Japan’s government could fall on fate of Marine base essential to US, unwanted by Okinawans

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US military base impasse could topple Japan leader

TOKYO — It is possibly the most controversial U.S. military facility in the world after the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Local residents like to call it the world’s most dangerous base. An impasse over its future could bring down the government of a key U.S. ally.

But this hotspot isn’t in Kyrgyzstan, or Afghanistan.

It’s an airstrip on the sleepy, semitropical tourist haven of Okinawa that hasn’t directly been involved in a conflict since the Japanese surrender in 1945 ended World War II. For decades, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma has instead been a political quagmire — and now D-Day appears to be looming.

Haunted by a campaign pledge to relocate the base, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has vowed to settle the issue — or at least form a coherent set of proposals — by the end of this month. Polls suggest he will be under heavy pressure to resign, after barely nine months in office, if he fails to do so.

The debate has grown so convoluted and the pressure to find a compromise so intense that Hatoyama is suggesting a replacement airstrip be built on raised pilings so as not to destroy marine life below — an expensive, high-tech option that experts doubt would work and which has so far failed to appease many Okinawans.

“It is a terrible idea,” said Masaaki Gabe, a professor of international relations at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa’s most prestigious college. “It’s no better than the previous plan. It won’t persuade Okinawans, and I don’t think it will be welcomed by Washington, either.”

So far, it hasn’t been — working-level talks in Washington this week ended in discord.

The base, home to about 2,000 U.S. Marines, has long symbolized Okinawan concerns over safety, crime and economic development. But efforts to remove it have shaken support for America’s most important alliance in Asia, a region where — with China ascending and North Korea unstable — Washington badly needs reliable partners.

All sides agree in theory that the base, a noisy helicopter and transport-plane hub located in a crowded city, should be closed.

An agreement to that effect was made in 1996, following uproar over the brutal rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The U.S. also has agreed to move about 8,600 Marines from other Okinawa units to the tiny Pacific territory of Guam by 2014.

But the devil is in the details.

Washington is demanding Futenma’s replacement be built nearby. But suggested alternate sites have fiercely protested having the base moved into their backyard and, with Tokyo unwilling to rebuff its most important ally, the impasse has only festered.

Facing key elections in July, Hatoyama is scrambling to find a consensus by his self-imposed deadline of the end of the month. But his public support ratings have plummeted to the 20 percent level. Polls say many voters think he should step down if he can’t demonstrate more leadership, and one of his coalition partners has said it may have to quit the government if Okinawa’s concerns are not fully addressed.

Though the Obama administration has largely stayed out of the fray, the process has been a humiliating initiation for Hatoyama.

He ousted Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party last September with promises to forge a more equal relationship with Washington. As part of that pledge, he said Futenma’s operations should be moved off Okinawa, where more than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan are stationed.

Hatoyama recently backed down, painfully apologizing to Okinawa during a trip there for the “nuisance” the base causes. At the same time, he said there was no feasible alternative to building the new landing strip farther to the north in the town of Nago.

“The Hatoyama government is as docile a satellite of the U.S. as the LDP ever thought of being,” said Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a private think tank based in San Francisco. “The U.S. is certainly the more culpable partner in simply refusing to negotiate, but the Japanese government is at fault in never standing up to us.”

Johnson said Washington has stood firm because it is afraid that agreeing to close the base outright could lead to a flood of demands to close more. The U.S. has more than 100 bases and facilities — including depots and ports — across Japan.

The Pentagon operates more than 700 overseas bases worldwide.

“We had to be kicked out of the Philippines and Ecuador, and we paid through the nose to remain in Kyrgyzstan, probably including bribes to the former government there that has just been overthrown,” Johnson said.

U.S. officials say a replacement for the Futenma base is essential because its air assets support the infantry units that will remain on Okinawa. They also argue that Okinawa — site of one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War II — is a key to Washington’s strategy in the Pacific because of its proximity to China, Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.

“Is the Marine presence necessary in Okinawa? In terms of geostrategic location, the answer is a definite yes,” said Mike Green, Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Okinawa is only a few days’ sailing time and only a few hours’ flight time from the major hotspots in the Western Pacific. Time matters in a crisis.”

But that argument is drowned out in Japan’s public debate.

Instead, a helicopter crash in 2004 just outside the base’s gates on a university campus is used to justify claims the heavily populated area around Futenma is unsafe, though no one died in that accident. Japanese media frequently show images of schoolchildren playing soccer as C-130 transport planes buzz overhead, or of the razorwire fences and “keep out” signs that ring the airstrip.

Last month, 90,000 Okinawans protested the base and the relocation plan — the biggest demonstration against the base ever. This weekend, to mark the 1972 reversion of Okinawa from U.S. to Japanese administration, a human chain around Futenma is planned.

Organizers say they expect more than 10,000 people.

Weston Konishi, a Japan expert with the Washington-based Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, said Hatoyama’s dithering has allowed opposition to the security alliance to swell.

“The political leadership in Tokyo has not adequately counterbalanced that sentiment,” he said. “The U.S. forces are increasingly seen as both unnecessary and bothersome to local communities that host them.”