Former National Security Adviser James Johns has questioned the feasibility of the plan for relocating a U.S. Marine base within Okinawa Prefecture. Secretary General of the People’s New Party Mikio Shimoji told reporters in Washington on Friday that Johns, an Obama aide until last November, said the best option is integrating Futenma Air Station with Kadena Air Base, rather than transferring the facility from the residential district of Ginowan to the coastal area of Henoko in Nago, Okinawa, as Japan and the U.S. have agreed.
The relocation of the Futenma Air Station has been a contentious issue between the U.S. and Japan. Even though U.S. servicemen account for only 4 percent of the population in Okinawa, they are a highly visible minority. U.S. servicemen commit proportionately less crimes than the native population, at 1.7 percent of the crimes committed. However, these crimes become headline news as the media play up the crimes. U.S. servicemen, especially black servicemen, are viewed as sexual predators–an idea that became especially prevalent in 1995 after three black servicemen rented a van, kidnapped a 12-year-old girl, beat her, bound her with duct tape, and repeatedly raped her over several days. (See Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s 2001 article, “Sex and Race in Okinawa,” in TIME magazine for an in-depth account of the perception of increased crime by U.S. servicemen and what it means for U.S.-Japan relations.)
The mainstream in Okinawa and the rest of Japan would like to see the airbase relocated or removed altogether. However, no one can agree on where the base should be relocated. Every town has a “not in my backyard” attitude toward accepting the base. And as much as the right-wing nationalists would love to see the U.S. military out of Japan, or how much politicians popularly say they’re making headway on the issue, it is not strategically to Japan’s interest. However, the departure of American servicemen from Japanese soil does play to the strategic interests of China and North Korea.
