September 14, 2023

The tax money spent until the end of March 2022 for the planned construction of a new U.S. base in the Henoko district in Okinawa's Nago City has already amounted to 431.2 billion yen.

This was revealed during a negotiation held between the 7-member group of the Japanese Communist Party Okinawa prefectural assemblypersons and the central government on September 12 in the Diet building.

Only 15% of reclamation work for the Henoko base project has been completed at the end of March 2023. As the central government estimates the total construction cost will be about 930 billion yen, nearly half of the money has already been spent. By simple calculation, the project will exceed 2.55 trillion yen in total to complete the base construction.

The JCP Okinawa prefectural assemblypersons' group demands that the Henoko base project be abandoned since an enormous amount of tax money is to be used in spite of no prospect for completion.