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ﾔAgreementﾕ on new U.S. air base in Nago will perpetuate Okinawansﾕ burdens
Akahata editorial (excerpts)

Defense Agency Director General Nukaga Fukushiro and Nago Mayor Shimabukuro Yoshikazu in Okinawa have ironed out differences over the plan to construct a new U.S. base on the shoreline of U.S. Camp Schwab in the city by agreeing to build two runways, one for take-offs and the other for landings. This is a plan that will impose a U.S. base that is far greater in size than the one which the government initially planned to construct on the shoreline.

This plan will only please the U.S. Marine Corps while seriously threatening local residentsﾕ safety and contaminating waters off Nago.

The Defense Agency plan is one of forcing the residents to accept such a dangerous base plan by taking advantage of residentsﾕ minimal request that no U.S. military aircraft fly over their villages.

The plan to use two runways, one for take-offs and the other for landings, in the same direction, is a trick covering up how U.S. military aircraft are actually flown in Japan. The U.S. forces never make public their flight plans in order to maintain free flight operations. At the U.S. Kadena Air Base and other bases, flight paths vary.

With two runways made available at the new air base, U.S. forces can strengthen their operational functions. It will no longer be necessary to keep a plane waiting for take-off until a plane making its approach lands at the base. This will allow more planes to be deployed, thus increasing the danger of accidents.

Compared to the on-sea air base plan initially proposed by the 1996 Japan-U.S. agreement on the Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), the new plan will be for a state-of-the-art U.S. air base in Okinawa. The SACO agreement envisaged a base that ﾒcan also be removed when no longer necessary,ﾓ but this provision disappeared from the new plan. The length of runways is extended to 1,800 meters from the initial 1,500 meters. (*)

*The 1,800-meter runway assumes the use of the U.S. Marine Corps state-of-the-art vertical landing-take-off MV22 Osprey, reported in Akahata of April 9, 2006.

The Defense Facilities Administration Agency chief has revealed that a pier for unloading and oil storage will be added. This means that the new base will also have a military port. With U.S. high-speed transport ships deployed to the port, the new base will become a new major foothold for U.S. ground combat units at U.S. Camp Schwab and neighboring Camp Hansen to be swiftly deployed to anywhere in the world.
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The new base will need huge amounts of tax money. We must stop such an agreement made in complete disregard of the hardships the Japanese people will have to endure because of Japanﾕs subservience to the U.S.

The U.S. government puts emphasis on the new base in Okinawa because it will be a major foothold for U.S. preemptive strikes abroad but it will never be for defending the peace and security of Japan.

The agreement reached between the government and the mayor is adding fuel to Okinawansﾕ anger over U.S. bases. For the sake of Okinawansﾕ safety and world peace, we must demand that the new base plan be withdrawn and U.S. military bases removed from Japan.
- Akahata, April 9, 2006