The Court’s decision on Friday comes as a step supporting the
central government plan to go ahead with the relocation plan based on a
1996 agreement between the US and Japan.
"During the parliamentary elections in July, every single
parliamentary seat for Okinawa went to the opposition parties, which are
against the base’s expansion. The US and the Tokyo government both said
they wanted to relocate the base to a less populated area of Okinawa.
The locals say, however, that even if the airbase is relocated, it
doesn’t mean that the original base is going to be shut down. This is
just an expansion,” Ryan Dawson said.
He added that the people of Okinawa and the governor are obviously
against this base expansion, which they see as trampling on their
sovereignty. Tokyo, for its part, sees this as compliant with its
relations with the Americans.
"The government of Okinawa has decided to withdraw from the
previous agreement on the base. They don’t want the base and will use
every pretext to prevent it from staying there,” Dawson noted.
When asked about the chances of the Supreme Court overturning this
ruling, Ryan Dawson said that the Court usually favors the central
government and that this is something the ruling Liberal-Democratic
Party will have to watch out for because it lost all its parliamentary
seats last July over this issue.
"This is a case of the central government trampling on the local
government and, as the Okinawa governor said, ‘"why would we have a
local government if all its policies are going to be dictated by the
state and that they are not going to listen to local autonomies? Okinawa
is supposed to be governed by Okinawans.’”
Ryan Dawson said that the conflict around the planned expansion of the
US military base in Okinawa is going to help the opposition parties.
"This base relocation is not really a geopolitical matter, it’s about
fulfilling certain business contracts, it’s not really in the military
interest, it’s not there to fight off North Korea or anything like that.
The US is just using Okinawa as a place where it can bully people and
expand personal profits of the corporations involved in the base
expansions,” Dawson continued.
Mentioning the possibility of a compromise reached between the
Okinawans and the central government, Ryan said that he didn’t think so
because whenever the government wants to relocate US Marines or expand
an airstrip, it does so.
"Last year there was a horrible rape and murder of a Japanese woman by a
contractor from one of these military bases and this really turned
public sentiment against the base expansion because of the behavior of
some of the American servicemen. They just do not want them there. Most
people would not want foreign military bases. You couldn’t see
Americans allowing foreign military bases on their territory on their
island or in their home town.”
"The Japanese pay the bill. It’s weird because it is in the US’ interest
to have bases in Okinawa. It should be the Americans paying Japan for
the use of its territory in their own interests. It’s not in Japan’s
interest,” Dawson emphasized.The US wants to have its bases in Okinawa because it is close to
Taiwan. The excuse for the Americans maintaining their bases in Japan
and South Korea since WWII has always been North Korea, and before that
the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The Cold War is gone now, along with
the Soviet Union, so it is just North Korea.
"To have bases in Okinawa just because of North Korea is kind of
ridiculous. You don’t really have a good pretext to maintain bases in
Okinawa other than letting Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and a lot of giant
aerospace companies sell their toys there and it really boils down to
military profiteering. It’s not really helping defense, it’s not helping
the people of Okinawa and these rape cases and murders are turning the
people against the Japanese government, and they also give a bad image
to America,” Ryan Dawson said in conclusion.
More than half of the 47,000 American troops in Japan are stationed
on the island of Okinawa, which hosts about 75 percent of all US bases
in Japan (by land area).
The US command planned to relocate the Okinawa base from a densely
populated area of the island to a more deserted one, but had to abolish
the plan because of strong local resistance.