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By Jon R. Anderson
Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, March 19, 2005
Photo: Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine makes a point during Wednesday’s press conference in Washington. Inamine is on a lobbying tour in an attempt to lessen U.S. troop presence on Okinawa.
WASHINGTON — Top Okinawa government officials are launching a new campaign in an old fight to get all U.S. Marines off Japan’s southernmost island.
Okinawa governor Keiichi Inamine says he is “making a drastic new proposal” to the U.S. and Japanese governments as the two nations are reworking the details of their alliance. The proposal also comes as Pentagon leaders are trying to consolidate existing overseas bases and return tens of thousands of forward-based U.S. troops to American soil.
“This is a rare chance and a great opportunity, because the U.S. military is working on its worldwide posture review,” Inamine told reporters Wednesday during a lobbying tour of White House, Pentagon, State Department and congressional leaders.
The U.S. blitz comes in the wake of a similar effort by Inamine among top Japanese leaders in Tokyo.
Okinawans have long argued that they’ve shouldered an unfair proportion of the U.S. presence in Japan. With less than 1 percent of Japan’s land mass, the island provides 75 percent of the facilities used by U.S. forces in Japan. That includes some 50,000 troops and family members.
Following the 1995 rape of a Okinawan schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor, a 1996 agreement between the two countries was designed to lift some of that burden. The Special Action Committee on Okinawa report, or SACO, centered on moving the Marine Corps’ Futenma air station to a new off-shore base. But nearly a decade later, haggling over exactly where the base will go has yielded little progress.
Inamine said he wants to scrap that agreement and shift to something much more comprehensive.
Flanked by Takeshi Onaga, the mayor of Okinawa’s capital and largest city, Naha, he said he is pushing a four-point proposal. Inamine wants to:
• Remove all Marines. Marines occupy about 75 percent of the U.S. facilities there, and local officials say Marines are responsible for most accidents and crimes. Inamine is proposing that the Okinawa Marine Corps units now making their return to the island from Iraq “don’t come back.”
• Reduce noise at Kadena Air Base. Another facet of SACO included reducing noise at the Air Force’s main hub in the area, including limiting early morning and late night flights at the base, which is surrounded by homes. Little improvement has been seen on that front either, said Inamine. More must be done now, he said.
• Halt construction of a live-fire complex. The Army is building a live-fire complex at Camp Hansen. According to the text of Inamine’s proposal, the site is “barely 300 meters (330 yards) away from civilian homes and a national expressway.”
• Rewrite SOFA. The Status of Forces Agreement, which governs the rules U.S. troops must live by in Japan, is long overdue for an overhaul, said Inamine, calling for a “fundamental revision.” Forty-five years after the original SOFA was written, he argues in his proposal “there have been significant changes in the security environment and social conditions … the SOFA has become inconsistent with the demands of the times.”
In Washington, the response was polite, but noncommittal.
“We thanked them for their input,” said Pentagon spokesman Navy Lt. Cmdr. Greg Hicks, after Inamine’s contingent met with Richard Lawless, the Defense Department’s deputy undersecretary for Asian and Pacific affairs.
Hicks said, however, that any negotiations regarding U.S. presence in Japan would be between the U.S. and Japanese governments — not local officials.
“This is between the policymakers, and we’re working with the government of Japan.”
Any sweeping changes on Okinawa, however, do not appear on the horizon.
“We remain committed to the steady implementation of SACO,” said Hicks.
In Japan, Hatsuhisa Takashima, the top spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said senior leaders are studying Inamine’s proposal — and with U.S. and Japanese officials now reworking their alliance — hinting there might be options for compromise.
“The bilateral talks are under way with the focus on reducing the burden shouldered by the local communities, including Okinawa, and maintaining deterrence,” said Takashima. “As for a request to revise the SOFA, the government stance is to make operational improvements to the agreement, while giving consideration to requests from local communities.”
Yoshinori Ohno, Japan’s defense minister, told reporters after Inamine’s visit to Tokyo on March 8 that moving the Marines off Okinawa must be weighed against regional security needs.
“This is an issue of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, the security of Japan and the security of the Far East,” he said. “Therefore, maintaining the deterrence power is very important.
“At the same time, there are calls for reducing the burden of hosting the military presence,” he added. “At issue is how to achieve the two goals.”
David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida contributed to this report from Okinawa.
Japan Policy & Politics, March 21, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 14 Kyodo
The United States indicated Monday to visiting Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine that it plans to reduce the prefecture's burden of heavy U.S. military presence only on the condition that any relocations will keep the bases in Okinawa, the governor and prefectural officials said.
The condition was laid down by Michael Green, senior director for Asia on the White House National Security Council.
Inamine has called for moving U.S. Marine Corps troops out of Okinawa as part of a planned realignment of U.S. forces in Japan now being discussed by Japan and the United States.
"We don't want anything that gives an additional burden to places already shouldering a burden," Inamine was quoted as telling Green.
Inamine in particular stressed his opposition to relocating the Marines' Futemma Air Station to somewhere else in the prefecture instead of to an offshore civilian-military airport to be built at Nago in the north of Okinawa Island, the officials said. The planned relocation to Nago has run into difficulties and is stalled.
The governor quoted Green as saying the bilateral talks on realignment of the U.S. forces in Japan will move in the direction of generally reducing the burden on Okinawa, but regional problems may arise.
U.S. officials have said they are ready to consider a faster alternative option to relocate the Futemma base if such a proposal is made by Japan. The U.S. side is showing impatience with the long-delayed implementation of the 1996 bilateral agreement to vacate the base on the condition of moving its helicopter functions within Okinawa.
The two nations later agreed on the Nago offshore airport plan, but its construction remains stalled due to strong local opposition. They are now reportedly considering alternatives, such as relocating the Marines' helicopters to the U.S. Kadena Air Base and Shimoji Island, both in Okinawa Prefecture.
Asked what he considers he achieved in his talks with Green and other senior U.S. officials, Inamine said he felt the two nations "will move speedily this time" to solve the base issues. He noted that the U.S. officials repeated said they want to urgently complete the realignment talks and to listen to opinions from Okinawa and other base-hosting local concerns.
A prefectural official said the U.S. side asked for input from the governor for "an interim or basic agreement expected to be reached soon" by the two nations.
Inamine presented a set of written requests highlighting four key issues -- moving the Marines out of Okinawa, improving operations at the Kadena base to reduce noise and prevent accidents, halting the construction of a U.S. Army live-fire training complex at Camp Hansen, and revising the Status of Forces Agreement.
"The Okinawa prefectural government understands the U.S. military bases located in Japan plays a vital role in maintaining the U.S.-Japan security arrangements, thus contributing not only to the security of Japan but also to the peace and stability of the Far East," Inamine said in the written request.
The prefecture also "fully recognizes the importance of the U.S. military bases located in Okinawa. We believe that mitigating the negative sentiments of the host community by lightening the U.S. military presence would contribute to the stability of the U.S.-Japan security arrangements and smoother U.S. base operations," the governor said in the request.
In a meeting with Deputy Defense Undersecretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Lawless, Inamine conveyed his opposition to the return to Okinawa of Marines sent to Iraq, the prefectural officials said.
But Lawless told Inamine that troops dispatched from Okinawa will return there, they said.
Evans Revere, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, promised to proceed with consultations with Japan to detail how to reduce the burden in Okinawa, as the defense and foreign affairs officials of the two nations agreed last month.
The agreement was reached in a so-called "two-plus-two" top security meeting to accelerate the realignment talks, including the Okinawa issue.
[ Futenma ]
By Richard Halloran
Monday, Mar 14, 2005, Page 9
In a scenario unimaginable 60 years ago at the end of World War II, the former enemies are pooling their efforts and resources for their collective national security
In the coming months, US and Japanese military officers and defense officials will be sitting down in Tokyo, the Pacific Command in Hawaii and Washington to determine ways to put muscle into the swiftly maturing alliance between the US and Japan.
If all goes well, those efforts will produce a joint declaration by US President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi next autumn that will reflect the most fundamental and far-reaching revision of the alliance since the US-Japan Security Treaty was rewritten in 1960.
The critical feature: The US and Japan will transform their security bond from one of senior partner-junior partner to one of more nearly equals in policy and strategy, even if the military power of the US still overshadows that of Japan.
Among the vital issues to be worked out, Japanese and US officials say, are:
One, roles and missions, in which Americans and Japanese will decide on a division of labor and which forces will be responsible for what missions, to make best use of those forces and to preclude duplication.
Two, expanded combined operations and training, especially between Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force and the US Army and US Marine Corps. The navies and air forces, which already coordinate many operations, would do more of the same.
Three, sharing intelligence as the Japanese, in particular, strengthen their ability to collect and analyze information and then to meld it with intelligence produced by US services.
Four, revised war plans, a touchy subject that officials are reluctant to discuss in public. A US official said, however: "We continually review our bilateral coordination mechanisms and processes."
Five, moving a US Army corps headquarters to Japan from the US to put it in the region where it would operate and into close proximity to Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force for combined planning, training and operations.
Six, researching and building a combined ballistic missile defense that would be aimed first at the missile threat from North Korea, which fired a missile over Japan in 1998, and then at the longer range threat from China.
All of this is part of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's plan for a rigorous overhaul of the US military posture in Asia. It calls for dismantling the many-layered command structure in South Korea, consolidating control into a streamlined US headquarters in Japan, reducing US forces in South Korea and giving those that remain a regional rather than a local mission.
When US and Japanese officials began discussing the realignment of US forces in Japan, the US focused on the command element while the Japanese sought to reduce the friction of US bases next to Japanese neighborhoods. Before the negotiations went far, the two sides agreed that they needed basic reassessment of the alliance.
In Japan, Koizumi formed a commission on security led by a prominent business executive, Hiroshi Araki of Tokyo Electric Power. The commission recommended in October last year that Japan forge an "integrated security strategy" through "strategic consultations" with the US.
Then came two declarations in Tokyo and one in Washington that would have been unthinkable five years ago from a Japan that had wrapped itself in a pacifist cocoon after the devastating defeat of World War II.
In December, Koizumi's government published a new defense guideline and a plan to expand Japan's defenses over the next five years. The guideline said: "Japan's defense forces are the ultimate security of its national security."
The guideline further said(rt)0314p09.tif Japan should "engage in strategic dialogue" with the US to include role-sharing, intelligence exchange, cooperative operations, exchanges of technology and "efforts to make the stationing of US forces in Japan smoother."
Last month, Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura, Defense Minister Yoshinori Ohno, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Rumsfeld met in Washington to approve "common strategic objectives" that called for US and Japanese forces to "maintain the capability to address contingencies affecting the United States and Japan."
Machimura said that the strategic dialogue has three stages: The review of strategic objectives just concluded, an examination of Japanese and US missions and capabilities now started, and scrutiny of US bases in Japan.
Japan and the US have thus come a long way in sixty years. In April 1945, US and Japanese troops were locked in the bloody battle of Okinawa in which 250,000 people, including 150,000 Okinawan civilians, perished. Today, Japanese and US military officers sit side by side poring over maps and tables to figure out how best to deter mutual adversaries in the future.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
By David Allen and Jon R. Anderson
Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, March 6, 2005
A U.S. district court judge in California has denied Pentagon motions to dismiss a case challenging plans to relocate a Marine Corps airbase to another part of Okinawa even as top Defense officials were telling Japanese leaders they were open to moving the airbase to an alternate location.
At issue is where scores of helicopters — and the Marines who fix and fly them — now based at Futenma Air Station will go. The Marine Corps agreed years ago to shut down the base once Japanese officials provided a new location.
Japanese and Marine Corps leaders want to build a new site on reclaimed land off the island's northeast coast. That proposal is being challenged by local and U.S. environmental groups concerned about the habitat of a rare cousin of the manatee called the dugong.
In a case that’s been dubbed the “Okinawa Dugong vs. Donald Rumsfeld,” the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday denied a Pentagon motion to dismiss a 2003 lawsuit by six Japanese and U.S. environmental groups.
On the same day, Japanese officials met with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Lawless, the Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary for Asian and Pacific affairs.
Lawless told the Japanese delegation “we remain committed to the steady implementation of the (agreement to relocate Futenma), but if the government of Japan proposed an alternative to the current plan that met our alliance requirements, we would consider it,” said Navy Cmdr. Greg Hicks.
District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said the Defense Department hadn’t sufficiently shown it wasn’t involved in selecting a site at Henoko as a replacement for the Marines Corps air station at Futenma, as Justice Department lawyers had argued.
The lawsuit claims the air station would destroy the northernmost Pacific habitat of the endangered dugong, which feed off sea grass in the area. The dugong is classified as a “natural monument” in Japan and the environmentalists have argued U.S. law requires the government to conduct environmental impact studies before undertaking projects that could affect culturally significant areas.
Patel ruled that the dugong is a cultural property protected under Japanese law and is entitled to protection under the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act, which covers culturally significant areas in the United States and abroad where U.S. facilities are involved.
There have been at least 18 confirmed sightings of dugongs on Okinawa since 1979, most of them beached carcasses of the animals that were caught in fishing nets, according to Senzo Uchida, a marine life researcher who has studied the dugong habitats of Okinawa.
Takuma Higashionna, director of the Dugong Network Okinawa, one of the plaintiffs of the case, welcomed the news from San Francisco.
“We take it as a message that the U.S. court would take a positive stance on environmental protection,” he said. “As I have expected, the U.S. court did not close its door to us. Instead, they showed their willingness to hear the stories of both sides.”
Chiyomi Sumida contributed to this report.
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