Before Christmas, a contingent of 105 American Marines was redirected instead, who would be sent to Okinawa, instead of the United States of Guam. A little move meant the main milestone: This was the first time Marines lowered the head to Okinawa as part of an agreement between Washington and Tokius to reduce the excessive US military presence on the Pacific Island that dates back to World War II.
According to the agreement, 9,000 Marines – just below half of the power are currently on the island – eventually leave. However, their departure has been for two decades behind the original schedule and does not have to happen for more than ten years until the construction of substitute bases has been completed.
Their transfer was agreed in An agreement signed 12 years agoThe result of negotiations and re -negotiations, which will return to 1995, when three US soldiers raped schoolgirl Okinawan. This crime touched the mass protests that forced the United States and Japan to agree to reduce the US foundations that were built after the United States attacked Okinaw during the bloody battle of 1945.
The first iteration of the agreement, agreed in 1996, was to reduce the burden of five to seven years building an air base at the northern end of the island to replace the existing in a crowded city. A generation later the old airport remains in use and is new at least 12 years after completion.
While some islanders are growing impatiently, this state of constant delay seems to be fine with the Governments of the United States and Japan, which have a great geopolitical reason – the rise of China – for wanting to keep the marines in place.
“So a dozen years later only a hundred Marines moved,” he said Christopher B. JohnstoneFormer director of Northeast Asia in the Office of the Minister of Defense, which helped us lead negotiations on the current agreement of 2013. “Both parties know that things are not moving forward, but neither party is motivated to negotiate.”
The urgency of the relocation of Marines was undermined because China was increasingly feeling its presence by military exercises. The Japanese Ministry of Defense announced last week Watching four Chinese warships Between Okinawa and nearby island.
The growing Chinese presence is felt in Tokyo and Washington, but also in Naha, in the capital Okinawan, where Chinese speaking tourists Da Kokusai Dori, the main shopping street. The recent elections of the mayor across Okinawa have been swept by conservatives who occupy a more favorable view of the American bases as a protective presence, which also adds much needed jobs.
While the demonstrations of anti-storage are still attracting hundreds of screaming demonstrators, many appear with walking. Younger Okinawans are more likely to find in shopping centers such as American villageWhere they mix with American staff and their families.
There are still many Okinawans who are raging at the bases. They blame Tokyo as well as Washington and say that the American presence proves that Japan still perceives its island – which was an independent kingdom until the 19th century – just a little more than the inner colony. The current governor Denny Tamaki was the leading opponent of the bases, but he and his predecessor eventually slowed down the process of reducing the American presence by rejecting permission and searching for court orders to block the construction of a new airport. Last month, the Japanese Supreme Court rejected his last actionclarifying the way to build.
“The maintenance of the foundations puts an excessive burden on Okinawa’s population,” said Mr. Tamaki, a former social worker whose father was an American naval. “The pressure they have exerted on us, in the form of crime and noise and accidents, is a type of structural discrimination.”
Yet thinking in the main cities of two nations has clearly shifted. When the original agreement was signed, the United States was unquestionable in the Western Pacific. The Chinese army could now place Okinawa in the missile range and North Korea has also built a nuclear arsenal.
Japan would be on the first line of any conflict on Tai -wan, which lies in sight of the southernmost island in Okinawan. In 2022, the Chinese military exercise also had to intimidate the island for self -determination the rockets fell into the waters near Japan.
“We all acknowledge that the world has changed since the age of 90,” said Kevin Maher, a former American diplomat who was the general consul of Okinawa. “Will it make people think,” Oh, do the marines really have to start moving? “
Yet Mr. Maher and many other American officials say the current plan remains the best choice. Recent incidents as Last year announced four sexual attacks of American soldiers It underlines the risk of renewed anger at American bases and Tokyo has a small stomach to re -open the winding agreement.
Japanese Prime Minister Shiger Ishiba repeated his commitment to the current plan during Meeting last week with President TrumpAccording to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Mr. Ishiba said earlier that the gap left by the departing marines could be filled with Japanese forces or common bases.
“We will continue to work to reduce the basic burden,” Mr. Ishiba said last month during the equivalent of the most modern speech. He added, however, that “because the balance of power in the region is passing through a historical shift, we must continue to ensure regional commitments of the United States.”
Japan is not in a hurry to complete the relocation, whose peak remains a new airport in the Schwab camp, the American installation an hour north of the existing air base, which it will replace.
Waters filled with corals outside Camp Schwab are now busy with large boats that create a landfill area five times larger than the Pentagon building. The V -shaped runway will one day host helicopters and aircraft rotating Osprey rotors, moved from the Futenma naval staff in dense residential neighborhoods in Ginowan.
During December, when visiting Okinawa, Japanese Defense Minister at that time said that the airport would not be ready for use until 2036 – 40 years after the first agreement to build it.
Slow progress reflects the overall lack of the urgency of Japan, said Hiromori MaedomariProfessor at Okinawa International University, who teaches questions caused by military bases. “Japan wants to keep the status of quo marines as long as possible, although it means that Okinawa is spent,” he said.
Other parts of the relocation plan are only now entering full swing.
In the Foster camp on the southern half of the island, two dozen cranes build a new headquarters, schools and housing, part of the plan to concentrate the Americans on this base, allowing other bases to close.
“It is finally happening,” said col. Leroy Bryant Butler, naval management of construction projects. “We haven’t seen this level of construction since the 1950s when these bases were built.”
Marines will also move to the bases in the north of Okinawa from crowded population centers. In the end, about two -thirds of the American foundations in the southern part of the island, including a logistics node full of warehouses, naval port and Futenma Air Base, will be released.
Japanese construction costs are about $ 1.5 billion a year. In addition, this is to $ 2.8 billion that Tokyo spent on building a new Guam base, Camp Blaz, that was opened last month And he should accommodate about half of the marines who leave Okinawa.
However, the Marines did not conceal their reluctance to reduce their strength and refused to provide a schedule. If the conflict broke out, infantry in Guam would probably have to fight back to Japan against the enemy, which can question American superiority of air and the sea.
“Japan is now in the zone of weapons,” said Wallace Gregson, a naval lieutenant General in retirement who commanded the naval power in Okinawa. “We have to change the conversation to problems that are in 2025.”
Kiuko Notoya contributed by reporting.
