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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Attention in Japan and elsewhere has focused recently on the seaside village of Henoko (Ryukyuan: Hinuku) in northern Okinawa where a powerful protest movement has stymied the Japanese and U.S. governments from building an offshore air base. Attempting to ameliorate outrage in Okinawa after three U.S. servicemen raped a twelve-year-old schoolgirl in 1995, the governments in Tokyo and Washington announced an agreement in 1996 to close Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, located in the middle of Ginowan City. However, the agreement stipulated that a “replacement facility” be built in Okinawa “within five to seven years.” Yet, after more than fifteen years and numerous bi-lateral declarations reiterating the two governments’ determination to build the base, construction has yet to begin. In 2006 they announced a related agreement to transfer 8,600 of the 18,000 Marines in Okinawa and their 9,000 dependents to Guam, but this is conditioned on relocation of Futenma MCAS to Henoko and remains on hold.
1 Gavan McCormack, “The Battle of Okinawa 2010: Japan-US Relations at a Crossroad,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 45-4-10, November 8, 2010
2 SACO interim report of April 15, 1996, link.
3 Flavia Krause-Jackson,“Okinawa Marines Relocation Delayed as U.S., Japan Revamp Basing Plan,” Bloomberg, June 21, 2011.
4 Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting and Satoko Norimatsu, “Assault on the Sea: A 50-year U.S. Plan to Build a Military Port on Oura Bay, Okinawa, “ The Asia-Pacific Journal, 27-1-10, July 5, 2010.
5 Kensei Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed: Okinawa Under U.S. Occupation (Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University Press), pp. 58-75 and Higashimatsu Teruaki, Okinawa ni kichi ga aru (Bases in Okinawa) (Tokyo: Gurabia Seikôsha, 1969), pp. 64-65.
6 See Ishikawa Mao, Okinawa kaijô herikichi: Kyôhi to yûchi ni yureru machi (An Offshore Airbase in Okinawa: A Town Torn Between Welcoming and Rejecting) (Tokyo: Kôbunken, 1998).
7 Masamichi S. Inoue, Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 17 and Arnold Fisch, Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, 1945-1950 (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific), pp. 57-60.
8 Inoue, p. 99.
9 Yoshida, pp. 58-75. The Army claimed that landowner dissatisfaction in Okinawa was “being cleverly exploited by communist elements.”（Quoted on p. 69)
10 Ibid., p.100.
11 Yoshida, p. 73
12 Inoue, p.100.
13 Quoted in Okinawa Taimusu, December 21, 1956, translated in Inoue, 101.
14 Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting and Satoko Norimatsu.
15 Information in the following sections is from my observations as a U.S. Army draftee stationed at the Henoko ordnance depot (137th Ordnance Company) from July, 1967, to June, 1968. After Okinawa's reversion to Japan in 1972, the Marines took over several of the Army's bases in Okinawa, including the ordnance depot which became Camp Henoko.
16 Inoue, p.101.
17 Ibid., p.102.
18 Quoted in Yoshida, p. 113.
19 Inoue, p.102.
20 Takushi Etsuko, Okinawa: Umi o watatta Beihie hanayome-tachi (Okinawa's G.I. brides: Their lives in America; Kôbunken, 2000), pp. 143-144. All translations are mine unless otherwise cited. Marines and soldiers on “R & R” stayed on base or in hotels which catered to G.I.s in Henoko, Kin, and further south in Okinawa
21 Two soldiers in my platoon married young women who had worked in bars. I left Henoko while they were still stationed at the ordnance depot, so I don't know whether they returned with their wives to the U.S. American servicemen in Okinawa abandoned many women and their children, even after marriage. See Takushi, pp. 7-22.
22 Marines murdered bar hostesses in 1961 and 1974. Fukuchi Hiroaki, Okinawa ni okeru Beigun no hanzai (G.I. Crime in Okinawa) (Tokyo: Dôjisha, 1995, pp. 240-242.
23 See Steve Rabson, Okinawa: Two Postwar Novellas (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1989, reprinted 1996), pp. xii-xiii, 62, and 66. After reversion in 1972, the bilateral Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) on the mainland covered U.S. military personnel in Okinawa. Japanese courts could now try, convict, and sentence suspects for crimes committed. However, the agreement limits police powers in their arrest and detention as compared with Japanese suspects.
24 Local women organized protest groups, citing the 1995 rape and other recent crimes. Ishikawa, pp. 158-162 and 175-178.
25 Matsuda Yoneo, ed., Sengo Okinawa no ku waado: Kichi no shima no naritachi to ima (Key Words in the History of Postwar Okinawa: The Origins and Continuing Presence of U.S. Bases) (Gushikawa City, Okinawa: Yui Shuppan, 1998), pp 100-101. On his return from Washington in November 1969, where he and President Richard Nixon signed the Okinawa Reversion Agreement, Prime Minister Satô Eisaku announced that Okinawa would return to Japan “without nuclear weapons”（kaku nuki) and with U.S. military bases reduced to “mainland levels” (hondo nami). See Steve Rabson, …Secreť Agreement Reveals Plans to Keep U.S. Bases and Nuclear Weapons Options in Okinawa After Reversion,” The Asia-Pacific Journal. 5-1-10, February 1, 2010.
26 Inoue, p.105.
27 Ishikawa, 24.
28 Ibid.
29 Ishikawa, 167.
30 Yoshida, p.187.
31 Interviews conducted by Takushi Etsuko, reporting for the Okinawa Taimusu. Among her interviewees were a number of Okinawans working on Camp Schwab who lived in Henoko with American spouses they had married during and after the Vietnam War.
32 During a shortage of Japanese rice in 1994 and 1995, rice was imported from Thailand for sale in Japan, including Okinawa.
33 Inoue, 196.
34 He effectively abandoned his opposition, declaring that the issue was to be decided by consultation between Nago City and the Japanese government.
35 Ryûkyû Shimpô, January 22, 1997. Translated in Inoue, p. 129.
36 Kikuno Yumiko and Norimatsu Satoko, “Henoko, Okinawa: Inside the Sit-In,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 8-1-10, February 22, 2010.
37 Ishikawa, pp. 42-43.
38 Ibid., 87.
39 Ibid., p. 67.
40 Ibid, p. 58.
41 Inoue, p. 131.
42 Okinawa Taimusu, December 9, 1997. Cited in Inoue, p. 130.
43 Ishikawa, p. 167.
44 Ibid., p. 209.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Inoue, p. 188.
48 Ibid., pp. 189-190.
49 Inoue, p. 185. Also see Kikuno and Norimatsu.
50 Ibid.,p. 167.
51 Urashima Etsuko, “Electing a Town Mayor in Okinawa: Report from the Nago Trenches,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 4-1-10, January 25, 2010.
52 Asahi Shimbun, February 4, 2002, p. 2. See Steve Rabson, “Another Undemocratic Election in Okinawa,” The Ryukyuanist, Autumn, 2002, and Gavan McCormack, Satô Manabu, and Urashima Etsuko, “The Nago Mayoral Election and Okinawa's Search for a Way Beyond Bases and Dependence,” Japan Focus, February 16, 2006.
53 Quoted in Asahi Shimbun, p. 23.
54 Inoue, pp. 188-189.
55 Urashima.
56 “Okinawa town elects mayor against U.S. base,” Associated Press, January 24, 2010. As in the 1997 referendum, voting totals for Henoko, a district of Nago City, were not officially recorded.
57 “Hatoyama breaks promise on Henoko,” Asahi Shimbun (English edition), May 24, 2010.
58 Haru Deburyu, February 13, 2011. In January, 2008, the U.S. federal court in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. Defense Department's plans violated the National Historic Preservation Act by not protecting a Japanese “national monument, the endangered dugong.” The Japanese government has announced that the decision does not apply in Japan.
59 Mainichi Japan, September 13, 2010. Also see “Saishû hôkoku” (Final election results) at the Nago Cty Counciľs website.
60 In speeches in May, 2011 by Senators John McCain, Jim Webb and Carl Levin (chair) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. See Eric Johnston, “Futenma base relocation plan has little hope left,” The Japan Times, December 16, 2011. The Senate Armed Services Committee had earlier voted to block funding for the proposed relocation of 8,600 Marines from Okinawa to Guam, calling it too expensive.
61 At this writing the Japanese government is seeking approval for the reclamation of land for the base from Okinawa's governor Nakaima Hirokazu who shifted his position from supporting to opposing the Henoko relocation. With the Japanese government promising a large development fund package for Okinawa in 2012, it remains to be seen whether he will maintain his opposition.
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