2010: Japan Behind the News >> What the Islanders Know: U.S. Bases Keep Okinawa Poor

Cultural News, 2010 June Issue

By Motoaki Kamiura, Military Analyst

Translated by Alan Gleason

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military bases in Okinawa served as the launching pad for the bombardment of North Vietnam, but also for an economic boom fed by “special procurements” for the war. There was a time when local cab drivers, it was said, made more money in tips from American soldiers than the local mayors earned in salary.

But with the end of the Cold War, the Okinawa bases came to be reviled as perpetrators of noise, environmental pollution, and crime. To suppress local opposition to the bases, the Japanese government threw large amounts of “base subsidy” money at the island and commissioned roads, community centers and other construction projects. In short, cash served as the sweetener to make Okinawans swallow the bitter pill of the American bases.

The current controversy over relocation of the U.S. Marines’ Futenma Air Station has heightened Okinawan loathing of the bases by reminding them that the Americans occupy vast stretches of the island’s flattest land and prime real estate, thereby hampering industrial development and economic growth. In other words, the bases have kept Okinawa poor.

Okinawa Prefecture’s average per capita income is only 2.04 million yen (US$22,000) a year, the lowest in Japan, and its unemployment rate is the highest in the country. Recent news reports describe 200 people applying for a single job in the stockroom of an on-base supermarket. Those are the only places hiring in Okinawa these days.

In this economic climate, all the political parties in Okinawa have found it expedient to form a united front on the Futenma relocation issue and join the vast majority of residents in their opposition to construction of a new base elsewhere on the island.

Yet neither the Japanese nor the U.S. government seems to grasp the depth and breadth of this opposition. They continue to believe that tossing a few more crumbs at the populace will resolve the Futenma issue.

But the state of Okinawa today is ample proof that cash infusions of this sort do not improve the livelihood of its citizens. The islanders have now realized this and are beginning to speak out about it. That is the real source of the outrage against the Futenma relocation.

If Okinawa’s bases and the people who live around them are to achieve anything resembling peaceful coexistence — the sort that will ensure a brighter future for the island’s children — then a new kind of governance of the bases is required.

Motoaki Kamiura is a Tokyo-based military analyst. He appears frequently on national television programs.

Alan Gleason is an editor, writer, and Japanese-English translator. He lives in Tokyo.