JAPANESE POLICE dragged away elderly protesters yesterday as work resumed on a new US military base on the southern island of Okinawa.

Some 300 demonstrators, mostly pensioners, held a sit-in protest at the entrance to the site to call for the base to be moved off the island entirely. Others gathered offshore in canoes.

Tokyo restarted land reclamation work at Honoko Bay despite the objections of Okinawa prefecture residents and Governor Takeshi Onaga.

“It’s totally dictatorial,” Mr Onaga told reporters. “I will firmly fight against this.”

One elderly woman shouted: “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting citizens?” as police hauled her off.

Okinawa prefectural assembly member Katsuhiro Yoshida yelled at officers: “Get your hands off the old woman.”

He asked: “Don’t the people of Okinawa have sovereignty? This reminds me of the scenes of rioting against the US military before Okinawa was returned to Japan.” Following Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, Okinawa remained under US administration until 1972.

“Now we are facing off against our own government,” Mr Yoshida lamented. “It is so contemptible.”

Greenpeace said its ship Rainbow Warrior III would arrive in Okinawa this weekend to support the protests.

The current base, US Marine Air Station Futenma, is located in the city of Ginowan, six miles from the provincial capital Naha.

Okinawans are concerned about the safety of flights using the airfield, especially since the US announced the deployment of the accident-prone MV-22 tiltrotor aircraft to the base.

But residents have also had to endure decades of abusive and criminal behaviour from US service personnel stationed on the island, including several rapes and murders of women and children.

Okinawa houses more than half of the 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan and bases occupy nearly a fifth of the land on the main island.

Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga left yesterday for Guam, where he was due to tour alternative sites for US bases.

Mr Suga and other ministers have said that they are counting on the Okinawan people’s “understanding” of the relocation plan.