Landowners Lose With Return of Okinawa Base

The deafening sounds of U.S. military helicopters over his home so anger Toyokichi Miyagi that he wants to run out and hurl rocks at them.

But ask how he feels now that the U.S. government has agreed to return the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa to local landowners like him, and his wizened face breaks out in consternation.

“We are really going to be in a fix,” the 75-year-old retiree says fretfully.

That’s because Miyagi receives $12,000 annually from renting his land to the air base. That and an equal amount from his pension are his entire income and provide the money to pay his mother’s annual $9,600 nursing-home bill. Miyagi has no idea how to replace that income when the base is returned within seven years.

The announcement earlier this month that the United States will return more than 12,000 acres, or 20% of the land being used by the U.S. military here, was hailed as a breakthrough for the long-suffering Okinawans.

For decades, they have clamored for relief from the burden of hosting the bulk of the U.S. military facilities in Japan--along with the crime, noise and pollution they bring.

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Yet here in Ginowan, where military land-use fees provide a security blanket for the mostly elderly landowners, the planned reversion is causing deep unease.

In fact, 70% of the 2,175 landowners polled last year said they did not desire Futenma’s return until the government had a concrete plan to convert the land and replace the lost income, said Seiten Hanashiro, chairman of the Ginowan landowners association.

Yet Okinawan officials made Futenma the top priority for return without consulting them, he said.

The income loss is one reason why only 100 of the island’s 30,000 landowners are refusing to renew leases for land housing U.S. facilities and why only 100 have joined the Anti-War Landowners Assn.

“More than half of our members are older than 60 years old and rely on this money for their lives,” Hanashiro said. “What are they going to do?”

Local officials have a general vision to turn the Futenma site--now an air base with a heliport, an extended runway and housing facilities--into an “international city” bridging Japan and Southeast Asia. They dream of a convention center, an outdoor market, Okinawa-style tropical resort facilities and a research center.

Having suffered the bloodiest battle of World War II, Okinawans want to convert their land from America’s most important Asian military platform to an “Island of Peace.”

They envision becoming a center of technology exchange between Japan and its economically robust neighbors.

Older landowners such as Miyagi and Shozen Nakamura, 75, long to revive the Ginowan they grew up in, before war razed it to smoky rubble, before the military installed the air base where the vibration of screaming helicopters, jets and transport planes rattles their homes.

The Ginowan they recall was a graceful area of residential homes, a park, an outdoor market and a road lined with pine trees that were declared a national treasure.

Pulling out a map as they animatedly described their old homes, the men said such memories have held them to the area despite the intrusions the air base makes into their lives.

“Ideally, we’d like to have the old town back,” Nakamura said wistfully. “We miss it.”

Local officials say their plans are vague partly because they were cut out of the U.S.-Japanese decision-making process and were never alerted to Futenma’s imminent return; even Okinawa Gov. Masahide Ota learned of it just minutes before Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto announced it on national television.

“We desired the return, and will do our best, but it was so sudden, even for us,” said Reiji Fumoto of Okinawa’s prefectural planning office.

Okinawa planning chief Masaharu Miyagi said residents and officials of other areas set for return are also concerned because there has been no clear timetable announced. Without a timetable, officials can’t make concrete redevelopment plans. And without such plans, the landowners who will lose their fees, the base workers who will lose their jobs and the shop owners who will lose their businesses face nothing but anxiety, residents say.

The largest tract, known as the Northern Training Area and used for jungle-combat exercises, may be made into a wildlife or nature preserve. But those plans, like others, remain glints in the eye.

Such anxieties helped attract an overflow crowd of more than 500 people to a town hall meeting last week on Futenma’s future. In addition to income loss, an estimated 8,000 people will lose their jobs on the base and in supporting businesses.

Participants ranging from university student Mayumi Shimokawa, 21, to farmer Senkichi Uehara, 76, listened to the hopeful plans painted by several speakers but came away unconvinced.

Uehara is panicked about the loss of land-use fees, which supply 90% of the income on which he supports his wife and daughter. Shimokawa worries that Okinawa’s paucity of industry will doom the island in the long run.

“As pretense, we say we want the American military to leave, but actually a lot of Okinawans are involved with them, personally and business-wise,” said Hideyuki Ganeko, 37, a cab driver. His father was an engineer at the Kadena Air Base, and some of his friends specialize in businesses aimed at the military.

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Even optimistic speakers who pointed out how the Philippines successfully converted the old Subic Bay Naval Base into a thriving commercial center agreed that duplication in Japan is not assured. Subic managed to turn the land around for business use in three years; Japanese officials predict that it may take 10 years or more for Futenma because of different regulations and a greater need here for consensus-building.

It is not known whether environmental damage will be uncovered at Futenma, which could further delay the planning process.

Japanese officials recently discovered mercury levels four times higher than acceptable safety standards in sludge contained in a septic tank at the Point Onna communication site in western Okinawa, which was returned in November by the U.S. military.

Traces of PCB, cadmium and other hazardous substances were discovered in surrounding residential areas but were within safety standards.

The U.S. military, which has not used the site for several years, does not know how the substances seeped into the area but did not engage in intentional dumping, said Maj. Kevin Krejcaret, spokesman for the U.S. forces in Japan. He added that the forces have an “excellent record” of prompt, thorough response to environmental problems, such as a recent leak from a diesel-fuel tank into a river near Camp Courtney.

As a snapshot of the challenges raised by land reversion, Okinawa officials point to a 500-acre tract of land known as Amekuchiku in Naha, Okinawa’s capital.

The land, which housed U.S. military apartments, was returned in three phases from 1977 to 1987. Today, the land still stands empty except for a few bulldozers atop the expanse of dirt and green mounds.

Infrastructure work began in 1987 but will not be completed until 1998. As for how long it will take to build housing, a school, a museum, government offices, a commercial center and other hoped-for facilities, Fumoto said, “We have no idea.” Maybe five years, maybe seven.

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For at least some of the area’s original 1,600 landowners, 16 years is too long to wait between losing their land-use fees and being able to put their land to profitable use again. Some have had to sell their property to survive, said Tomohiro Fukuhara, an official of the landowners association.

The biggest chunk of time was consumed by having to negotiate with landowners to surrender 30% of their land for public use and gain their consensus for the new urban plan. Then there was the cumbersome process of obtaining approvals, licenses and the like from three layers of government. Local officials also had to wait for annual infusions of public-works funding from the central government, which essentially financed the $330-million infrastructure job.

Fukuhara said he is thinking of putting an office building on his property but, given the unclear timetable, he still is unsure.

“It’s been nine years since the property was returned to us, and we still can’t use it,” he said. “It seems a long time.”

Miyagi of the Okinawa planning office said lessons learned from Amekuchiku should help them with Futenma.

Already, local officials have formed a committee to begin the consensus-building and hope to complete a concrete land-use plan by 2000.

Naha was given only two years’ notice before Amekuchiku’s reversion began, but Futenma’s seven-year lead time gives them a considerable head start, officials say.

Futenma landowners are also more fortunate because a new law guarantees them land-use fees for up to three years after reversion, giving them at least a decade-long income cushion. Given the history of delay, however, Ginowan landowner Miyagi said his association members are asking for financial guarantees to cover them until they can begin using their land.

Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.