Not far from the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz lies the curiously out-of-place Japanese farming district of Colonia Okinawa. Many of those living there are descendants of Okinawan farmers, forced off their land – by bulldozers or at bayonet point – by American soldiers in the 1950s. Some of the dispossessed were persuaded to make a new life in Bolivia. But when they arrived, instead of the fertile land they had been promised, they were dumped in the jungle where many died of hunger or unfamiliar diseases. Only the more fortunate made it on to Colonia Okinawa, now considered a model of Bolivian development.
This quirky footnote to Japanese (and Bolivian) history illustrates a broader point. Okinawa, a semi-independent kingdom until it was formally annexed by Japan in 1879, has always had a raw deal. Barack Obama, the US president, should ponder this fact when he arrives in Tokyo tomorrow against the backdrop of a messy tussle over an Okinawan base for US marines. He should know that there are three – not two – parties to any discussions about the US-Japan alliance, the half-century old military arrangement that has underpinned postwar Asian stability. Like Banquo’s ghost, Okinawa hovers uncomfortably at the table.
Japan has always treated Okinawa, a tropical island far to the south of the mainland, as an inferior cousin. At the end of the war, in the infamous Battle of Okinawa, or Typhoon of Steel, up to 200,000 people were killed and a quarter of Okinawa’s civilian population wiped out. Kenzaburo Oe, Japan’s Nobel Prize-winning author, chronicled those tragic events in Okinawa Notes, which documented the role of Japan’s imperial army in coercing Okinawan civilians to commit suicide rather than surrender. In 2007, more than 100,000 Okinawans demonstrated against an attempt by the government in Tokyo to erase the incident from school textbooks.
When the US occupation of Japan ended in 1952, Washington held on to Okinawa, its most important military base in the Pacific. The US lorded it over the island until 1972. Even when Okinawa reverted to Japanese control, one-fifth of the land, given over to US military bases, remained off limits.
Many Okinawans benefit economically from the US presence, especially the construction companies that feed off lucrative contracts. Pro-base candidates have sometimes prevailed in local elections. But much of the population regards the Americans as more of an occupying force than a guarantor of safety. From time to time, anti-US sentiment bubbles over. It did so in 1995 after the gang rape of a 12-year-old-girl by three US servicemen, and again in 2004 when a Marine Corp helicopter from the Futenma base slammed into a university, exploding into a fireball.
Incidents like this persuaded both Tokyo and Washington to reduce what most Okinawans consider the unfair “burden” they shoulder in hosting the US military. Okinawa accounts for just 0.6 per cent of the Japanese land mass, but half the nearly 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan are jammed on to its territory. In 1996, they agreed to move the Futenma helicopter base, which sits dangerously in a dense conurbation, to a more remote location on the island. They subsequently drew up proposals to redeploy 8,000 marines to the US territory of Guam in the western Pacific.
A promise by the Democratic party of Japan, which swept to victory in August elections, to reopen negotiations over the Futenma relocation has thrown US-Japan relations into a tailspin. At a time when China is growing more confident, Washington is desperate to avoid any appearance of cracks in its most important Asian alliance. Yet in truth, even under the supposedly alliance-friendly Liberal Democratic party, the Futenma relocation plan had not been implemented in 13 years. Bogged down in endless debates over its cost and impact on the environment, some doubted whether it would ever happen at all.
US officials, including Mr Obama, have promised to be patient with the new government as it tries to figure out what it means to develop a “more equal” partnership with the US. In the meantime, Robert Gates, US defence secretary, has been anything but patient, branding the Futenma relocation non-negotiable and demanding its swift implementation. If the marines do not get their new helicopter base, he has warned, Okinawa will not be able to wave goodbye to the 8,000 marines supposedly bound for Guam.
If there are viable alternatives to the current plan, the DPJ is not letting anyone in on the secret. Futenma’s helicopters could, for example, be moved to the huge Kadena air force base on Okinawa, or to Kyushu, one of Japan’s main islands. A more likely outcome is a messy, face-saving compromise followed by further procrastination.
Many Pentagon officials, long exasperated at Japanese foot-dragging, cannot fathom why Tokyo does not simply enforce its will on Okinawa as it has done so many times before. Certainly, Japan’s new government has not made its life any easier by reopening the discussion. It could even risk sparking wild talk of a serious rift in the US-Japanese alliance. But the historical debt to Okinawa is mountainous. The DPJ is honour-bound to take another look.
david.pilling@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/davidpilling