Hundreds of demonstrators opposed to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq chanted outside the gates of a U.S. Marine base in Okinawa to protest the arrival Sunday of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
About 300 demonstrators, some holding placards reading "Don't attack Iraq!" and "Rumsfeld go home!" called for the United States to withdraw from Iraq as they stood outside Camp S. D. Butler on Okinawa, where the defense secretary was scheduled to lunch with troops.
"Rumsfeld was a proponent of going into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction. But the U.S. attack cost the lives of many Iraqi people," said Daiichi Sonoyama, head of a group of student protesters from two Okinawa universities. "We are here to criticize the armed occupation."