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I live in Ginowan city. It's a nice place to live, conveniently located between Naha and Okinawa City (Koza). It has become a commuter town or as they say in Japanese 'bed' town. With many Okinawans travelling to Naha daily the city has absorbed a lot of new housing over the years since reversion. This gives it the feel of most other 'bed' towns in Japan where urban planning seems to be a foreign concept. An incongruous mix of pachinko parlors and second hand furniture shops line Route 58 through Ginowan. New concrete apartment blocks sit next to traditional Ryukyuan houses and light industry sits on reclaimed land down by the bay where in nearby fields farmers tend their crops of water potato.
As Ginowan continues to grow and absorb the urban sprawl of Naha there is one area which sits conspicuously underdeveloped. A cursory glance at an aerial photo of Ginowan City (left) highlights this disparity clearly. The huge clear area of land in the heart of Ginowan is MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) Futenma and it is this base which dissects the City in such a way as to earn Ginowan the sobriquet 'the doughnut'. It is a peculiar sight to see the C-130 Hercules transport planes lurch and bank over the crowded suburban streets of Ginowan and indeed no less a miracle a disaster hasn't occurred (though there have been three helicopter crashes in the base since 1980 and the occasional helicopter has gone down in the bay over the years). 'Squads' of choppers fly in to land in tight formation over my apartment almost daily, the last flight usually coincides with the 11pm news report which is inaudible for the duration.... . A trip to the main Ginowan Post Office though barely 3km away (by Marine helicopter) is turned into a 10km crawl around the congested streets of Futenma. These are dangers and inconveniences that I'm sure any American living on home soil would not stand for. Okinawans however find themselves disadvantaged politically and economically and their voice has struggled to be heard over these issues. Unfortunately, It takes such tragedies as murder and rape by US service members to put Okinawa in the spotlight, and to give Okinawans the opportunity of being heard
In the aftermath of the now infamous rape of a 12 year old schoolgirl in the autumn of 1995, an agreement was made between the Japanese and US governments to return 11 military facilities in Okinawa, the most substantial of which was to be MCAS Futemna. At the time of the announcement the mood in Ginowan was celebratory but as the air cleared and the small print read and digested, the celebrations were cut short. It was a requirement of the agreement that any relocation of Futenma's facilities (and indeed most other relocations) would have to be within Okinawa! This was a stunning piece of logic on the part of Tokyo but those who are familiar with Okinawan history and especially Tokyo's willingness to sacrifice Okinawa for the good of the nation were not too surprised. In the following months various sites were put forward as possible alternatives to Futenma, perhaps the most bizarre of which was for an offshore construction of some kind which would sidestep the need for landowners permission (but not the Prefectural Government's, which is a perpetual thorn in the side of Prime Minister Hashimoto - so much so that they are trying their damnedest to have a new Governor elected in the Autumn Prefectural Elections, no doubt a Governor who is more sympathetic to Tokyo's wishes). The national government chose to pursue this offshore construction and sought the 'understanding' of the local residents by waving money around in the form of proposed development and public works projects. In this respect Tokyo was showing it's usual hand in that by throwing money at the problem they hope it will somehow go away. As soon as the site at Henoko in Nago City was proposed a strong anti-heliport lobby was mobilized ( letter from "Council for Opposing Offshore Base Construction") amid fears of the impact of the heliport on the environment and local community.
A non-binding referendum was set for December 1997 and the two sides soon set out their stalls. On the pro heliport side there were of course many who would benefit from the project and Tokyo was quick to allign itself with those voices, mostly from the business community, and show it's benevolence in the form of promising to protect the environment ( how exactly driving steel posts into the seabed and coral can be done 'environmentally consciously' is for Tokyo to explain.) and economic development proposals for the northern region ( votes for sale anybody?). The referendum had a high voter turnout of 82%, of which approximately 54% were opposed to the heliport construction and 45% agreed with the plan. In the days following the referendum various Government figures obstreperously voiced their disgust at Nago's failure to 'understand' the bigger picture as it were (and started to bandy heavyhanded threats of not following through with economic stimulii for the area), Nago's Major Higa shocked all involved by announcing that he would accept the heliport plan against the majority's wishes and immediately resigned his position on the grounds that he had divided the city into two over the issue. The fallout of this decision was that the Nago residents would ostensibly have another vote on the heliport issue almost immediately with the candidates for the newly vacant Mayor's post alligning themselves either side of the heliport fence, as it were. In the run up to the election Governor Ota had maintained a silence that he broke unexpectedly days before the vote was held. He came out in support of the anti heliport candidate, Mr. Yoshikazu Tamaki, in a bid to win over last minute waverers, but in the light of the result in which the pro heliport candidate Mr. Tateo Kishimoto won, this tactic would seem to have been ill advised, as it left Ota in a precarious position.
Where does this all leave Futenma in it's struggle to rid itself of the base? Initial reports from Washington left the problem squarely in the hands of the Japanese Government, and stressed that Futenma would not be moving if a suitable replacement site were not found. One point that has not been discussd deeply enough is the rationale that Okinawa is the only feasible candidate for a replacement site. This belligerent line from Tokyo is becoming tediously selfserving. A congressional committee -The US General Accounting Office- stepped into the fray when it criticized the proposed relocation plan as a waste of public money and environmentally and operationally dangerous. On an optimistic note perhaps Ginowan and Okinawa's best hope of relief would probably not come from Tokyo but the US should it be decided that the current levels of US forces (and more pertinently for Okinawa, marines) are no longer neccesary in the region due to changing relationships in the critical areas of Korea and Taiwan. This is fast becoming the reality of the people here in Ginowan.
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