As US frets over China and North Korea, Okinawa looks stuck with its military base
- New Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki is heading to the US hoping for a rethink of plans to relocate troops to an expanded base in his prefecture
- Worried about an expansionist Beijing and an unpredictable Pyongyang, America is likely to listen nicely – and ignore him
New Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki will depart for a series of meetings in the United States on Monday apparently confident he can persuade politicians and government officials to abandon plans to relocate US troops and equipment to an expanded military base on the north-east coast of his prefecture.
Analysts said officials in Washington would listen politely to the governor – elected in a landslide vote in September that he insists reflects the opposition to the US military presence – and then largely ignore him. Geopolitical concerns in northeast Asia, revolving around an increasingly expansionist China and the regime in North Korea that remains deeply unpredictable, make the US military presence in Okinawa too important to the governments in both Washington and Tokyo.
About half the 54,000 US troops in Japan are based in Okinawa, which is also home to the largest US Air Force base in the region. Tokyo and Washington have agreed to close the US Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station, in a heavily populated area in the central part of Okinawa Island, and move tens of thousands of personnel and their equipment to Camp Schwab, a Marine Corps base in the more remote northeast of the island where work is under way to reclaim an offshore area for new runways and associated facilities.
The US presence in Okinawa has been unpopular since the end of the second world war, when local residents’ land was expropriated for military facilities and has remained in US hands since. The military is also blamed for noise, pollution and damage to the environment, while criminal acts by members of the military invariably make the headlines – particularly cases such as murder or sex crimes.
The best outcome Tamaki might secure, the analysts said, would be a commitment from the US and the central government in Tokyo to shift some of the US military personnel to other parts of Japan or some of the outlying islands of Okinawa Prefecture. The governor will be aware, however, the residents who elected him will be disappointed in any deal that does not reduce the number of US troops in the prefecture.