Okinawans outraged after Japanese leader says US base won’t be moved off island after all

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Japan PM apologizes as US base stays on Okinawa

TOKYO — Okinawans were outraged Sunday that Japan’s prime minister reneged on his campaign pledge to move a U.S. military base off their island, a decision that upholds a longstanding agreement with Washington.

Protesters held signs plastered with the Japanese character for “anger” as Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama visited the Okinawa prefectural (state) office. His broken promise over Okinawa deepens political confusion just weeks ahead of nationwide elections.

The southern semitropical island is important to the U.S. military because it is near China, Taiwan and the Korean peninsula, where tensions have risen sharply after North Korea was blamed last week for the sinking of a South Korean warship.

The people of Okinawa have long complained about the noise, jet-crash dangers and crime worries that come from housing more than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan, stationed under the bilateral defense alliance.

The U.S. and Japan agreed in 2006 to move the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station to a less crowded part of Okinawa, and Washington has insisted that Japan hold to the deal. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday on a visit to Tokyo that Japan and the U.S. were seeking to resolve the dispute by the end of May — a deadline set by Hatoyama.

On his Okinawa visit, the prime minister apologized for failing to make good on his promise to move the U.S. air base off the island, perhaps even out of Japan.

“I apologize from the bottom of my heart for the confusion that I have caused the people of Okinawa,” he said.

Prefectural chief Hirokazu Nakaima said Hatoyama had raised the residents’ hopes.

“The way he has dashed our hopes is such a disappointment. We need a solution to be worked out,” he said.

His concession restores the plan chiseled by the former governing party, or one similar to it: an Okinawa base in a coastal area less crowded than the residential sector where Futenma is now.

Japanese media reported Henoko, the coastal area chosen in 2006, will house the new base, but the plan lacked further details. Government offices were closed over the weekend, and officials were not available for comment.

The prime minister’s popularity has plunged as voters increasingly are disenchanted with his failure to act on a number of campaign pledges, including the Futenma move, as well as promises for toll-free highways and cash payments for babies.

Nicknamed “space alien” by the public, Hatoyama basked in nearly unanimous popularity at the start but now is even lambasted for his taste in gaudy shirts, including a checkered one he wore to a recent party. He wore a pale blue shirt without a tie to Okinawa.

After Clinton’s talks with Japanese officials, U.S. officials said they were hopeful an agreement could be reached quickly as the Japanese position had shifted.

One reason for the change was the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, which an international investigation concluded was caused by a North Korea-fired torpedo. That underscored serious security challenges in the region and the importance of the U.S. military presence, the U.S. officials said.

Hatoyama had pursued other alternatives, including moving some of the base functions to another southern Japanese island. But no one wanted it, and other options were impractical, raising questions on whether Hatoyama ever had much of a real plan when he had made his promise.

The failure to appease the people of Okinawa is likely to be Hatoyama’s biggest problem as Japan heads into elections, which must be held sometime in or around July.

Minoru Morita, who has written several books on Japanese politics, says the recent problems highlight the immaturity of the Democratic leaders, who seized power after near-constant rule by the Liberal Democrats since World War II.

“The Okinawan people are outraged. They feel Hatoyama betrayed them,” Morita said. “The Democrats didn’t think through what they could change and what they couldn’t change. The base issue is an international agreement. They are ignorant and irrational.”

Analyst and politics expert Eiken Itagaki was more sympathetic, noting that Hatoyama was the first prime minister to start an ambitious effort to reduce the U.S. military presence in Japan.

“This is the first step, maybe just half a step,” he told The Associated Press. “Although it did not result in change yet, it got the Japanese people thinking about the base problem.”

Morita and Itagaki both forecast divisive balloting for the upper house of Parliament, with splinter groups breaking off from both the Democrats and the Liberal Democrats, setting off continued political chaos in Japan.

Okinawa was the site of one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War II and was occupied by the U.S. before being returned to Japan in 1972. Residents have felt they have been treated like second-class citizens by both countries.

“How would you feel if someone told you that a military base was coming to your neighborhood?” asked cab driver Yukinori Uehara in a telephone interview. “If you aren’t in Okinawa, you can’t really understand how we in Okinawa feel.”

Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee in Shanghai contributed to this report.