Dan (not his real name) is a member of the US Marine Corps. He's based in Camp Foster, a military base near to Futenma, on Okinawa Island.

The Japanese military is pretty limited and the country has quite a peaceful mindset today. In the US, every police officer has a gun. Here, there's one gun for a whole unit, and it's another one that has the pepper spray. So I think we come in quite useful to them. For example, we're particularly watchful of what's going on in North Korea.

It has to be said that Okinawa Island is a key spot for the US in the Pacific zone. Closing bases here would mean moving 30,000 to 40,000 people; it's a big task; not something you can do overnight. But it's true we don't do much here. We do daily training exercises and often go off to train in Australia, Thailand etc., My work is mainly a computer job.

I went along to the demonstration and spoke to some of the locals. They told me that what bothers them most is the noise of the fighter planes taking off and landing. Another big issue, which I do understand, is that the base takes up a massive amount of space, leaving the town overcrowded.

The government talked about moving the base to Henoko in the north of the island, but the residents opposed the idea because the suggested spot was on the coast next to where dugongs live [mammals related to the manatee whose population is decreasing].

On the whole, the island is divided about the base. Some say that for economic reasons it's better that we stay because we bring a lot of money to the area [40,000 Americans - soldiers and their families - live on the island]. But others want us to go because they think we're monsters. It's true that a few of us have done some stupid things [Close the Base has a list of accidents and criminals cases on its website]. There are some who think we're all drunks who go around stabbing taxi drivers.

But the ones who do are a minority. I walk around outside the base every day and I've never met anyway who's told me to ‘go home'. The press reported that tens of thousands of people came to demonstrate on May 1, but I don't think there were any more than six or seven thousand."