Japanese Mayoral Vote Turns Against U.S. Military Base

JANUARY 24, 2010, 8:55 A.M. ET
By ALISON TUDOR and YUKA HAYASHI

TOKYO -- An opponent of a proposed U.S. military base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa won a closely fought mayoral election Sunday, according to Japanese media exit polls, putting the controversial project in jeopardy and threatening further strain on bilateral relations between the two allies.

The election, in the small rural town of Nago, hundreds of miles from Tokyo, was a de facto referendum on a plan by the U.S. government to adjust American military positioning in Okinawa, shifting resources away from heavily populated areas of the island to a more rural portion of the island.

The incumbent mayor, Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, had accepted the plan, while his opponent, Susumu Inamine campaigned against him largely over the base issue. "This election means that we will not allow construction of the new military camp," Mr. Inamine said in declaring victory.

Photo: Voters in the small Okinawan city of Nago went to the polls to choose their next mayor.

Washington had reached agreement on the plan with the previous Japanese government. But the current Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, who took office in September, has expressed reluctance to go ahead with the deal, saying repeatedly he wanted to "hear the voices of people of Okinawa." He has said he would make a final decision on the project in May.

Sunday's election doesn't necessarily kill the plan. The governor of the Okinawa and the national government could continue with the siting, over the objections of the community. But the vote will make it more difficult, politically, for Mr. Hatoyama to accept the U.S. demands.

The Obama administration has been putting steady pressure on Mr. Hatoyama over the past few months to stick to the agreement. But "the victory by the mayoral candidate opposing to host the new facility will naturally have a gravely negative impact on the existing plan," said Hitoshi Tanaka, a former foreign ministry official who has advised Mr. Hatoyama recently, and who is currently a senior fellow at the Japan Center for International Exchange, a Tokyo-based think tank, and.

Finding an alternative location will be "extremely difficult" for Mr. Hatoyama's government, he said, adding: "We spent the last 13 years looking but weren't able to find any such place."

Of the 33,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan, around 21,000 are currently on Okinawa. The island's people have depended on U.S. bases to provide jobs and spur their economy. But they have also borne costs, including a 2004 helicopter crash at an island university and the 1995 rape of a local schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen.

The U.S. has been struggling since those incidents to find a way to maintain its military presence in Japan while making its forces appear less intrusive, particularly in heavily populated areas of the country. The 2006 accord that was the focus of Sunday's mayoral vote involves building a new facility outside Nago for the Marine Corps in exchange for closing a helicopter base located in a crowded urban area.

But the new national government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, put the plans on hold. Mr. Hatoyama, has said he wanted to see the result of the Nago election before making a decision on whether to go ahead with the relocation.

Nago is home to an existing U.S. Marine facility called Camp Schwab. The 2006 agreement calls for building a large V-shaped runway adjacent to Camp Schwab.

The base issue has long divided this town of 60,000. A majority of its voters rejected an airfield plan in a 1997 referendum. Since then, three mayors favoring the facility have won elections.

The incumbent mayor, Mr. Shimabukuro, advocated hosting the new facility because the local community will receive generous financial compensation. Tokyo, as part of its agreement to build the airfield, has pumped $900 million into Nago's economy to fund everything from a tax haven for financial back-office operations to a dolphin theme park.

The victor in Sunday's vote, Mr. Inamine, campaigned on a platform of wanting to encourage more tourism in Nago instead of counting on aid from Tokyo. The area has become a destination for mainland tourists who dive on its coral reefs and trek in its tropical forests. The waters off Camp Schwab are a feeding ground for dugongs, a marine animal related to manatees, that are in danger of extinction in Japan. Opponents of the new base say it would threaten that habitat.

—Makiko Segawa