Referendum happens more often in Western culture than you think, here in Australia, referendum range from something functional like legalise marijuana or giving a permanent seat to the indigenous people in the Parliament to something symbolic like Australia going Republic or daylight saving time......
Referendum is used to settle stuff with population approval, that does not mean it have an issue to begin with.
On the other hand, even if this is considering an issue, you still need to flip those people into going into your camp, which as I ask, and no one can still answer, as to how or who to flip, and the reason I said you can't flip average person not becuase they are smart, but rather they are useless, I mean, there are over 2 millions okinawan, for you to succeed, your "NGO" need to at least flip half of those people, and on average you pump around $50,000-$100,000 to lobby for a single person in a third world country, where they earn probably 10 times less to show interest, you do the maths on an Okinawan earn an average of $50,000 a year.
I mean, even if you have a "Tucker Carlson" type person you can sway in Okinawa, you still need idiots to buy into what he said, again, it's not that easy.