Japan Press Weekly

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2013 January 9 - 15 [US FORCES]

CV22s likely to be deployed at Kadena base

The U.S. Air Force is considering deploying eight CV22 Ospreys at the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, revealed Akahata from documents it obtained.

Okinawa will likely accommodate more than 30 Ospreys in total in addition to the already-deployed 12 and another 12 scheduled to be deployed this summer to the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma base, which will increase the noise pollution and the danger of crashes and thus inevitably arouse anger among Okinawans.

The documents Akahata obtained show that eight CV22 Ospreys will be deployed to the 353rd Special Operations Group at the Kadena base.

The U.S. Command in Japan gave an ambiguous answer to an Akahata inquiry on January 9, but Michael B. Donley as Secretary of the U.S. Air Force on January 11 confirmed the existence of the plan to deploy CV22s to Okinawa or to somewhere else in Japan during his press conference in Washington.

Unlike MV22s deployed to replace the existing CH46 helicopters at the Marines Futenma base, CV22s are to be deployed to increase the functions of the Air Force Kadena base.

The latter base has two 4000-meter-long runways. Aircraft from mainland Japan, the U.S., and South Korea also use this base on a daily basis, emitting a huge amount of noise. The noise has already been greatly disturbing residents in the vicinity of the Kadena base.

In addition, CV22s are even more crash-prone than MV22s. The aircraft caused a fatal crash involving 20 people in Afghanistan in April 2010 followed by another one injuring five people in Florida in June 2012.

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The Kadena Town Assembly on January 11 unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the cancellation of the CV22 deployment at the Kadena base. The resolution denounces the so-called “reduction of Okinawans’ base burdens” agreed upon between Japan and the United States in relation to the U.S. military realignment as “an absolute lie”.

Japanese Communist Party members of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly visited the Okinawa Defense Bureau in Kadena Town on January 11 to demand the cancellation of the plan to deploy CV22s to the Kadena base. JCP member of the House of Representatives Akamine Seiken accompanying their petition pointed out, “Flight training by CV22s in itself is dangerous.”