April 25, 2010, 10:52 PM EDT
By Takashi Hirokawa and Sachiko Sakamaki
April 26 (Bloomberg) -- Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said he’ll work to “ease the burden” of the people of Okinawa after tens of thousands of residents rallied yesterday against keeping an American military base on the island.
Organizers said more than 90,000 Okinawans took part in the protest to oppose moving the Futenma Marine Corp Air Station to a less populated part of the island as part of a 2006 agreement. U.S. President Barack Obama is pushing Japan to implement the accord, while residents want Hatoyama to fulfill a campaign pledge to transfer the base elsewhere.
“It was a very big event,” Hatoyama told reporters today in Tokyo. “We understand this is one expression of the public will. We’ll continue to make efforts to ease the burden of the Okinawan people.”
Traffic jams prevented an even larger number of people from joining the protest, said Nozomi Tsukeran, a rally organizer.
Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada signaled Japan will accept most of the 2006 relocation plan in a meeting last week with U.S. Ambassador John V. Roos, the Washington Post reported April 23, citing unidentified U.S. and Japanese officials. Hatoyama confirmed the meeting while disputing some details of the newspaper’s report.
Hatoyama repeatedly has said he will settle the issue of where to relocate the base by the end of May, suggesting last week he may step down should he fail. The prime minister missed his original year-end target date and has seen his popularity plummet since taking office seven months ago.
Election Looms
Lawmakers in his Democratic Party of Japan have suggested Hatoyama may have to quit his post before parliamentary elections set for July if he’s unable to resolve the issue.
The U.S. and Japan, under the previous Liberal Democratic Party administration, agreed in 2006 to transfer the base within Okinawa as part of a $10.3 billion plan that would also transfer 8,000 Marines from the island to Guam. Hatoyama campaigned on moving the base off the island, which hosts 75 percent of the U.S. military facilities and more than half of the 50,000 American troops in Japan.
The administration’s approval rating fell 12 percentage points to 24 percent from March, the Nikkei newspaper said today. The disapproval rating rose 11 points to 68 percent. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said Hatoyama should resign if he doesn’t meet his base deadline. The paper polled 914 people from April 23-25 and didn’t provide a margin of error.
--Editors: John Brinsley, Bill Austin
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