The United States has already agreed to move the Futenma Air Base out of the crowded urban center of Ginowan but the proposed new location has also been controversial.

"We want the base to be relocated overseas," Ginowan Mayor Yoichi Iha, who took part in the protest, was quoted as saying by Kyodo News, which quoted organizers putting turnout at 24,000 people.

The demonstration was held on the anniversary of the 1972 handover of Okinawa to Japan. It was captured by the United States during one of World War II's bloodiest battles.

Okinawa, which accounts for less than one percent of Japan's land mass, remains the base of 65 percent of the 40,500 US troops in the country with other communities reluctant to host them.

In 1996 US forces and the Japanese government agreed to move the Futenma air station from Ginowan to reclaimed land on the ocean off the quiet Okinawan fishing town of Henoko.

Activists and fishermen have held a dawn-to-dusk sit-in for more than a year in Henoko to oppose moving the base there. Greenpeace supports the protests as the area is a crucial feeding ground for the dugong, an endangered mammal also known as a sea cow.

The Ginowan mayor said he opposed the air base simply shifting to Okinawa and wanted it out of Japan.

The United States, which has a security alliance with officially pacifist Japan, has stressed it is sensitive to local sentiment and will move the base to a new location if requested.

Okinawa has frequently seen protests such as the one Sunday. Some of the largest demonstrations took place in 1995 after three US Marines gang-raped a 12-year-old girl and again last year when a US helicopter crashed into a university campus near the Futenma air base.

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