| Relocation of US military base will damage Okinawa's ecology The United States has met Japanese demands for the relocation of the American Futema helicopter base in Okinawa. This was announced by Japanese Defense Minister Yoshinori Ono after yesterday's talks in Tokyo with US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Lawless. In early October, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld pointedly canceled a visit to Japan due to disagreements on this issue. Now the problem can be finally resolved during a meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and US President George W. Bush in Kyoto on November 16.
However, as Foreign Minister Nobutaka Matimura told the Japanese Parliament yesterday, at the negotiations between the heads of the military and diplomatic departments of the two countries in Washington on October 29, only an interim agreement will probably be signed. The Futema base, in a densely populated area in southwestern Okinawa, became a thorn in the side of the prefectural administration and public after the rape of a 12-year-old Japanese schoolgirl by three American soldiers in 1995. Already in 1996, the United States agreed in principle to close this facility, although it serves as a landing pad for an entire Marine division. In subsequent years, Okinawans were alarmed by new rapes and American helicopters falling on their heads, but Washington and Tokyo still could not agree on where to move the base.
It has now been decided that the helicopter base will move to northwest Okinawa closer to the US naval base Camp Schwab. It will have to be expanded, for which the Japanese authorities are offering land plots that have already been reclaimed from the sea. The Americans insist on very expensive work to drain a new section of shallow water. The head of the Center for Japanese Studies at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Viktor Pavlyatenko, explained to Vremya Novostey that “unlike, say, Europe, where American bases are on the balance sheet of the United States, the main financial burden for the maintenance of US military facilities in Japan is borne by the Japanese themselves.”
The shallow waters of Okinawa, which the Pentagon liked, are relict coral reefs unique to Japan with tropical flora and fauna listed in all the Red Books. It is home to dugongs, endangered large mammals also called sea cows. Japanese environmentalists announced that they would raise up the entire nation and lay down their own heads, but they would not allow Americans onto the reefs.
“The planned relocation of the base is in many ways just a symbol, but it is also a response to the mass movement for the liberation of Japan from American bases,” says Viktor Pavlyatenko. In Okinawa Prefecture, this movement is led by Governor Keiichi Inamine, a politician of a very obstinate disposition, who is feared even in Tokyo. Premier Koizumi actually gave him carte blanche to negotiate with the Americans. They scare Inamine with North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the growth of Chinese military power. The governor nods his head in understanding... and demands that the military load on his domain be eased. It now houses approximately half of the 50,000-strong US contingent in Japan. Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN |
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