Under a 50-year-old accord, a small corner of Japan is reluctant host to American forces, writes DAVID McNEILLin Tokyo
ALMOST exactly half a century ago, Tokyo and Washington signed a landmark agreement so divisive it forced then US president Dwight D Eisenhower to cancel a trip to Japan, led to the resignation of Japan’s prime minister Nobusuke Kishi and sparked large riots and violent demonstrations by students and trade unionists across the country.
Yet, despite the best efforts of its opponents, the US-Japan Security Treaty (Ampo) – the keystone of US defence policy in Asia – is still with us. The two sides officially celebrated its anniversary last month, even as they were buffeted by what could be the most serious crisis in the treaty’s history. Many wonder if it will survive 2010 at all.
The treaty is one of the odder creations of international diplomacy because it depends on a key contradiction: how can a country that is supposedly neutral and pacifist also be a key player in the American global defence network? The answer, points out Japan-based political scientist Douglas Lummis, is Okinawa, Japan’s southern-most prefecture.
Nearly 1,000 miles from Tokyo, and a psychological world away, Okinawa hosts about 75 per cent of all US military facilities in Japan. Thousands of young marines – many battle-scarred from Iraq and Afghanistan – are uneasily stationed there. The marine’s Futenma air base squats right in the centre of crowded Ginowan city, bringing noise, pollution and crime.
For decades, Okinawans complained of being forced to bear the burdens – and contradictions – of the nation’s entire defence strategy. Out of sight and mostly out of mind of the mainland, they demanded the US bases and troops be spread more evenly in Japan. Until last year, they were largely ignored by a succession of conservative governments led by the Liberal Democrats (LDP). But the election of the liberal-left Democrats (DPJ) under prime minister Yukio Hatoyama has raised expectations of long-awaited change.
The prime minister has made little secret of his desire to end what he calls Japan’s “subservience” to US interests. He has publicly questioned whether Japan should host any American troops during peacetime and called for a major reassessment of a defence strategy he believes is still frozen in cold war amber.
Before being elected, he demanded a review of a 2006 agreement calling for the relocation of the ageing Futenma base to a pristine, ecologically important area off Okinawa’s northern coastline. Okinawans responded by overwhelmingly backing the Democrats in last August’s general election. Now they’re wondering if they made a mistake.
Caught between Washington’s increasingly insistent demands to honour the 2006 deal and his promise to Okinawa, Hatoyama dithered before deciding to appoint a government committee to adjudicate. His strategy now seems to be to wait until the outcome of local elections in Okinawa before making a final decision in May.
In the meantime, the prospect of having to live beside a huge new US airbase has alarmed the citizens of Nago, the nearest small city. Local polls show opposition running at over well over 70 per cent. Last month, voters opted for anti-base candidate Susumu Inamine against Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, who said the facility would bring jobs and money to the local economy.
Inamine has added heft to a campaign largely shouldered until now by pensioners and students, who have camped for years in Heneko, the village that will host the US facility. The election outcome has added a layer of complexity: “National security policy cannot be made in towns and villages,” Lieut Gen Keith J Stalder, commander of marine forces in the Pacific, said last month.
Pressure is coming too from Hatoyama’s domestic opponents, who say he risks badly damaging the half-century alliance and has not seriously considered the implications of unhitching Japan’s defence wagon from its US partner. Opting for the Hatoyama route means Japan “would have to increase its five trillion yen defence budget by 10 per cent annually for the next 10 years”, warned Sentaku political magazine this month.
As the deadline for a decision nears, many analysts believe Hatoyama will give way to US demands and face down the Okinawans – probably the least worst political option. But many have been surprised by his stubbornness. Whatever the final outcome of the dispute, says veteran Japan watcher Gavan McCormack in an essay in Japan Focus, “the Hatoyama government has so far withstood the most sustained barrage of US pressure, intimidation, insult, ultimatum, and threat, and decided, at least for the present, to say: ‘No.’ ”