is killing our environment, our culture, and our peaceful way of life?

On Feb. 7, PeaceWorks will host my talk about these trips at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick at 4 p.m. The public is invited.

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Bruce K. Gagnon lives in Bath and is a member of PeaceWorks and Veterans For Peace.