By official counts (that invariably vary), Okinawa has more than 32 U.S. military bases or installations and nearly 50 restricted air and marine sites designated for military training. Japan's poorest and smallest prefecture shoulders 75 percent of all the U.S. bases in the country. Almost 20 percent of the islands of Okinawa is held by the U.S. military. Okinawa, which makes up less than 1 percent of Japan, is home to around 24,000 U.S. military personnel -- about half of all those in Japan. Most people in Okinawa have long been opposed to the high concentration of military bases for many reasons, chief among them: crime (especially rape and sexual assault), robberies, traffic accidents, military crashes, noise, widespread severe environmental contamination, and a general opposition to being used by Tokyo to bear the burden of Japan's military pursuits. Many Okinawans, especially older generations, also resent the role their home is forced to play as a launching point for U.S. wars.

This month marks 70 years since the battle of Okinawa in which over 120,000 people -- between a quarter and one-third of the population at the time, perished in enormous bloodshed that killed many Japanese and Americans, as well. Okinawans, especially the older people, know all too well the cost of war -- particularly when it is someone else's war fought on your land. Now, after decades of protests and a sense that they've become second-class citizens in their own islands, Okinawans are standing firm, brave and strong, in the face of overwhelming military and police force. The governments in Tokyo and Washington are largely in agreement about relocating the long-disputed U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in the densely populated city of Ginowan to a less crowded area at Cape Henoko near Nago city in the northeast of the island.

A clash between Japan's central government and Okinawa island, host to the bulk of U.S. troops in Japan, deepened on Monday when the southern island's governor ordered a halt to underwater work at the site of a planned relocation of a U.S. Marine base. PM Shinzo Abe's government and Okinawa have been on a collision course since anti-base conservative Takeshi Onaga was elected governor last November and ruling party candidates were trounced in a December general election. The US(a) and Japan agreed in 1996 to close the Futenma Marines air base, located in a populous part of the island. But plans for a replacement stalled in the face of opposition from residents, many of whom associate the bases with noise, pollution and crime and resent bearing what they see as an unfair burden for the U.S.-Japan security alliance.

Okinawa, which was not returned to Japanese sovereignty until 27 years after Tokyo's defeat in World War Two, still hosts nearly 75 percent of the U.S. military presence in Japan, accounting for 18 percent of its land area.

"We're really interested in seeing how the rest of the UK and the international community react if Scotland does vote for independence," said Masaki Tomochi, a professor of economics at Okinawa International University and a leading figure in the independence movement. "Scotland has every right to be independent and to take decisions about its own future. That's what people all over the world want, including the people of Okinawa." Tomochi and his colleagues, along with a reporter from the Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper, will tour Scotland meeting voters, academics and Scottish National party officials. Their group has posted a condensed Japanese version of the SNP's Scotland's Future manifesto on its website.

Activists from Japanese island hope growing anger over a controversial US military base will boost support for making the southern Japanese island an independent nation.