Japan crosses the Rubicon

Saturday, Feb. 7, 2004
By RICHARD HALLORAN
Special to The Japan Times

HONOLULU -- Japan has crossed the Rubicon, with surprisingly little opposition at home or abroad, by starting to dispatch armed soldiers to Iraq in their first deployment to a combat zone since World War II.

In a departure ceremony in northern Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Defense Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba presented the colors, or flags, to a detachment of 500 soldiers standing rank on rank in black berets, camouflaged battle uniforms and black boots.

Their commanding officer, Col. Yasushi Kiyota, told his troops, their families and the dignitaries: "We shall overcome all obstacles, no matter how difficult, and all return safely." Those listening said he emphasized the last point. The Japanese have been tasked to help reconstruct Iraq's damaged and obsolete roads, power plants, water works, schools and hospitals.

The ceremony was televised and evidently seen all over Japan where it was greeted with complicated feelings. Japanese parents were worried, as are all parents when their sons and, in this case, a few daughters, are sent in harms way. Japan has sent perhaps a dozen peacekeeping and humanitarian missions abroad in as many years but only after most danger has passed.

In addition, say Japanese who watched the ceremony and related events, there was evidence of a quiet pride that Japan has begun to shed the cocoon of pacifism in which it has wrapped itself for nearly 60 years and started to accept responsibilities and risks in the international arena.

A soldier addressing the departure formation spoke of representing "our country of Bushido," the way of the warrior that was honorable in the days of yore but was corrupted by the militarists of prewar Japan. In Hawaii, a citizen of the Saipan, the island occupied by Japan before and during World War II, approved of Japan "paying back for some of the things they did then."

Japanese opposition politicians protested, but without much fervor, the dispatch of armed soldiers, contending that it violated Article IX of the constitution, which prohibits the use of armed force to settle disputes. About 4,000 protesters rallied in Hibiya Park in Tokyo with banners: "We don't need a war." In a land where demonstrations of tens of thousands have been fashioned, kabuki style, into an art form, a protest of 4,000 is not worth the ink it takes to print this.

Abroad, China and South Korea, which nurture historical animosities toward Japan, appear to have taken the deployment calmly; most press reports have been limited to factual accounts of the departure. A Filipino military officer, whose nation was brutally conquered by Japan in 1942, said in Hawaii: "It's OK even though we have not totally forgotten what they did."

In a round-table discussion at the East-West Center, a research and educational institute in Hawaii, six scholars specializing in Asia were unanimous in saying they expected little criticism of Japan over the deployment. "Too many people in Asia," said one, "have too many other things on their minds."

North Korea, which is at odds with Japan on several scores, was among the few to be openly critical: "This is a prelude," said Rodong Sinmun, an official newspaper, "to the overseas aggression of the Japanese militarists, which may bring immeasurable misfortune and disasters to humankind again in the 21st century."

Ever since Julius Caesar led his legions across the Rubicon River in northern Italy in 49 B.C., that passage has come to be an emblem for decisions from which there is no turning back. Japan, which plans to send about 1,000 troops to Iraq in coming weeks, has passed its point of no return.

What of the future? A research study by Colonel William E. Rapp of the U.S. Army War College notes: "Japan is in the midst of a fundamental re-examination of its security policy." He concludes, however, that "Japan remains deeply ambivalent toward security expansion" and suggests that "Japan will continue slowly and incrementally to remove the shackles on its military security policy."

Some years ago, a Japanese whose name is lost in foggy memory, wrote: "Japanese mothers must understand that they are not the only ones who do not wish to send their sons off to die in battle." Since Iraq is a dangerous place for Americans, Australians, British, Koreans, Poles and everyone else, not to say the Iraqi people themselves, the Japanese are likely to suffer casualties there.

Then Japanese mothers, sadly, will experience, for the first time in six decades, the profound sorrow of mothers everywhere who have lost their sons in hostile action.

Richard Halloran, formerly a correspondent for Business Week, The Washington Post and The New York Times, is a freelance journalist.

U.S. plans consolidation of Pacific forces

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2004
By RICHARD HALLORAN
Special to The Japan Times

HONOLULU -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is planning a sweeping revision of the command apparatus through which American military forces are controlled in Asia in an effort to make them more responsive to contingencies from the Korean Peninsula to Australia.

Military officers said the revision would take place primarily in South Korea and Japan, but would affect U.S. deployments throughout the Pacific Command's area of responsibility -- which runs from the U.S. West Coast across the Pacific and Indian oceans to the shores of Africa. This command, from its headquarters overlooking the naval station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, controls 300,000 military people and is the largest unit of the U.S. armed forces.

Among the command elements that will most likely be dismantled in South Korea are the United Nations Command (UNC), United States Forces Korea (USFK), the Combined Forces Command (CFC) and the Eighth U.S. Army.

In Japan, United States Forces Japan will disappear, but a new operational corps headquarters led by a three-star lieutenant general will be set up.

In addition, the position of the four-star general who commands the UNC, USFK, and CFC will be abolished. At the same time, a new billet for an army general will be established at the headquarters of the U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter, Hawaii. He will take control of army forces in the Pacific region now under the command of a three-star lieutenant general.

The officers said this shakeup is part of Rumsfeld's wider plan to "transform" the Pentagon and the armed forces. In this case, they said, the intent is to eliminate crisscrossing chains of command that are legacies of World War II, the occupation of Japan, the Korean War, the war in Vietnam and the Cold War.

"When we get through," said one officer, "it will be seamless." They said many details, including the timing of the moves, remained to be decided but that the process has started. Allied governments in Asia, particularly in Seoul and Tokyo, will be consulted before final decisions are made.

Besides increasing the efficiency of U.S. forces, the revisions are intended to appeal to South Korean nationalism and to tamp down rising anti-Americanism. The U.S. and South Korea have already agreed that the U.S. headquarters will move from a congested area in Seoul to a new site about 120 km south. The 2nd Infantry Division will also move from the heavily populated area north of Seoul to new bases further south.

Disbanding the Combined Forces Command is also intended to lessen South Korean complaints that it diminishes their nation's sovereignty. At present, it controls South Korean and U.S. forces but is led by a U.S. general with a South Korean general as second in command. Many South Koreans have argued that since it is their country and they furnish the bulk of the forces a South Korean should command.

"This would reduce the misperception that the U.S. controls the Korean military," said an officer. It might also blunt the North Korean charge that South Korean forces are lackeys of the Americans.

The corps headquarters in Japan will likely take operational control of the 2nd Division and other army combat formations in South Korea to meld them into one operational force. The U.S. has 37,000 troops in South Korea, about 17,000 of them in the 2nd Division. Its mission will focus less on the defense of South Korea and more on deploying to meet threats elsewhere in Asia.

The corps commander, most likely to be posted at Camp Zama, southwest of Tokyo, will be on a level with the navy's 7th Fleet Commander, whose flagship's home port is Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, and with the Air Force's 5th Air Force, with headquarters at Yokota Air Base, west of Tokyo. Thus U.S. forward operational commands will be bunched in Japan.

Having a four-star general leading the Army of the Pacific is intended to enhance the Pacific Command's ability to influence the armies of Asia. In most Asian nations, Japan being an exception, the army as an institution is politically and economically powerful. That gives the American commander in the Pacific region a large political-military portfolio in his job description.

Asian counterparts, many of whom are sensitive to protocol and want to be seen as equals, will more easily receive a visiting American general with four stars on his shoulders than a general with three stars -- or the four-star navy admiral who heads the Pacific Command.

Richard Halloran, formerly a correspondent for Business Week, The Washington Post and The New York Times, is a freelance journalist.

Japan makes history with its mission to Iraq

By Linda Sieg
Thursday, Jan 15, 2004, Page 9
REUTERS, Tokyo

The country is cautiously moving award from a purely defensive role for its armed forces to one of participating in international military operations

When Japanese soldiers arrive in Iraq later this month, they won't be making war. They will be making history.

The dispatch, expected to become Japan's biggest and riskiest overseas military mission since World War II, marks a milestone in a shift away from a purely defensive posture toward a larger international role for the nation's military.

Japanese troops in Iraq will operate in what experts agree is a conflict zone, where the risk of casualties is high and the blue helmets of a UN peacekeeping force are nowhere to be seen.

"Is Japan's security policy undergoing a major transformation? I think the answer is `yes,'" said Richard Samuels, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.

"Putting `boots on the ground' in Iraq is fundamentally different from anything they have done in the past half century."

If successful, the Iraqi operation could become a model for future missions and accelerate a drive by neo-conservatives in Japan to revise its pacifist Constitution.

No member of Japan's military has fired a shot in combat or been killed in an overseas mission since World War II, and substantial casualties in Iraq could spark a public backlash that would rock Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government and hamper the forging of a new security policy.

"There might be a setback because of severe casualties," said Akio Watanabe, president of the Research Institute for Peace and Security, a think tank. "Public opinion is still very fluid in that sense."

A small advance army team is expected to leave later this week for southern Iraq, where they will act as scouts for a Japanese force that could number some 1,000 personnel on a mission to provide humanitarian aid and help rebuild the country.

A law enabling the dispatch limits its activities to "non-combat" zones, a concept hard to apply in Iraq, where at least 261 US and allied military personnel have been killed in attacks since May, when US President George W. Bush declared major combat over.

Japan's constitution renounces the right to wage war, bans the maintenance of a military except for defensive purposes, and has been interpreted as prohibiting the exercise of the right of collective self-defense, or aiding allies when they are attacked.

Untested in combat

The Self-Defense Forces (SDF), as the military is known, celebrate their 50th birthday this year, and though untested in combat are comparable in terms of spending and manpower to those of Britain.

For most of those 50 years, the forces were kept at home and efforts to expand their reach and role constrained by the Constitution as well as by reluctance to fan fears among Asian neighbors of resurgent Japanese militarism.

But stung by criticism of a "checkbook diplomacy" which gave cash but no troops for the 1991 Gulf War, Japan has stretched the limits of the Constitution over the past dozen years.

A 1992 law allowed Japanese forces to take part in UN-led peacekeeping operations, though with severe restrictions.

In 2001, Japan deployed its navy to the Indian Ocean to provide logistical support for the US-led war in Afghanistan, the first post-World War II dispatch to a war situation.

Experts agree, though, that the level of risk and absence of a clear UN mandate make the Iraq operation qualitatively different.

HUGGING AMERICA

Behind Koizumi's decision to take such a risky step is both a long-felt desire to normalize Japan's gun-shy, postwar defense policies and more recent worries about North Korea's nuclear and missile programs and China as an emerging regional power.

The US, Tokyo's main security ally, has also been pressuring Japan to take a bigger global role.

"If they didn't fear the possibility of abandonment by the United States on North Korea, they wouldn't feel the need to hug the United States more vigorously," Samuels said.

Koizumi backed the US-led war on Iraq despite opposition from the majority of Japanese voters and is moving ahead on the troop dispatch to Iraq in the face of polls showing that most of the public want to wait at least until the country is safer.

While many voters appear to be abandoning the pacifism that defined Japan's postwar security debate, a sense of forced obedience to Washington has fostered some resentment.

"The feeling is mixed. We love America, but we don't like our people always having to obey US pressure," said defense policy expert Satoshi Morimoto.

Few, however, would suggest that Japan try to go it alone on defense in the foreseeable future.

Despite the policy shift, few expect Japan to soon become a "Britain of Asia," fighting alongside US forces overseas.

"The Japanese government cannot be so bold," Watanabe said.

"I think they will stick to providing logistical support rather than actual fighting. My conclusion as to whether Japan has crossed the Rubicon [taken an irrevocable step] is `yes,' but very cautiously."

America's Abominable Record in Okinawa

1-05-04
America's Abominable Record in Okinawa
By Chalmers Johnson

Mr. Johnson's newest book is The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan Books).

America's 703 officially acknowledged foreign military enclaves (as of September 30, 2002), although structurally, legally, and conceptually different from colonies, are themselves something like microcolonies in that they are completely beyond the jurisdiction of the occupied nation.1 The United States virtually always negotiates a "status of forces agreement" (SOFA) with the ostensibly independent "host" nation, including countries whose legal systems are every bit (and perhaps more) sophisticated than our own.

In Asia, the SOFA is a modern legacy of the nineteenth-century imperialist practice in China of "extraterritoriality"-the "right" of a foreigner charged with a crime to be turned over for trial to his own diplomatic representatives in accordance with his national law, not to a Chinese court in accordance with Chinese law. Extracted from the Chinese at gun point, the practice arose because foreigners claimed that Chinese law was barbaric and "white men" engaged in commerce in China should not be forced to submit to it. Chinese law was indeed concerned more with the social consequences of crime than with establishing the individual guilt or innocence of criminals, particularly those who were uninvited guests in China.

Following the Anglo-Chinese "Opium War" of 1839-42, the United States was the first nation to demand "extrality" for its citizens. All the other European nations then acquired the same rights as the Americans. Except for the Germans, who lost their Chinese colonies in World War I, Americans and Europeans lived an "extraterritorial" life in China until the Japanese ended it in 1941 and Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang stopped it in 1943. But men and women serving overseas in the American armed forces still demand that their government obtain as extensive extraterritorial status for them as possible. In this modern version, extrality takes the form of heavy American pressure on countries like Japan to alter their systems of criminal justice to conform with procedures that exist in the United States, regardless of historical and cultural differences.

Rachel Cornwell and Andrew Wells, two authorities on status of forces agreements, conclude, "Most SOFAs are written so that national courts cannot exercise legal jurisdiction over U.S. military personnel who commit crimes against local people, except in special cases where the U.S. military authorities agree to transfer jurisdiction."2 Since service members are also exempt from normal passport and immigration controls, the military has the option of simply flying an accused rapist or murderer out of the country before local authorities can bring him to trial, a contrivance to which commanding officers of Pacific bases have often resorted. At the time of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, the United States had publicly acknowledged SOFAs with ninety-three countries, although some SOFAs are so embarrassing to the host nation that they are kept secret, particularly in the Islamic world.3 Thus, the true number is not publicly known.

U.S. overseas military bases are under the control not of some colonial office or ministry of foreign affairs but the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a plethora of other official, if sometimes secret, organs of state. These agencies build, staff, and supervise the bases-fenced and defended sites on foreign soil, often constructed to mimic life at home. However, not all overseas members of the military have families or want their families to accompany them; therefore, except in Muslim countries, these bases normally attract extensive arrays of bars and brothels, and the criminal elements that operate them. The presence of these bases unavoidably usurps, distorts, or subverts whatever institutions of democratic government may exist within the host society.

Stationing several thousand eighteen-to-twenty-four year-old American youths in cultures that are foreign to them and about which they are utterly ignorant is a recipe for the endless series of "incidents" plaguing nations that have accepted U.S. bases. American ambassadors quickly learn the protocol for visiting the host foreign office in order to apologize for the behavior of our troops. Even in closely allied countries where English is spoken, local residents get very tired of sexual assaults and drunken driving by foreign soldiers. During World War II, the British satirized our troops as "over-paid, over-sexed, and over here." Nothing has changed.

Okinawa's Christmas Presents

Santa Claus came to town

Saturday, December 20, 2003
Saturday Evening Edition

Several meetings were held in Tokyo Thursday regarding Okinawan development plans by the central government in connection with U.S. military base conversion to commercial use. It is an annual function of budget allocation coinciding with the Christmas season. Both the central government and Ginowan City agreed to complete conversion planning for Futenma Marine Corps Air Station by fiscal year 2005.

The central government put the total budget for the Northern Area Development Plan at 2.1 billion yen for the second portion of this fiscal year's allocation. The government opened the joint assembly of two working groups, one for northern area development and the other for relocation and development of surrounding areas, with the attendance of the Minister of the Okinawa Bureau Toshimitsu Mogi, Governor Keiichi Inamine, and Nago City Mayor Tateo Kishimoto.

Minister Mogi announced the budget and four new projects for the northern part of Okinawa, designated as the new host area for Futenma MCAS. The government will pour billions into the development of the north in compensation for accepting a potentially new troublesome facility. In his speech, Minister Mogi showed enthusiasm to work hard for northern area development in cooperation with the governor and citizens.

On the same day, the government held another meeting with Ginowan City Mayor Yoichi Iha to discuss the conversion planning of Futenma MCAS after its relocation to the north. It was decided to complete a basic plan by fiscal 2005 to convert the military base for civilian use. It was the first meeting for the group to reach a definite time line.

Ginowan City and the OPG will form a study committee inviting Futenma landowners to help make the conversion plan within this fiscal year. Mayor Iha welcomed the progress of the working group and requested an earlier return of the land. He also explained that he was elected by citizens who supported his promise to return the land within five years and went on to complain about the annoying aircraft noise. Minister Mogi replied, "We take your words seriously."

For Chatan Town, where serious soil contamination was found on returned land used as a U.S. military base, the central government promised to take necessary measures for recovery. Chatan Mayor Choichi Hentona appreciated the central government's efforts concerning hazardous materials and recovering cultural treasures found after U.S. base removal.

The four new projects for northern area in the second portion of this year's budget are as follows: a 340 million yen processing facility on Iheya Island for packing and sales of Mozuku seaweed; a 332 million yen IT Business Integration Project which would serve as a data base center for new business in Nago City; a 147 million yen Wide Area Network Project for the northern area which would connect public facilities of the four municipalities of Nago, Ginoza, Kin, and Onna with optic fiber; and a 23 million yen Long Life and Healing Village Project in Ogimi Village, known for its many centenarian residents, which would study the home helper service and associated businesses.

Futenma Relocation Still Undecided

The Futenma issue a hot potato

Saturday,December 6, 2003
Saturday Evening Edition

The deadline for the return of land used by U.S. Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to the local community passed last Thursday. It was on December 2, 1996 that the Japanese Prime Minister and the U.S. Ambassador to Japan had declared the return of Futemna within five to seven years. The condition for land return was to provide a new air station within Okinawa, but plans have not even been put down on blueprint and it seems the process will take ten years or more.

The idea of relocating Futenma to Camp Shwab in Nago City is seemingly halted. Nago wants several limitations on the kinds of planes, flight patterns, and for environmental protection. And the dugong, a natural treasure, resides around the seashore of Camp Shwab. Many issues lie in the way of planning to build a new military airbase there.

Going back seven years, the declaration by both the U.S. and Japanese governments was to return Futenma by making a helipad to land helicopters and other related facilities. Later it was revealed that they needed a runway and certain other facilities, which was far from image of a pad, and proposed locations for the new air station jumped from one place to another like a grasshopper.

Keiichi Inamine became governor in 1998 and decided to accept the building of a new air station in Henoko, Nago City and within the area of Camp Shwab on the conditions of making an additional runway for commercial use and limiting military use for only fifteen years. Many local residents supported his appeal during his gubernatorial election campaign.

But the U.S. government publicly stated it would be impossible to accept a time limitation regarding security matters and they believed the governor's request could not be granted. The Japanese government also took the same stance.

The horrible crime of U.S. servicemen assaulting an elementary schoolgirl in 1995 attracted world-wide attention to Okinawa military base issues. Both governments set up a Special Action Committee, SACO, for the consolidation and reduction of military bases on Okinawa to ease the burden of the local people. It included the return of Futenma.

Although SACO agreed to return eleven military facilities, only two have actually been returned to local communities. It proved difficult to relocate military bases within Okinawa which was already saturated by bases. Even if the SACO agreement would be implemented, Okinawa would still host seventy percent of the total U.S. military facilities in all Japan.

The seven-year anniversary of the SACO agreement was not a celebration, but the reality and difficulty of U.S. military base issues remains.

There is little progress on the Futenma issue between Tokyo and Okinawa. There was the question of who would be in charge of the commercial runway and it was agreed that the central government would be. Before agreeing, Okinawa argued that accepting a new military base was itself a heavy political cost and the Defense Agency said it could not manage anything other than a military facility.

Henoko Ordnance Ammunition Depot

Okinawa, Japan
[ca December 1, 2003]

Henoko Ordnance Depot, which is adjacent to Camp Schwab, is an ammunition storage facility for the U.S. Marine Corps. Most of the ordnance depot is covered over with dirt. Henoko is the village closest to Camp Schwab.

The US military has had plans to construct a new heliport in Henoko. In December 1999 Nago City Mayor, Tateo Kishimoto accepted plans to move the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to Nago’s southeastern district of Henoko. The Mayor’s approval was considered to have cleared the final obstacle towards the relocation of Futenma. It also ended a debate that has been going on for more than three years. The isssue first came up in 1996, when the US and Japan decided to move Marine air operations to other, less developed areas of Okinawa.

Henoko heliport is planned to be the upgraded version of the major Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station, which is nestled in a crowded metropolitan area on the South End of Okinawa. Futenma has long been the object of controversy, as its noise pollution and other chemical contagion have been pinpointed as major causes of health problems in the area. Schools, hospitals, and thousands of homes are located within mere yards of this highly valued Marine transportation hub and supplies outpost.

The new air station, which would replace Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, would be built over a reef that is almost 2 miles off the shores of Henoko. The environmental assessment is the first step toward making the move northward. Government officials have been working on the plan and estimate that the size of the proposed facility will be about 195 hectares. It would be 2,600 meters long and 750 meters wide. The planners considered eight different proposals on different construction methods depending on the location. The construction work is estimated to take between eight to nine years. The total cost is estimated to be from ¥200 billion to trillion.

Surveys, expected to begin in December 2003 and to take about three years, will assess the area where land is to be reclaimed and the airport construction’s environmental impact.

Some environmentalists expressed fear that the airport would harm the seabed grazing grounds of an endangered saltwater manatee, the dugong. Henoko city officials said the dugongs never really were a consideration in the decision. Most of the 18 confirmed dugong sightings in Okinawa waters since 1979 were beached carcasses. And officials said they know of no sightings inside the reef where the airport will be built.

In December 1996, after 12 months of study and consultations, the governments in Tokyo and Washington and their representatives on the Special Action Committee on Okinawa produced their final report concerning the return of US military base properties on the island. The plans for the Futenma Air Station - the single most important issue for Okinawans - were not finalized.

A floating heliport was the leading option, but its location and the construction method had not been determined. The focus of the December 1996 Special Action Committee on Okinawa final report was an accord is to relocate the major military heliport now at the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station to a 1,500-meter sea-based facility off the east coast of the main island of Okinawa. It envisaged developing and constructing the facility off Camp Schwab, located in the city of Nago. But an exact location for the heliport was not specified in the report, because agreement from local residents had not been reached. In the past, such marine super floating structure had been considered and talked about many times as a touch-and-go base as the replacenent of the Atsugi Airbase as well as a candidate for the Kansai Airport. At the meeting between President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto, held in New York on September 24, Clinton commented on proposed sea floating heliport as a replacement facility for the Futenma Airbase by saying, "no matter where it would be moved, it should be done in a way that the US military system would not be harmed, and it must be solved in a way that in the future the problem like that of Futenma should never be resurfaced".

The United States established a runway length requirement of about 4,200 feet for the sea-based facility. Arresting gear would be located about 1,200 feet from either end of the runway to permit carrier aircraft to land. In addition, the runway would have 328-foot overruns at each end to provide a safety margin in case a pilot overshoots the optimal landing spot during an approach and a parallel taxiway about 75 feet wide alongside the runway. Additional aircraft facilities include a drive-through rinse facility for aircraft corrosion control, an air traffic control tower, and aircraft firefighting and rescue facilities. Up to 10,000 pounds of ordnance would be stored in a magazine collocated with an ordnance assembly area aboard the sea-based facility. Also, flight simulators and security and rescue boat operations, among other capabilities, are required aboard the sea-based facility. The "DoD Operational Requirements and Concept of Operations for MCAS Futenma Relocation, Okinawa, Japan (final draft)" stated that the sea-based facilities of the new military base and all associated structure shall be designed for a 40 year operational life with a 200 year fatigue life.

The United States planned to locate the headquarters, logistics, and most operational activities aboard the sea-based facility and most quality-of-life activities, including housing, food service, and medical and dental services, ashore at Camp Schwab. US officials estimate that over 2,500 servicemembers currently stationed at MCAS Futenma would transfer to the sea-based facility and Camp Schwab. To accommodate the incoming arrivals from MCAS Futenma, Marine Corps Bases, Japan, plans to relocate about 800 to 1,000 servicemembers currently housed at Camp Schwab to Camp Hansen and absorb the remainder at Camp Schwab. US engineers estimated that about 1,900 people would work on the sea-based facility.

In August 1997 the Okinawa Prefectural Government officially accepted a central government request to conduct borings at a site off Nago on the east coast of Okinawa Island as part of a survey for a sea-based US military heliport facility. Despite strong pressure from Tokyo, local people in Nago voted against the heliport proposal in a referendum in December 1997.

By November 1997 the Japanese government was considering two methods of construction for the sea-based facility, which would be approximately 1,500 meters long and 600 meters wide. One called for a pontoon platform, protected by breakwaters, moored outside a coral reef at a point approximately 3 km from Henoko, the nearest residential area. The other entailed a platform supported by stilts sunk in the sea bottom inside the reef and about 1.5 km from Henoko. Within the reef, the water is less than 3 meters deep, while outside the reef it is 10 meters to 70 meters deep. A thir method, dubbed the "semisub" system, had been dismissed due to potentially exorbitant costs. Both methods included construction of a runway about 1,300 meters long and 45 meters wide, along with a control tower, hangers, an apron, repair facilities and warehouses. Additional residential facilities would be built at nearby Camp Schwab to accommodate some 2,500 Marines and their families.

According to the proposal, about 60 aircraft would be deployed at the sea-based facility, including UH-1 utility helicopters, AH-1 attack helicopters, and CH-53 and CH-46 cargo transport helicopters.

A March 1998 report by the General Accounting Office noted that the sea-based facility, planned to replace the Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma, faced three major technological, financial and operational challenges. Annual operations and maintenance costs for the sea-based facility were initially estimated at $200 million based on a $4-billion design and construction cost, significantly higher than the $2.8 million being paid by the United States at Futenma.

The area planned for the new base is in a natural conservation area dedignated by Okinawa Prefecture. The area, where a diverse ecosystem is maintained, such as coral reefs, tideland and sea weed grounds, is given high priority for conservation. The sea area is the northern habitable limit of dugongs, an internationally protected animal.

In June 2001 the Futenma Relocation Committee was presented with eight different designs and three different methods of construction. The conceptions were for structures either within the coral reef or beyond it. Generally the methods are based on structures connected by piers, floating pontoons or land reclamation.