Okinawa and the Politics of an Alliance

摘要

The problem of whether a US Marine Corps air base in Okinawa (Futenma Air Station) should be relocated to a new facility or moved off the island entirely has been a fishbone in the throat of the Japan-US alliance. Okinawa's location makes it a strategic asset for US regional and global military strat-egy: the island provides easy access to the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait and serves as a crucial hub of America's global military network of bases and facilities.While Okinawa Prefecture occupies only 0.6% of Japan's territory, about 11% of the prefecture's total area is occupied by US bases, which represents about 75% of the total area of all the US bases in Japan.1 The prefectural and other local governments, along with ordinary citizens, have frequently protested against the US presence, which is seen as a symbol of Tokyo's unequal treatment of Okinawans in the context of Japan's security depen-dence on the United States and, more generally, of an unequal relationship that has impaired Japan's sovereignty. How to manage the relocation issue is linked not only to the alliance's political viability but also to the legiti-macy of the Japanese government.