The governor of the Japanese island of Okinawa has handed a petition to the US defence secretary, urging him to scale down American military bases there.
Donald Rumsfeld, who is on an East Asia tour, said the US was reviewing its worldwide military presence.
Governor Keiishi Inamine said Okinawa had been “shouldering the excessive burden of US bases over long years”.
There has been bitter opposition to the US military in Okinawa since US Marines raped a schoolgirl there in 1995.
US forces in Okinawa include more than 17,000 Marines who are in a position, if necessary, to bolster the US military presence in South Korea.
The demands presented by Mr Inamine included a call for a reduction in aircraft noise and for a ban on the low-frequency sonar used by the US Navy in the seas around Japan.
Several hundred protesters held a rally outside Camp Foster in southern Okinawa on Sunday, shouting: “We protest the author of the war” - a reference to the conflict in Iraq.
The japanese to the Koreans ask the Americans time and time again to go home and leave them alone.
But the Americans being a colonial nation just don’t listen. And if iraq is anything to go buy it seems the only language the Americans listen to is the language of the Gun!