Japan is forced to pay unusually high cost for U.S. military housing construction

Suspicions are growing that contractor construction companies may be seeking business concessions in the unusually high-priced construction of housing units for U.S. Marines that are to be relocated to Guam from Okinawa at Japanese taxpayers’ expense.

Last April, Nukaga Fukushiro, Defense Agency director general at the time, and then U.S. Secretary for Defense Donald Rumsfeld discussed cost-sharing in the relocation of the Okinawa-based U.S. Marines to Guam and agreed that Japan will pay the cost of construction of 3,500 housing units for US military personnel at a cost of 25.5 billion dollars. The average unit price of the planned housing is 730,000 dollars per unit.

In the December 4 House of Councilors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting, Defense Minister Ishiba Shigeru said that the United States had explained to Japan that the average cost per unit of U.S. military housing construction is 440,000 dollars. The cost per unit built with Japanese taxpayer money is 1.7 times higher.

Ishiba finally said, “It will be necessary to disclose information and explain in the Diet how this cost was estimated. Japanese tax money should not be used without convincing the Diet of the legitimacy of the budget estimate.”

A thoroughgoing investigation is necessary to explain why the construction cost is so unusually high.--Akahata, December 8, 2007