The slow walk of US Marines from Okinawa

It’s a pathetic milestone: Two months ago, about 100 U.S. Marines who otherwise would have been stationed in Okinawa ended up instead on a base in Guam. This was the first force reduction contemplated by longstanding negotiations between Washington and Tokyo designed to trim the gigantic U.S. military footprint in Japan’s southern-most prefecture. Eventually, 9,000 Marines — a little less than half the number now deployed there — are supposed to exit Okinawa.

But don’t hold your breath. The two countries, members of the most important security alliance in Asia, have been slow-walking the process. They claim that full implementation of the deal hinges on the construction of new U.S. bases in the region, and on the strategic behavior of a rising China.

By contrast, many Okinawans view Washington and Tokyo as collaborators in a conspiracy to saddle them with environmental and social pollution, and potentially expose them to cataclysmic violence. They have become deeply resentful after 80 years of military occupation.

Although it was reclaimed by Japan in 1972, Okinawa still hosts more than 30 U.S. military bases, which equals 70% of all such facilities in the country. This means it is home to more than 25,000 U.S. soldiers — a little more than half of all such foreign troops stationed in the entire country. Almost 30 years ago, after the kidnapping and brutal rape of a 12-year-old girl by American service members, Okinawans overwhelmingly approved a non-binding referendum calling for a reduction in the U.S. military presence.

Washington responded to that massive pressure by signing an agreement to give up 12,000 acres of garrison land. But the 1996 pact, which hinged on the relocation of an air base from Ginowan to Henoko, went nowhere. Although Okinawans hated the original location of the Futenma Marine Base, always viewed as dangerous, especially after a U.S. transport helicopter crashed into a nearby college, they hated the new location at Camp Schwab even more. It will jeopardize a coral reef that sustains all kinds of fish as well as seagrass beds that provide habitat for an endangered marine mammal.

In 2013, Washington and Tokyo tried to revive the original plan, creating a new timetable for reducing the U.S. military presence in Okinawa. With the exception of December’s small redeployment of Marines, however, this pact also gained little traction. Who or what is to blame?

American and Japanese officials say Okinawans have been unreasonable and intransigent. One U.S. official described anti-base activism as “extortion” designed to secure handouts from Washington and Tokyo. Another claimed protesters routinely engage in “hate speech.”

There is no doubt that fierce opposition has delayed the expansion of Camp Schwab, where a new system of runways is slowly being built on top of the Henoko reef. Some project backers have alleged, without evidence, that the Japanese Communist Party has imported paid protesters. Given that the men and women who show up with placards outside the base tend to be anti-war and pro-environment retirees, this is an absurd allegation. It also ignores the fact that Okinawans generally oppose the relocation project.

In 2019, more than 70% of the prefecture’s voters backed a referendum calling for a halt to construction at Henoko. Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki, the estranged son of a U.S. Marine, has won two elections largely on the strength of his opposition to the project. He and other local officials and agencies have filed a string of 14 lawsuits against it. The last piece of litigation was rejected last month by the Supreme Court in Tokyo, paving the way for many more truckloads of dirt and gravel. Despite that breakthrough, completion of the relocation project is still years away.

So, apparently, is the rest of the 2013 plan. In addition to relocating Futenma operations, the U.S. had pledged to close a few other bases in Okinawa’s more densely populated south, moving those Marines to the northern half of the island, to the Japanese mainland, or to Guam. But those bases continue to operate.

“So a dozen years later, only a hundred Marines have moved,” says Christopher Johnstone, who helped negotiate the deal for the Pentagon before becoming Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Both sides know things aren’t moving forward, but neither side is incentivized to take action.”

One of the disincentives, according to Washington and Tokyo, is China, which is flexing its muscles in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Leaders of the U.S.-Japan security alliance prize Okinawa’s strategic location near the Senkaku Islands and Taiwan.

But how can a relatively new factor (China’s rise) cause a continuation of the status quo? Critics of the heavy troop presence in Okinawa say the national leaders in the United States and Japan view the island as “expendable.” In other words, they don’t care much about the island’s fate.

Okinawa is the least “Japanese” of Japan’s 47 prefectures. It was its own Ryukyu kingdom from 1429 to 1879, when it was finally folded into the centralizing, industrializing, and perhaps “Westernizing” regime of Meiji Japan. Before that, it operated as a quasi-independent nation in the China-centered tributary system of East Asia, and served as a critical node in the trading networks that connected the Chinese and Japanese with Southeast Asia. One can still witness the Chinese influence in Okinawan architecture, food, and culture.

Because they tend to be physically darker and culturally distinct, Okinawans have been viewed for years by mainlanders as “different,” and as inferior. Some islanders, especially aspiring assimilationists like the early 20th century anthropologist Ifa Fuyu, became just as critical of what they regarded as “backward” characteristics of their own culture. They described themselves as seiban or “primitive tribal members.” Sadly, such self-loathing has been a common product of colonialism.

World War II deepened Okinawa’s alienation from Tokyo. In the bloodiest and last major battle of the war, U.S. troops seized the islands in a “typhoon of steel” that led to the death of between 100,000 and 150,000 Okinawans, maybe a third or even half of the local population. The Japanese military recruited many islanders to fight and encouraged others to commit suicide rather than, as imperial soldiers warned, be raped or murdered by “impure” invaders.

Okinawa remains poorer than the rest of the country. Infrastructure is less developed, in part due to neglect by the Japanese government before and during the war, and in part due to neglect by the U.S. government during its long military occupation. The unemployment rate is significantly higher than elsewhere in Japan.

The U.S. military provides employment for Okinawan guards, janitors, and cooks on bases, but also (indirectly) bar hostesses outside the gates. The local economy is distorted by its dependence on Japanese tourists and American troops. There is almost no manufacturing on the island.

As much as they resent the military occupation, Okinawans often sound resigned to their fate. They don’t expect relief anytime soon because, according to one anti-base activist, they simply don’t enjoy power: “The American government controls the Japanese government, and the Japanese government controls the Okinawan people. It’s all top-down.”