Before Christmas, a contingent of 105 American navies which would have been sent to Okinawa was redirected to a new base on the American territory of Guam instead. The small reshuffle marked an important step: it was the first time that the navies cut the number of heads on Okinawa as part of an agreement between Washington and Tokyo to shrink an oversized American military presence on the Pacific Island that goes back to the Second World War.
Under the agreement, 9,000 navies – just under half of the force currently on the island – are ultimately supposed to leave. But their departure is already two decades behind the original calendar and may not occur for more than a decade to come, until the construction of replacement bases is finished.
Their redeployment was agreed in an agreement signed 12 years ago, the result of negotiations and renegotiations dating back to 1995, when three American soldiers violated a schoolgirl from Okinawa. This crime resulted in mass demonstrations that forced the United States and Japan to agree to reduce the American bases, which were built after the United States stormed Okinawa during a bloody battle in 1945.
The first iteration of the agreement, agreed in 1996, was supposed to reduce the burden in the five to seven years by building an air base at the northern end of the island to replace one in a crowded city. A generation later, the old aerodrome remains used and the new one is at least 12 years after completion.
While some islanders are getting impatient, this constant state of delay seems to be well with the governments of the United States and Japan, which have a great geopolitical reason – the boom of China – to want to maintain the marines in place.
“Thus, a dozen years later, only a hundred marines have moved,” said Christopher B. JohnstoneFormer director of Northeast Asia at the office of the Secretary of Defense who helped direct the American negotiations of the current agreement of 2013. “The two parties know that things cannot move forward, but none Parties is not encouraged to act. “
The urgency to move the navies has been compromised because China has made its presence more and more felt with military exercises. Last week, the Japanese Defense Ministry reported Follow four Chinese sailing vessel ships Between Okinawa and a neighboring island.
The growing Chinese presence is felt in Tokyo and Washington, but also in Naha, the capital of Okinawan, where Chinese language tourists make the Kokusai Dori crowd, the main shopping street. The recent mayor’s elections through Okinawa have been swept away by conservatives who have a more favorable vision of American bases as a protective presence which also provides essential jobs.
While anti-base demonstrations still attract hundreds of cries demonstrators, many present themselves with walking rods. The youngest Okinawans are more likely to be found in shopping centers such as the American villagewhere they mingle with American staff and their families.
There are still a lot of Okinawans who are furious at the bases. They blame Tokyo as much as Washington, claiming that the American presence proves that Japan still considers their island – which was an independent kingdom until the 19th century – as a little more than an internal colony. The current governor, Denny Tamaki, was one of the main opponents of the bases, but he and his predecessor ended up slowing down the process of reducing the American presence by refusing permits and asking for judicial orders to block construction new aerodrome. Last month, the Supreme Court of Japan rejected his final trialpaving the way for the construction of proceeding.
“Keeping the foundations exert an excessive burden for the inhabitants of Okinawa,” said Tamaki, a former social worker whose father was a American sailor. “The pressure they have exerted on us, in the form of a crime, noise and accidents, is a type of structural discrimination.”
However, thought in the capitals of the two nations has clearly changed. When the initial agreement has been signed, the United States has not been disputed in the Western Pacific. The Chinese army could now put Okinawa in the easy range of missiles, and North Korea has also built a nuclear arsenal.
Japan would be on the front line of any conflict in Taiwan, which is at the sight of the southern island of the Okinawa chain. In 2022, a Chinese military exercise intended to intimidate the self-stripting island also abandoned missiles in waters near Japan.
“We all recognize that the world has changed since the 1990s,” said Kevin Maher, a former American diplomat who was Consul General of Okinawa. “That makes people think:” Oh, should the Marines really start to move? “”
However, Mr. Maher and many other American officials say that the current plan remains the best option. Recent incidents like Four sexual assaults reported by American soldiers last year Underline the risk of renewing anger against the American bases, and Tokyo has little stomach to reopen a negotiated turtle agreement.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba repeated his commitment to the current plan at a meeting last week with President Trump, according to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Ishiba previously said that the gap left by outgoing navies could be filled by Japanese forces or joint bases.
“We will continue to work on the reduction of the basic burden,” I ishiba said last month during the equivalent of a speech by the state of the Union. But he added that “as the balance of powers in the region undergoes a historical change, we must continue to guarantee the regional commitments of the United States”.
Japan does not rush to finish relocation, the centerpiece of which remains the new aerodrome of the Schwab camp, an American installation one hour north of the existing air base it will replace.
The waters filled with coral off the Schwab camp are now occupied by large barges, which create a discharge area five times larger than the Pentagon building. The V -shaped tracks here will one day host helicopters and rotating rotary stammers of stammering, moved from the Air Station of the Marine Corps Futenma in the dense residential districts of the city of Ginowan.
During a visit to Okinawa in December to mark the relocation of the first navies, the Minister of Japan of Defense at the time said that the aerodrome would only be ready for use at least 2036 to 40 years after The first agreement to build it.
The slow progression reflects Japan’s lack of emergency, said Hiromori MaedomariProfessor at the International University of Okinawa who teaches the questions raised by the military bases. “Japan wants to maintain the status quo of the navies in place as long as possible, even if it means that Whitewawawa is consumable,” he said.
Other parts of the relocation plan only enter boom.
In Camp Foster on the southern half of the island, two dozen cranes build a new head office, schools and housing, part of a plan to concentrate Americans on this basis, allowing other bases to close .
“It finally happens,” said Colonel Leroy Bryant Butler, a navy managing construction projects. “We have not seen this level of construction here since the 1950s, when these bases have been built.”
The navies will also move to northern bases of Okinawa, far from crowded population centers. About two -thirds of the American bases in the southern part of the island will eventually be canceled, including a logistics center filled with warehouses, a sea port and the Futenma air base.
The cost of Japan for construction is around 1.5 billion dollars per year. It is in addition to the $ 2.8 billion that Tokyo spent to build a new base on Guam, Camp Blaz, who opened last month And is supposed to house about half of the navies who leave Okinawa.
However, the Marines did not hide their reluctance to reduce their forces and refused to provide a calendar. If a conflict breaks out, the infantry in Guam should probably make its way to Japan against an enemy who can challenge the superiority of the American air and the sea.
“Japan is now in the weapon engagement area,” said Wallace Gregson, a retired marine lieutenant who commanded marine strength on Okinawa. “We have to change the conversation into relevant problems in 2025.”
Kiuko Notoya contributed the reports.
