LAT: Farmers wage turf battle with Japan air force
Reporting from Hyakuri, Japan - Crouched in his lush green rice fields on this agricultural plain northeast of Tokyo, Masaru Umezawa works the land as his father and grandfather did before him. On a humid late-summer afternoon, the only sound is the buzzing of the cicadas from a nearby thicket of trees. Then it starts -- slowly at first, and building in intensity until it reaches a deafening pitch: the roar of a shiny supersonic jet lifting off the runway at the Japanese military's Hyakuri Airfield. Nearly 100 times a day, the jets take off and land, performing training maneuvers overhead and creating a racket that makes it impossible for the stocky farmer and his family to watch television or talk on the telephone, let alone hear themselves think. "It's probably why my wife and I have stayed married so long," he said. "When we fight, we can't hear what the other is yelling"...more...
