Idyllic beach resorts jostle for space with US military bases on Japan’s subtropical island of Okinawa, at the center of a feud that may cast a shadow over US President Barack Obama’s visit to Japan next week.
Nowhere is the contrast between the US troop presence and the laid-back local culture more jarring than in Ginowan. Seen from a hilltop, the city’s low-rise concrete buildings, including schools and hospitals, huddle around the perimeter of the Futenma US Marine air base, a dispute over which is straining the 50-year-old security alliance between Tokyo and Washington.
Many of Ginowan’s nearly 90,000 residents welcome a plan to relocate the base, especially after safety fears rekindled by a 2004 helicopter crash in the city added to irritation over noise, but others are ambivalent.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“I want to get rid of it,” said Toshio Arakaki, 52, whose three children go to a primary school a stone’s throw from the base.
“If they are going to replace it, they should find somewhere not just outside Okinawa, but outside Japan. Okinawa has had enough,” he said during a break from his job delivering kerosene.
Washington and Tokyo agreed in 2006 to close the base and move it to the coastal town of Henoko, in a less populated part of the island, as part of a reorganization that would involve up to 8,000 Marines being shifted to the US territory of Guam.
But Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who has vowed to seek a more equal relationship with the US, says he wants more time to review the relocation plan, which is seen by many as damaging to the environment.
“Henoko is a very beautiful place, but I think it’s the best option,” said a 56-year-old woman working in a dry-cleaning store, who gave only her family name of Oshiro. “At least there’s less danger of people being hurt.”
About 1,600km southwest of Tokyo, Okinawa plays host to about half the 47,000 US troops based in Japan, despite making up only 0.6 percent of the country’s land mass, a historical legacy that many see as an unfair burden.
The US military is an integral part of Japan’s security, but it is also key to Okinawa’s economy. That’s a major factor in Japan’s poorest region, where unemployment runs at 7.7 percent, well above the national average of 5.3 percent.
Okinawa is otherwise mainly reliant on the influx of nearly 6 million tourists a year, attracted by white sandy beaches, clear seas and a unique culture that owes much to China.
“There are people who make a living from renting out land for the base,” said the owner of a barber shop in an almost deserted Ginowan shopping street, who declined to give his name, adding he was concerned about the economic effects of closing bases.
“Many of them are elderly. Even if they got their land back, it’s not as though they could farm it,” he said.
Central government subsidies meant to make up for the burden of hosting the bases also provide construction jobs.
Although the island remained under US control after World War II until its return to Japan in 1972, many Okinawans say they bear no ill will toward Americans, whatever their feelings about Futenma.
“We enjoy mixing with the Americans and learning about a different culture,” said 36-year-old Atsuko Takeshika, who works in a Ginowan clothing store and lives close to the base, whose noise she says is irritating.
Takeshika said past fears of crime committed by servicemen had faded with the introduction of curfews for the troops.
“If we could work out a way to co-exist, that would be fine,” she said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS