Maehara Social Street

In the summer of 2002, I was in Okinawa prefecture, Japan. When I was taking a bus, I saw impressive scene. Low glide militarily plane was flew over the dense populated residential area of Ginowan city. It's nearby Futenma US air base.
Coincidentally, I found the gate which was written "Maehara Social Street" when I look out through the window. I pressed the stop request button without any moment. I was so attracted by the name of "Social Street"

When I walked back to the gate where I had just passed by, a man talked to me.
"Hey, wata ya doin' with hangin' the camera, uh? You'll have a trouble with taking picture in such place. You wanna photo a woman? You come here for photographing a woman, uh?"
I couldn't hear it well. Because air plane was flying over making loud noise. But I heard something like that.
"Ah ... well ... I think so"
I responded to him although I could not make sense what he was saying exactly.

However I understood what he had said when I went thorough the gate of Maehara Social Street. It's a red light (prostituting) area. The scenery of the street was quite impressive to me. Side of the street was long flat house which was divided into the compartments. Each compartment has a woman. They sat on the stool crossing their legs. They looked out the street smoking cigarette. It's hot and sticky afternoon of Okinawa. Day light of summer was still left on the street. Then I looked up the sky. I saw the gigantic figure of military plane every couple of minutes.

The scenery looked like the very old days. Of course, I didn't know the post WWII period. But the scenery of Maehara, some how, made me imagine that it must be like this.
To be honest, I got shock for seeing the street. I thought I had seen those kind of red light districts all over the world so far. But I was surprised with existing such area in today's Japan. Mehara looked like even resisting the passage of time.

Days passed by. Few years ago, I read the article about Maehara on news paper. It said " Okinawa's dishonored heritage Maehara Social Street , which has grown with US military base after WWII, was strictly inspected for illegal prostitution by the police dept. of Okinawa" Maybe the quarter has been changed now.
However I think the cross of "Dishonored Heritage" was too heavy for the people's lives in such a tiny quarter. Okinawa has a much bigger dishonored heritage. Apparently, It's US military bases which occupies 20% of Okinawa main Island.

Now, the one of dishonored heritages which is nearby the Maehara Social Street, Futenma, is moving out. But Japanese government cannot get agreement for acceptance from any proposed community. Of course, everyone knows the reason.