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Okinawa and Guam: In the Shadow of U.S. and Japanese “Global Defense Posture”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Yoshida Kensei
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Okinawa is Japan's southernmost prefecture lying between mainland Japan and Taiwan off China's east coast. The main island measures twice the size of Guam and has a population roughly seven times greater, or one-third the size of New York's Long Island with 50,000 more people. On its slender, irregularly shaped island, which constitutes a mere 0.3 per cent of the country, Okinawa hosts 75 per cent in size of all U.S. only military bases in Japan, exclusive of sea and air space. U.S. bases include the Marine Corps jungle training, aviation, bombing and shooting ranges, landing training grounds and an ammunition depot, the largest Air Force base in the region with its own ammunition site, a naval station often visited by nuclear submarines and Army facilities, adding in sum to roughly one-fifth of the densely populated island. It is home to an estimated 24,600 U.S. service personnel, out of a total of 36,000 in all of Japan, many of them living with their dependents in fenced-in “American towns” with schools, gyms, golf courses, shopping centers and churches. Nearly 90 per cent (about 15,000 in number) of the Japan-based Marines are concentrated in Okinawa.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 26 , June 2010 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

References

Notes

[1] Joint Guam Program Office, “Why Guam -guambuildupeis.u0073”

[2] Ministry of Defense website on the Guam relocation.

[3] According to the Marine Corps Camp S.D. Butler, Newcomers' Information Booklet posted in 2007, the Air Station is “home to approximately 3,000 Marines and Sailors. It is capable of supporting most aircraft and serves as the base for Marine Aircraft.”.

[4] Ministry of Defense, cit.

[5] American Forces Press Service, “Gates Views Massive Growth Under Way in Guam,” May 30, 2008.

[6] Shirley A. Kan and Larry A. Niksch, “Guam: U.S. Defense Deployments,” Congressional Research Service, CRS Report for Congress, May 22, 2009.

[7] James Brooke, “Looking for Friendly Overseas Base, Pentagon Finds It Already Has One,” New York Times, April 7, 2004.

[8] Joint Guam Program Office, Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Pacific, Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Overseas Environmental Impact Statement Guam and CNMI Military Relocation Relocating Marines from Okinawa, Visiting Aircraft Carrier Berthing, and Army Air and Missile Defense Task Force (Draft EIS), Volume 1: Overview of Proposed Actions and Alternative, pp. 1-18.

[9] Draft EIS, Volume 2, Marine Corps relocation: Guam, 2-1.

[10] Op.cit., 2-76.

[11] Mar-Vic Cagurangan, Marianas Variety News, “Guam gets $566M under ‘11 DoD budget” (May 21, 2010)

[12] Ministry of Defense, cit.

[13] Office of the Governor of Guam, “Governor Unveils Guam's Vision to Address Military Buildup” (Oct. 11, 2009).