Okinawa governor's race tightens as voters prioritize economy over bases

Futenma-to-Henoko relocation advances after Japan’s top court backed plan

In an unusually tight gubernatorial race, Okinawa voters are prioritizing economic concerns over longstanding opposition to U.S. military bases, a shift that reflects Japan’s changing security landscape as it confronts growing security concerns around China, North Korea and Russia. Incumbent Gov. Denny Tamaki, whose two prior election victories were driven by fierce resistance to a plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps air base at Futenma, is in a neck-and-neck contest with Genta Koja, a youthful challenger backed by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Voters cast ballots Sunday, with a poll earlier this month finding only 15% considered the base issue the most important question in the race and more than half citing the economy.

The shift in Okinawa, where residents have hosted more than two-thirds of the U.S. military presence in Japan since the post-World War II occupation, signals how generational change and an evolving security environment are reshaping attitudes toward the American footprint across the Pacific.

The U.S. military Ospreys that roar over Sumito Yokoi’s coffee shop in Ginowan, Okinawa, sometimes fly so close the 56-year-old can see the faces of the pilots inside. Still, Yokoi said Okinawans have more pressing concerns than the sprawling U.S. Marine Corps air base at Futenma, which sits across the road from his business. The base — smack in the middle of the small but densely populated city, 1,000 miles from the Japanese capital — has for decades been a thorn in the side of many Okinawans and a symbol to them of Tokyo and Washington’s highhanded treatment of their island home. Yokoi said he is used to the American presence and wants politicians in Sunday’s gubernatorial election to focus on bread-and-butter issues such as quality of life in the group of islands that make up Okinawa prefecture.

“Poverty in Okinawa is severe,” he said.

The unusually tight contest illustrates how Okinawan hostility to the U.S. military presence is receding, a feature of a broader shift in Japan as the country confronts growing security concerns around China, North Korea and Russia. The change reflects the priorities of younger voters, who see the economy and the worsening security environment as bigger concerns than the base fights that preoccupied their parents and grandparents.

In the vanguard of the long-running base opposition is Tamaki, the son of a U.S. Marine and a Japanese mother, whose back-to-back election victories were driven by his fierce resistance to a plan set in the mid-2000s to close Futenma and expand the American military presence at Camp Schwab, about 30 miles northeast in Henoko, a less densely populated part of Okinawa’s main island. Seeking a third term, he faces a youthful challenger in Koja, backed by Takaichi and the Liberal Democratic Party. Koja has said he will not stand in the way of the relocation, which Tamaki has said he still opposes.

A poll conducted earlier this month for Japanese media found only 15% of voters thought the base issue was the biggest in the election, while more than half said it was the economy. Daisuke Hasegawa, a 23-year-old monorail driver in Naha, Okinawa’s capital, said he wants to see the Futenma site redeveloped into homes and businesses, believing the change will bring construction jobs and other economic benefits “so that Okinawa can be a source of pride.” Hasegawa said he is voting for Koja and estimated that 60% to 70% of his co-workers lean the same way. He added that he has been perturbed by incidents of Chinese vessels skirting Japanese waters and disrupting the livelihoods of Japanese fishermen, and said he doesn’t feel local officials have taken islanders’ concerns about Chinese encroachment seriously enough.

“I don’t think there’s any other option but to move forward with the project,” Hasegawa said, referring to the Futenma relocation plan.

Older Okinawans remain opposed. “We don’t need military bases,” said Hitomi Hanashiro, 72, who said the island economy would do better without them. Yuji Fukumoto, who chairs All Okinawa, an organization opposed to U.S. bases on Okinawa, said the memory of living under U.S. military rule “runs deep.” The island is simply convenient for the U.S., Fukumoto said, and residents “have no choice but to swallow their grievances.”

Okinawan opposition to the U.S. presence goes back to World War II, when the U.S. occupied the islands following some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Islanders were moved from their land to make way for the bases the U.S. military needed, Futenma among them. Okinawa was returned to Japan in 1972 but the bases remained. Sporadic incidents of violence perpetrated by U.S. servicemen, including rapes, would occasionally turn resentment over the U.S. presence to anger.

The relocation plan dates to the mid-2000s. Islanders who wanted the U.S. out altogether opposed the move fiercely and challenged it repeatedly in court, and many Okinawans feel they are being asked to shoulder an outsize burden by hosting more than two-thirds of the U.S. military presence in Japan. Japan’s Supreme Court last year sided with Tokyo and ruled the relocation should go ahead. Construction has already begun.

The redevelopment of Camp Schwab includes new buildings and lengthening the runway, an engineering challenge that requires plunging thousands of pylons and tons of landfill into the soft seabed at Oura Bay. That sparked ultimately unsuccessful environmental challenges to the relocation plan, citing risks to marine life such as the endangered dugong, a relative of the manatee.

The relocation is part of a broader reorganization of the U.S. military footprint in Asia. Roughly 9,000 Marines are set to leave Japan, with 4,000 slated to move to Guam. The other 5,000 will be stationed in the U.S. and elsewhere. There are currently around 18,000 Marines, sailors and their families in Japan, according to the Marine Corps website.

Yokoi, whose coffee shop sits near Futenma, said friends elsewhere in Japan are often surprised when he describes the noise and other daily challenges of living so close to the U.S. military. “They look at me like I am crazy. So that is how I found out this isn’t normal,” he said.