Japanese and American activists staged a rally Monday in front of the White House calling for a halt to landfill work for building a U.S. base off Japan's Okinawa Prefecture.
About 30 activists gathered after a petition urging U.S. President Donald Trump to halt the work has accumulated more than 195,000 signatures in 30 days -- well over the 100,000 threshold which requires the White House to make a response.
"We're definitely expecting some kind of response. Of course, they don't guarantee what type of response we'll get," Kajiwara said. "Even if we don't get a response that we're looking for, we're not going to give up and we're going to keep on trying."
The White House is supposed to respond within 60 days to any petition that gathers 100,000 signatures within 30 days of its starting date.
About 70 percent of U.S. military facilities in Japan are located in Okinawa Prefecture, which accounts for only 0.6 percent of the total land area of the country.
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