Okinawa Makes Hatoyama Pay

After eight months in power, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama walks on unstable ground. He has yet to see the political cost of his recent agreement with Washington concerning an American military base on Okinawa, which made him disregard one of his most important electoral promises. The aerial base on Futenma shall stay. This decision made the persisting high levels of discontent in Japanese society jump higher, especially among those who suffer at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

Tokyo and Washington announced the news simultaneously last week: The aerial base at Futenma, which houses 2,000 U.S. Marines and is located right in the middle of the town of Ginowan, will not be moved from Okinawa. It will only be moved to Nago, a less populated area in the northern part of the island. Since then, waves of people have threatened to drown the very leader who began his term with an approval rating of more than a 70 percent.

The first sign of disapproval was the refusal to sign the resolution to relocate the base by the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, Mizuho Fukushima, who worked as minister of state for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety, Social Affairs and Gender Equality in the coalition headed by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). For this reason, she was stripped of her position and in response her party, left the governing coalition, leaving the DPJ without a majority in the Diet.

But it’s not only within the realms of government that the prime minister has seen his approval ratings go down. A recent poll shows that 51.2 percent of those surveyed believed that Hatoyama should resign for not keeping his electoral promise to close down the Futenma base, while 44.4 percent believed the opposite. In addition, popular support for his cabinet’s performance fell to 19.2 percent in May. On top of that, there has been a rise in protests in Okinawa, where inhabitants are tired of the American military presence and have seen their hopes to be freed from this burden extinguished once more.

During his electoral campaign, Hatoyama promised to remove the unpopular U.S. base from the island and, if possible, from Japan. But, in the end, he could not. The U.S., Japan’s unconditional ally, did not give him a chance to breathe with all kinds of pressure. It cannot be forgotten that Japan is the cornerstone of the White House’s strategy on the continent, and that Washington was not willing to lose important grounds. As much as they complicated the situation, they did not give in, even knowing that this issue has been the center of debate in Japanese political life during the prime minister’s short term — higher than the rising public debt crisis.

Experts assure that Hatoyama sacrificed a large part of his political credibility by waiting eight months to take refuge, after all is said and done, in the same treaty signed by the United States in 2006 by the previous prime minister. Meanwhile, he no longer has the majority support that gave him the electoral triumph that put an end to the hegemony of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party. For those who understand, he quickly destroyed his power and still has to pass the test of the new elections that will reseat half of the Diet.

While the end of this story has yet to be seen, what is certain is that the residents of Okinawa will continue to carry on their shoulders the weight of the unwanted presence of American soldiers on their land. American soldiers constitute more than half of all servicemen deployed in Japan. They do not understand strategy, security or alliances. They are the most harmed. The noise made by airplanes, contamination, delinquency and the risk of accidents will continue, just a bit more to the north. Protests will surely continue. Later on, they will send Hatoyama the bill.