Banyan: A weak link in the island chain

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

FRIESIANS, Catalans, Basques and Québécois: pro-independence activists from many would-be nations were gripped by Scotland’s referendum in September on independence from the United Kingdom. Among the observer missions was the independence movement from the southern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa, which encompasses an island chain, the Ryukyus, that was its own kingdom until it was annexed by Japan in the 19th century. The interest in Edinburgh was hypothetical. Okinawan independence is not on the cards, and polls suggest no more than 5% of a population of about 1.4m support it. But like many Scots, many Okinawans are disgruntled. And as they vote on November 16th for a new governor, that could spell trouble not just for the central government, but also for America.

This is because of the dominant campaign issue: America’s military facilities on Okinawa, always unpopular for their intrusive presence and the fear that they put Okinawa on the front line of a future conflict. About half the 53,000 American troops in Japan are based on Okinawa island, the largest of the chain. The bases there occupy 18% of Okinawa’s land area, or nearly three-quarters of the American army’s overall footprint in Japan. Especially controversial is the Futenma marine air base, which is wholly surrounded by the city of Ginowan as if it were a local baseball stadium. Way back in 1996 it was agreed that Futenma would be moved. In 2006 a new site was identified at Henoko, in Okinawa’s less populated north-east. Politics impeded the move, until the current governor, Hirokazu Nakaima, who was re-elected in 2010 on an anti-Henoko platform, changed his position last year. Preliminary work has started at Henoko.

For the government of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, putting the Futenma issue behind Japan is a priority. The American alliance has rarely mattered more to Japan, as China has sought to challenge its rule of the Senkaku islands (Diaoyu to the Chinese), some 400km (250 miles) from Okinawa. Despite ending the deep-freeze to which China had consigned Mr Abe, his encounter with President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week still looked frosty.

Some American analysts have questioned whether such a big deployment in Okinawa is necessary, yet it remains central not just to America’s defence of Japan but also to its presence in the western Pacific—and so to the “pivot” Barack Obama has proclaimed, tilting American strategic weight towards Asia. Closer to Seoul, Shanghai and Taipei than to Tokyo, and within what China calls the “first island chain” dividing it from the open Pacific, Okinawa is also close to the region’s most dangerous flashpoints: the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and, of course, the Senkakus.

By tradition, politicians in Tokyo think that Okinawa can always be bought off: per person, it gets more central-government subsidy than any other prefecture. Last year Mr Abe promised it at least ¥300 billion ($2.6 billion) every year until 2021. And his government has been pulling out the stops to help Mr Nakaima, who is 75, win re-election for a third term. The chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, has been appointed “minister in charge of alleviating the burden of the bases in Okinawa”. Senior figures in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have visited to lend Mr Nakaima their support. He says Henoko is the best option for Okinawa; it could allow Futenma to be closed within five years, well ahead of the 2022 deadline agreed on with America.

Of the three candidates opposing Mr Nakaima, the most dangerous is Takeshi Onaga, until recently mayor of Naha, Okinawa’s main city. A former LDP bigwig, he led Mr Nakaima’s campaign office in 2010. He opposes Henoko, a position shared, according to a poll in August, by 80% of Okinawa’s people. And he appeals to Okinawa’s sense of its own identity. The LDP hopes it can win at the ballot for reasons that swayed many Scots to vote against independence: the economic benefits of union (though, say local officials, curfews and other rules limiting the spending of American servicemen have sharply cut the economic benefits of the bases themselves). Moreover, in theory, the prefectural government cannot stop the Henoko project anyway. It is a central-government undertaking.

It could, however, make life difficult—delaying or revoking construction permits, for example. And activists might feel emboldened if Mr Onaga won. A hardy band of now mainly elderly protesters has agitated for decades as each new perceived outrage has added to Okinawa’s “burden”: crimes, including rape, by American servicemen; environmental damage; the extension of leases to the land on which the bases sit; aviation accidents and noise; and the arrival in 2012 of Osprey aircraft with an allegedly dubious safety record. Enforcing the current 2km exclusion-zone around the site might lead to clashes with protesters, who have taken to canoes in a part of the sea to be filled in for the project.

The weight of history

One Okinawan points to an even more fundamental reason why the bases are so unpopular. At the end of the second world war Okinawa suffered invasion, unlike the Japanese main islands; today, it harbours a visceral fear of another war. In the battle with American forces in 1945 some 240,000 people died, including a quarter of the island’s civilian population. Under American administration until 1972, Okinawa has come to accept that its future is within Japan rather than as an independent state or as part of China, to which, for centuries, the Ryukyu kingdom paid tribute.

Yet a museum at a moving prefectural memorial on the island’s rugged south coast, where many Okinawans were forced to leap to their deaths, emphasises the suffering of the local population at the hands of the Japanese army as well as the invaders. Okinawans may be reconciled to being Japanese. But many feel their country has always thrown them off a cliff; American bases, rather than being a cornerstone of their defence, seem another reason why, one day, they might be attacked again.

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