World IN BRIEF : JAPAN : Foe of U.S. Bases Wins in Okinawa
A Socialist-backed candidate who wants the United States to abandon its military bases on Okinawa was elected governor of the Japanese island prefecture. Masahide Ota, 65, backed by the Socialists, Communists and other opposition parties, defeated Junji Nishime, a conservative who has been Okinawa’s governor for 12 years. Nishime, 69, was backed by Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu’s Liberal Democratic Party and the moderate opposition Democratic Socialist Party. Okinawa, site of bloody fighting in World War II, is host to 35,000 U.S. troops. Ota, who won by only about 30,000 votes in an election that saw 600,000 islanders cast ballots, will take office on Dec. 9 when Nishime’s term ends.
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