 In 27 years, facilities worth 2 trillion yen given to U.S. forces in Japan The Japanese government has paid as much as 1,981 billion yen in "sympathy budgets" for U.S. military facilities in Japan during the past 27 years from FY 1977, according to a Defense Facilities Administration Agency (DFAA) material. The DFAA released this at the request of Akamine Seiken, Japanese Communist Party lawmaker in the House of Representatives. The material includes a list of items by facilities and cases, covering 12,747 cases. The list shows that new facilities were built in 66 U.S. bases, including housing for U.S. personnel and their families, school buildings, runways, piers, 67 kinds of facilities in total. As many as 11,283 housing units were supplied for USFJ families. An apartment-type housing unit has an average size of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious cooking and dining room, a porch, and a laundry room according to The Stars and Stripes (April 4 issue). School children at U.S. military bases are studying in a class size at 18-25 in 35 schools, costing 43.1 billion yen in total. In addition, the number of "considerate" swimming pools, baseball stadiums, and gymnasiums totals 49. A huge amount of money has been paid for operation-related U.S. facilities, especially for the construction of a new off-shore runway in U.S. Marine Corps Iwakuni Air Station in Yamaguchi. The cost totals 173.4 billion yen and is still unfinished. The USFJ plans to redeploy its carrier-based aircraft to U.S. Marine Corps Iwakuni Air Station to carry out night landing practices (NLP) as part of its "transformation" plan. The number of newly constructed facilities for U.S. bases is as follows (top four): 2,213 for U.S. Misawa Air Base in Aomori, 1,430 for U.S. Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, 1,029 for U.S. Maki-minato Service Area in Okinawa, and 949 for U.S. Yokosuka Naval Base in Kanagawa. The list does not cover payments for charges of electricity and water supply at U.S. bases. The payment of such a "sympathy" budget contradicts the Japan-U.S. Status of U.S. Forces Agreement that requires the U.S. to pay the costs of maintaining U.S. forces in Japan. - Akahata, April 27, 2005 |