TOKYO — Apologizing for failing to fulfill a prominent campaign promise, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told outraged residents of Okinawa on Sunday that he has decided to relocate an American air base to the north side of the island as originally agreed with the United States.
On his second visit to Okinawa this month, Mr. Hatoyama for first time conceded what Japanese media had been reporting for weeks: that he would accept Washington’s demands and honor a 2006 agreement to move the United States Marine Air Station Futenma to the island’s less populated north.
The decision is a humiliating setback for Mr. Hatoyama on a problem that has consumed his young government and could prove its undoing. Before last year’s historic election victory, he had vowed to move the base off of Okinawa or even out of Japan. But his apparent wavering on the issue helped drive his approval ratings below 25 percent.
In the end, he seemed to decide it was more important to keep good ties with the United States, Japan’s longtime protector, at a time when his nation faces a nuclear-armed North Korea and an increasingly assertive China. Washington had consistently demanded that Tokyo honor the 2006 agreement to move Futenma and its noisy helicopters to a new facility to be built in Camp Schwab, near the northern Okinawan fishing village of Henoko.
But Mr. Hatoyama’s decision was met with anger on Okinawa, where 90,000 residents rallied last month to oppose the base. On Sunday, irate crowds greeted his arrival with bright yellow signs that said, “Anger,” and showered him with jeering cries of “Go Home!”
Mr. Hatoyama explained his decision by saying that since taking office, he had learned to appreciate the role that the Marines play as a deterrent in the region, and that Okinawa was the most strategic location for them.
“We came to the conclusion that we have to ask local residents to accept the base in an area near Henoko,” Mr. Hatoyama said during a meeting with Okinawa’s governor.
He also said he had opted for the original plan of moving the base to Camp Schwab in order to quickly get it out of its current location in the middle of the city of Ginowan, where residents have long complained of the noise and potential for accidents.
Mr. Hatoyama called it a “heartbreaking” decision, and said he extended his “heartfelt apology for causing much confusion” among islanders.
Okinawa’s governor, Hirokazu Nakaima, said after the meeting with Mr. Hatoyama, “It is regrettable that he built up our expectations over the past half year.”
The announcement was also met with a deluge of criticism back in Tokyo. Opposition leaders and even members of his own ruling coalition blasted Mr. Hatoyama for having turned Futenma’s relocation into a huge political issue, only to go back to the original agreement.
Mr. Hatoyama had promised to change the 2006 agreement during his campaign for last summer’s election, in which his Democratic Party ended a half-century of nearly unbroken rule by the Liberal Democrats. But since taking office, he failed to take a clear stand on the issue, at times saying he wanted the base off Okinawa, but at other times saying he wanted to heed Washington’s concerns.
This apparent flip-flopping fed criticism of Mr. Hatoyama as indecisive and aloof. There is growing speculation among political observers that he may be forced to step down if his Democrats fair poorly in Upper House elections scheduled for July 11.
On Okinawa, local leaders on Sunday vowed to fight the decision, raising the specter of protests that could further delay the new base’s construction and cause further political embarrassment to Mr. Hatoyama and his ruling party.
The base’s relocation was first agreed between Washington and Tokyo in 1996, after the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl, but was long delayed as Japan struggled to find a community to accept the Marines.
Helped by offers from Tokyo of generous public works projects, the city of Nago, where Camp Schwab is located, finally agreed to host the replacement facility. In January, however, the city’s pro-base mayor was defeated by an anti-base opponent, who rode a wave of voter expectations that the base would be moved off Okinawa.
In a meeting on Sunday with the prime minister, Nago’s new mayor, Susumu Inamine, told a grim-faced Mr. Hatoyama that he was not welcome. After the meeting, the mayor denounced Mr. Hatoyama for “betraying” his city and Okinawa. He warned that local opposition meant that “there is zero chance” of the base being built.
“I cannot hide my rage,” Mr. Inamine said. “Nago needs no new base.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/world/asia/24japan.html?ref=world
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