May 28 09:11 AM US/Eastern
NAHA, Japan, May 28 (AP) - (Kyodo) — People in Okinawa expressed outrage and disappointment Friday at a new agreement reached between Japan and the United States on moving the U.S. Marines' Futenma Air Station within the prefecture, with local leaders doubting the accord can be implemented and angry residents staging mass protests.
Susumu Inamine, the mayor of Nago whose coastal area Henoko has been mentioned in the agreement as Futenma's relocation site, said the probability of the controversial base being relocated there is "zero."
"I will not engage in negotiations," he told reporters in the city.
The agreement, released in the form of a joint statement between the two countries, confirmed that the base will remain in Okinawa despite Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's earlier vow to seek to move it "at least outside the prefecture."
"Returning to Henoko after raising expectations so much among the people of the prefecture (of Futenma's relocation outside Okinawa) amounts to a betrayal of them and can't be accepted," Inamine said.
Of Hatoyama's dismissal of Social Democratic Party chief Mizuho Fukushima as a Cabinet minister over her opposition to endorse the Cabinet's position, the mayor told reporters in the evening, "Proceeding with matters with no concern for the means can't be allowed."
"That will definitely leave seeds for future trouble (for both Hatoyama and his Cabinet)," he added.
Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, who has called for the central government to present a relocation plan acceptable to his electorate, said there has been a lack of communication between the central government and those in Okinawa.
"Implementing it (the agreement) will be extremely difficult," he told reporters in Tokyo, adding, "I get the impression it was reached over our heads."
The governor has authority over land reclamation that might be needed to build a runway facility at Cape Henoko and adjacent waters as stipulated in the agreement.
But he avoided on Friday clarifying whether he would grant a permit for such reclamation if the facility is indeed to be built with it, saying, "I'm not at the point where I should say it yet."
Meanwhile, about 1,200 people protested at the new bilateral agreement at the Nago city hall and 1,500 people in front of the main prefectural government building in Naha, where participants expressed their rage while holding pieces of paper plastered with the word "anger" in Japanese.
Nago mayor Inamine told the people in front of the city hall, "Today we again had a day of humiliation. Okinawa has been cut off again." "The day of humiliation" had been used for April 28, 1952, when Okinawa had come under the administration of the U.S. military after World War II.
"It became clear today that (Hatoyama's) promise with the electorate was a lie and fake," Seijun Higa, a Nago farmer, said at the city hall, referring to Hatoyama's pre-election vow to seek Futenma's relocation outside Okinawa.
Muneyoshi Kayo, who has participated in sit-ins in Henoko for years to protest at Futenma's planned relocation there, criticized the prime minister and expressed his determination to fight against the central government's plan.
"The ancestor of the Hatoyama family will be crying, saying, 'The grandson is a liar'," Kayo said, referring to Hatoyama's grandfather, former Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama. "Go ahead and do it, and I will resist it by putting my life on the line."
Hiroji Yamashiro, who heads the secretariat of a local group that has helped organize demonstrations over the Futenma relocation, also expressed anger at the latest move, saying, "This kind of scam can't pass."
"If this government were to do the same thing as the government run by the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party did, there would have been no need for a change of government (last year)," Yamashiro said.
On Tokunoshima Island, a Kagoshima Prefecture island to which the agreement said relocating some U.S. military training from Okinawa will be considered, residents gathered at a park in the town of Tokunoshima to protest at the bilateral accord. Organizers said they numbered roughly 1,200.
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