Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2015 September 30 - October 6 [POLITICS]

New bilateral pact on US bases in Japan is deceitful

The Japanese and U.S governments on September 29 concluded a pact supplementary to the present Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). The true purpose of the signed accord is to force the planned construction of a new U.S. base on the people of Okinawa.

The supplementary agreement states that when an accident occurs on U.S. bases, the U.S. authorities will “give all due consideration to the request” from Japanese municipalities to enter the base premises in order to conduct environmental impact assessments. This means that it is left up to the U.S. military whether those municipalities will be allowed to carry out such investigations.

Okinawa Governor Onaga Takeshi has recently initiated procedures to revoke his predecessor’s approval for the central government to reclaim the Henoko coastal area to build a new U.S. base. Pretending to be working to ease the burden of U.S. bases on Okinawa, the Japanese and U.S. governments are trying to convince Okinawans to accept the base construction.

In Okinawa, the soil in and around U.S. military facilities are often found to be contaminated with toxic materials such as defoliants from leaking drums abandoned by the U.S. military. Local governments hosting U.S. bases across the country have repeatedly called on Tokyo and Washington to permit them to conduct on-the-spot investigations.

The authorities of the two nations have rejected those requests on the grounds that Article 3 of the SOFA gives the U.S. military the exclusive right to its facilities in Japan. The latest pact does not affect the SOFA’s fundamental nature granting various extraterritorial privileges to the U.S. forces.

On the same day, the Okinawa governor issued a statement criticizing the signed accord as “insufficient”.

The governments of Germany and Italy, which are also military allies of the United States, have the right to supervise U.S. military facilities in their countries and officials are able to enter the base compounds at any time.

The need now is to revise the SOFA itself drastically.

Past related article:
> Okinawa begins procedure to revoke approval for landfill in Henoko [September 15, 2015]