Last Wednesday, the Fukuoka High Court ordered Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki to “approve” the modified plan for landfill work ordered by the central government for relocating the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to the Henoko area of Nago on the east coast of the prefecture. Tamaki had rejected the revised plan, saying that further research was needed into the soft seabed discovered at the reclamation site. The court found that Tamaki’s action had harmed “the public interest,” despite the fact that Tamaki’s stated reasons for rejecting the plan was that his constituents opposed the base construction project and wanted Futenma to be moved out of the prefecture altogether. 

If Tamaki refuses to approve the revision, the land minister can circumvent his authority and approve it himself, which means that the governor of Okinawa has no real authority over the prefecture he was elected to govern because the central government can do whatever it pleases. The courts in this case simply have a rubber stamp function for anything the government wants. After all, it was the central government that sued Tamaki for not approving the plan, a rare move in the first place. He can still appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, but it doesn’t take a legal expert or fortune teller to figure out they’ll decide the same thing.

The Henoko construction project is already a fiasco. Futenma, built by the US in 1945 after the Battle of Okinawa, is located in the densely populated city of Ginowan, which has complained for decades about the danger of US military aircraft flying above it, not to mention attendant noise and air pollution issues. In 1996, the central government reached an agreement with the US. to relocate the base. Camp Schwab in the Henoko coastal area of Nago was chosen in 1999. Local residents and other Okinawans have opposed the relocation ever since, saying construction will destroy the area’s marine ecology and, besides, the prefecture shoulders too much of the burden of hosting the US military. However, the Americans insisted that the Marine air base is essential to its task of policing the Pacific, which includes protecting Japan, and Okinawa is the optimum location for such a base. The landfill work was originally approved in 2013 by the governor at the time, but his successor revoked the approval two years later. Then the Supreme Court ruled that the retraction was illegal and landfill work began in earnest in 2018, when Tamaki was first elected. In 2020, it was discovered that a major portion of the seabed where the reclamation work is being carried out is much softer than initially thought, and so more work and money would be needed to reinforce it. Tamaki rejected the revised plan and work was paused. In the meantime, protests against the construction by local activist groups intensified.

It has now been almost 30 years since the US and Japan agreed to relocate Futenma. According to a Sept. 4 article in the Tokyo Shimbun, as of this year, only 14 percent of the landfill work has been completed, and yet by the end of fiscal year 2022 more than ¥400 billion had been spent on the project. The initial budget was ¥350 billion. Four years ago, the defense ministry, after the discovery of the seabed problem, increased the budget to ¥930 billion, or 2.7 times the original estimate, but that will likely have to be increased yet again, since the 14 percent of the work that’s already been done is in the shallow portion of the reclamation area, meaning from now on the work will become much more difficult and costly, seeing that some 70,000 piles will have to be driven into the seabed in order to make it strong enough to support an airstrip. In addition, the construction period was extended from 5 years to 9 years and 3 months, another target that will probably be impossible to meet. During a discussion of the issue in the Diet last June one member from Okinawa projected that the eventual cost will be ¥2-3 trillion, and called on the government to waste no more tax money and time on the project, but the government refuses to budge.

They also refuse to explain fully why they won’t budge, probably because over the last 27 years the US has changed its mind about Henoko and doesn’t seem to be very enthusiastic about its completion. That doesn’t necessarily mean the US wants to see it cancelled, because as long as the Henoko project continues, the Marines can continue to use the Futenma base in Ginowan, which is what they really want. 

In an interview that appeared Dec. 18 in the Asahi Shimbun, a former marine named Shawn Harding, who is presently a doctoral candidate in international relations at Johns Hopkins University, said he was part of the team that worked on a review of US bases in Japan in 2006. Even at that time, he says, the idea of relocating Futenma to Henoko was already considered by the Americans “out-of-date.” Due to perceived missile threats, the US changed its overall strategy in the Pacific so that air defenses would be spread out more widely throughout Japan and not concentrated so much in Okinawa. The idea is to use existing Japanese Self-Defense Force bases and commercial airports. Henoko, says Harding, does not fit this plan, though Futenma does. The runway at Henoko would be too short, thus limiting the kind of aircraft that could use it. Also, the wharf originally envisioned for the base would not be able to accommodate larger military vessels. Later, after it was discovered that the seabed was softer than originally thought, the US lost confidence in the project. They even doubt it can ever be finished. Harding says that in the long term no one will get what they want from the Henoko construction—not Okinawa, not the US. 

But what does Japan want? In another interview in the same issue of the Asahi, Professor Akihiro Sado, a security expert at Chukyo University, says that the Japanese government still insists that Henoko is the only solution to the Futenma problem, which means they’ve stopped thinking about the matter, regardless of what the US says. The central government has no interest in “gaining the understanding” of the Okinawan people, and this lack of common purpose will undermine Japan’s national security. He mentions the November Osprey accident in Kagoshima Prefecture that killed eight US service members. If such a thing happened in Okinawa, the locals’ already simmering anti-US sentiments would certainly boil over. The problem, he says, is that Japan has no rational national security strategy of its own. It refuses to explain—not only to Okinawans but to the Japanese people as well—its defense strategy and why that strategy is necessary. All it does is follow the US policy of deterrence. Japan shows no interest in diplomatic solutions to security problems with its neighbors, and at the same time has taken no initiative in terms of its own security. All such decisions are made by the cabinet, not the Diet, meaning the public is shut out of the discussion. 

As a result of this lack of transparency, nobody understands the purpose of Henoko. According to a professor at Okinawa International University quoted in the aformentioned Tokyo Shimbun article, the government cynically insists that the Henoko construction must proceed because, in its own words, “Futenma is the most dangerous air base in the world.” But as the Henoko construction continues with no end in sight, the US is augmenting the Futenma runway and building more barracks there. Regardless of whether Henoko is ever finished, the US acts as if they are going to use Futenma indefinitely. 

This conclusion was verified in the Dec. 18 Asahi article, which also described an “explanation session” for the Japanese press carried out by an unnamed US officer assigned to Okinawa. In the presentation, this officer stated that moving Futenma to Henoko is actually a “worst case scenario” from a military standpoint. In addition to the shorter runway (Henoko 1,800 meters, Futenma 2,700 meters) mentioned by Harding, Henoko is logistically inappropriate. Futenma is at a higher altitude than Henoko and positioned on the west coast of Okinawa, meaning that it has proper visibility in the case of an attack from the west. Henoko is located on the east coast, with a mountain to its west blocking visibility in that direction (i.e., toward China or North Korea). The officer also said that, according to experts he consulted, the earliest possible date for completion of Henoko would be 2037, but in any case Futenma would always be preferable for the US even after Henoko is finished. 

When a “concerned individual” contacted a US military representative for a comment about this officer’s statement, the representative replied, “That’s just one person’s opinion. We think Henoko is the solution.” And, in a sense, it is. As long as Henoko remains under construction, perhaps forever, the US will use Futenma, which it prefers. It can let the Japanese government, which doesn’t have the wherewithal to come up with its own security ideas, take all the blame.