Okinawans Will Be Forced To Renew Leases For Bases

Overruling the objections of Okinawa’s governor, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto signed documents Thursday to force reluctant property owners on Okinawa to renew leases for U.S. military bases.

As a result of the renewal, police girded themselves for protests at a U.S. military communications facility where a lease expires Sunday. Workers at the facility near the village of Yomitan hurried Thursday to finish a protective outer security fence.

Demands for removal of all U.S. bases from the southern Japanese island have escalated since the Sept. 4 rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl that resulted in the convictions of three American servicemen.

A few weeks after the rape, about 60,000 people joined in the largest anti-U.S. military demonstration ever on Okinawa, and many other protests followed.

Islanders have also protested noisy aircraft overflights.

On Thursday, however, U.S. and Japanese negotiators agreed to new noise-reduction rules at two American air bases on Okinawa, about 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo.

Kadena and Futenma bases are to restrict night flights, strictly limit flights below 1,000 feet, ban the testing of jet engines after dark and curtail other activities that have drawn complaints.

Sensitive to his constituents’ unhappiness over the Americans’ presence on the island, Okinawa Gov. Masahide Ota has refused to sign lease documents for the bases, something other island governors customarily did.

By defying a court order this week to sign the documents, Ota in effect gave Hashimoto the right to intervene to keep the land in U.S. hands. A legal battle is likely, however, because Ota has vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Of the 32,000 landowners with plots used by the U.S. military on Okinawa, 2,937 are refusing to renew their leases, affecting about 10 percent of the land used by the American bases in Okinawa.

Ota did not comment on the move, but he said: “Although I can understand the way people in Okinawa think, it is hard to change a situation that has developed over 50 years at once.”