Okinawan Leader Abandons Fight

Succumbing to the powerful forces arrayed against him, Okinawa Gov. Masahide Ota announced Friday that he is ending his yearlong fight to block the renewal of leases for land used by the U.S. military on his southern Japanese island.

“This decision was the most difficult in my six-year career” as governor, a visibly distressed Ota said at a nationally televised news conference. “It was truly painful and severe . . . but I made the decision hoping this result would lead to resolving the issue.”

The decision was viewed as inevitable after the Japanese Supreme Court ruled unanimously late last month that Okinawa must appropriate land for the U.S. military bases, rejecting Ota’s appeal that their presence is unconstitutional.

Then, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, in a meeting with Ota earlier this week, offered contrition for Okinawan suffering, pledges to reduce the hardships caused by the bases--and a $45.8-million budget to develop the island. Okinawa is Japan’s poorest prefecture, or state, with a per capita income just half the national average.

Both reasons were cited by prefectural officials to explain Ota’s reversal, which was greeted with both praise and disappointment.

“His decision was too quick,” said Yoichi Iha, an Okinawan prefectural assembly member. He said Ota should have waited at least one more month to try to wrench more concessions from the U.S. military, such as a pledge to withdraw the Marines--widely regarded in Japan as the most troublesome U.S. service personnel.

Others lamented that Ota’s decision negated the people’s will expressed in a nonbinding referendum earlier this week, in which Okinawans overwhelmingly voted in favor of a base reduction.

“What was the meaning of our vote?” one woman told a Japanese TV network.

But Makoto Momoi, a security specialist, said Ota had extracted significant money and assistance from Tokyo to transform the faltering island economy into a robust center of tourism, free trade and international exchange. Officials are discussing plans to grant Okinawa special tax exemptions, status as a free-trade zone and other economic incentives.

“The Hashimoto government has offered to help [Ota] reconstruct his island economy without the dependencies on sugar canes, pineapples and base employment,” Momoi said. “It’s a good chance--that’s why Ota agreed.”

Even critics of the decision said Ota is not likely to lose public support, because most residents believe he was backed into a corner. Okinawans have embraced the white-haired governor as the symbol of their 50-year struggle against both U.S. military forces and a mainland Japanese populace largely indifferent to the crime, pollution and deafening noise the American presence forces the islanders to endure daily.

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After U.S. servicemen were involved in the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl last year, igniting a national outcry and focusing worldwide attention on his island’s hardships, Ota refused to comply with central government orders to renew land leases for U.S. military facilities. He appealed to his fellow Japanese, saying the burden on Okinawa, which has less than 1% of Japan’s land area but hosts 75% of American facilities, had been far too heavy for far too long.

His unprecedented act of defiance against Japan’s powerful central government won him national respect as a politician of rare courage and integrity. It also unnerved Washington, which viewed Ota’s action and the protests it reinvigorated as the most serious challenge to the U.S. presence on Okinawa in three decades.

In the end, however, Ota succumbed to the weight of the political and legal forces stacked against him.

Despite Ota’s pledge of cooperation, a number of thorny issues regarding the bases are unresolved. Nearly 3,000 leases will expire next year before procedures to renew them are completed--a circumstance that will force Tokyo to figure out a politically palatable way to keep Americans from a massive illegal occupation of the land.

The most intractable problem is where to relocate a Marine heliport so that the Futenma air station can be returned to Okinawans, as President Clinton and Hashimoto agreed this year. So far, no solution has been found, but both sides are aiming for resolution by the end of November.

Meantime, the number of crimes committed by U.S. military personnel in Okinawa has plummeted in the last year: 34 cases from September 1995 to August 1996, compared with 163 cases in the same period in 1993-94 and 130 cases a year later, Japanese police recently reported.