OKINAWA, Japan — Memorial Day weekend is normally party time on Gate Street, a seedy strip of bars and clubs outside a giant U.S. Air Force base here.
OKINAWA, Japan — Memorial Day weekend is normally party time on Gate Street, a seedy strip of bars and clubs outside a giant U.S. Air Force base here.
During this year’s holiday, though, Gate Street was all but deserted, its customers — young Americans from the military installations that blanket much of this southern Japanese island — barred by their superiors from partying in public.
The reason: a recent murder that has angered Okinawans and damaged relations between Tokyo and Washington.
The killing of the 20-year-old Okinawan woman, whose body was found decomposing in a suitcase last month, has been linked to a U.S. military contractor who is a Marine veteran. The outcry after the man, Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, was arrested on May 19 has been so strong that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe protested publicly to President Barack Obama during the president’s recent trip to Japan.
The unusual rebuke over a criminal case by another head of state marred a visit that was otherwise carefully choreographed to celebrate friendly relations and included Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima. Abe, at a joint news conference, professed “shock” over the murder and asked Obama “to understand the feelings of the Japanese people” and strengthen military discipline.
Shinzato has not yet been formally charged, a decision that can take weeks in Japan. His lawyer has declined to comment.
Okinawans have complained for years about violence, noise and other problems associated with U.S. bases. But this murder case is threatening to ratchet up opposition to the United States’ large military presence, which dates to the end of World War II.
“We’ve heard apologies and promises of prevention hundreds of times, for decades, but it hasn’t had any effect,” said Okinawa’s governor, Takeshi Onaga. Okinawans still bitterly remember a 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl involving two Marines and a Navy sailor, which led to protests, as well as more recent episodes.
Onaga was once the leader of the local chapter of Abe’s right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party, but he has broken with the prime minister over the issue of America’s military footprint, which he wants greatly reduced. Half of the 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan are stationed here, and U.S. facilities take up one-fifth of Okinawan land.
Anger is increasingly reflected in the politics of Okinawa, where local elections are being held today. Late last month, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly passed a resolution demanding that all U.S. Marines be removed from the island, its strongest censure of the American military to date.
The furor is erupting at a sensitive time for Okinawa, and for Japan, and the growing wealth and power of China has sharpened the debate about the island’s future.
Abe is seeking to reinforce its position as a military outpost by building a new but widely contested base for the Marines and expanding Japan’s own military assets. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces began operating a sophisticated new radar station this year on the tiny island of Yonaguni, part of Okinawa prefecture, to monitor Chinese naval activity in the East China Sea.
But at the same time, Asia’s new prosperity is opening up other possibilities. Foreign tourism was up 70 percent last year. Airlines are adding new international flights to the semitropical island, while more Asian cruise lines are docking at Naha’s port.
The bases never made Okinawans rich: The prefecture has the lowest per capita income in Japan, one-third below the national average. Now, dependence on them is in decline, Meguro said, and with it Okinawans’ tolerance for the problems they bring.
Hiroji Yamashiro, a retired local civil servant, said that he wanted Okinawa to become a tourist center, but that the bases stood in the way. He spends most days protesting outside the gates of Camp Schwab, a Marine armory and firing range in the north that the Japanese and American governments want to radically expand by filling in a bay and building a pair of aircraft runways.
The plan illustrates the complexities facing Japanese and U.S. policymakers. The expanded base is intended to replace another facility to the south, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which sits in the middle of a crowded city and has been the object of some of the most vigorous complaints by Okinawans. A Marine helicopter crashed just outside its walls in 2004, damaging a university.
Tokyo and Washington agreed two decades ago to shift much of Futenma’s equipment and personnel to Schwab. But local opposition has blocked the move, and work on the project was frozen before it really began.
Successive Japanese and U.S. governments have struggled to find a satisfactory solution to the Futenma issue. Deadlines to start construction at Schwab have come and gone, holding up a broader reorganization of U.S. forces in Japan that would move some troops off Okinawa to Guam.
Local authorities have little say over base policy. But they can hold up projects with tactics like withholding construction permits. The prefectural government recently fought Tokyo to a standstill in court over the expansion plan. A judge persuaded both sides to return to the negotiating table in March, but neither has shown signs of retreating.
“We’ll keep delaying until 2020, then 2030,” said Susumu Inamine, the mayor of Nago, where Camp Schwab is situated. “The question is, can the U.S. wait that long before looking for another option?”
© 2016 The New York Times Company