Nago, Japan (dpa) – The United States and Japan agreed in 1996 to build a US military base in this sparsely populated area on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.
After that, many officials and politicians visited this deserted fishing village to promote the plan, promising to pump more public money into the region. Anti-base activists and environmentalists also visited to oppose it.
The two countries wanted a new base to replace US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, located in the middle of residential areas in central Okinawa. About 20 per cent of the island, located 1,600 kilometres south-west of Tokyo, is devoted to US military facilities.
For more than 13 years, nothing materialized. But the Japanese government is likely to announce another plan by the end of this month, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s self-imposed deadline.
At the start of her Asian tour, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton briefly stopped by Tokyo Friday to meet with Hatoyama and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.
Clinton and Okada said they agreed that the US and Japan would work together to settle the thorny issue of a new US base by the end of May.
The US and Japan “seek an arrangement that is operationally viable and politically sustainable,” she told a news conference in Tokyo.
But local residents, whether they are for or against the new base, say they are sick of the subject.
“We are exhausted,” says Etsuko Urashima, an author and resident who has opposed a new US base. “The US and Japan behave here as if nobody lived on this island.”
Not all locals are against the base. “We need to think about jobs,” says one resident who did not want to be named. “Since my husband has long worked at a US base, all of our children were able to graduate from university. Without it, they could not have.”
But most Okinawans have long been critical of the US military’s presence on the island and crimes committed by US troops. The 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl by three US servicemen incurred the wrath of the islanders. To ease the anger, the US and Japan decided in 1996 to close Air Station Futenma.
In exchange for the closure, the US wanted a replacement facility, which the Japanese government tried to build in Nago in northern Okinawa.
Then-prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto repeatedly promised that the government would not pursue the plan against the wishes of residents.
Nago citizens rejected the plan in a hard-fought, non-binding referendum in 1997. The central government, however, exerted enormous pressure on local leaders to accept it. Locals and environmental groups continued to resist the move until it faltered.
Before last year’s general election, then-opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) leader Hatoyama promised to move the proposed facility out of Okinawa or even abroad.
The DPJ won a landslide victory, ending more than a half-century of almost uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party. After taking power, Hatoyama told the US he wanted to review a 2006 accord between the US and Japan that includes construction of the air facility at US Camp Schwab in Nago.
Now Hatoyama has backpedalled, asking Okinawa to accept the proposed replacement for Futenma, which was built in 1945.
“As he said, he had a plan in mind; we had some expectations,” says Hiroshi Ashitomi, a leader of an anti-base local civic group. “After all, Hatoyama is another Japanese politician from an affluent family. People like him could hardly understand ordinary people’s lives.”
While Japanese and US government officials say the base is necessary for the region’s security, many Okinawans see it differently.
“The bottom line is the US military can get a new base free of charge in exchange for the rapidly ageing Futenma,” former Okinawa governor Masahide Ota says. “That is because Japan will shoulder all the costs.”
On April 25, 90,000 people demonstrated on Okinawa, urging the government to move the proposed facility off the island as Hatoyama had promised.
“Against the backdrop of Okinawans’ voices, Hatoyama should negotiate with the US instead of caving in,” Ashitomi says. “Was he appointed by the US government?”
Even after the DPJ took power, the Japanese government remains insensitive to Okinawans, Ota charges. “But there are certainly some Americans who do care about locals’ sentiment,” he adds.
Indeed, some American experts on US-Japan relations now call for the proposed base to be moved off the island.
“It is time to recognize the need for Tokyo and Washington to make some very hard choices,” says Sheila A Smith, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “Okinawa should not be asked to bear the full burden of the US-Japan alliance, and Japan’s prime minister will need to move operations of US forces off-island.”
Takehiko Kambayashi 