Japan uneasy about shifting of U.S. troops

By Tim Johnson
Knight Ridder Newspapers

EMI DOI / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS Isao Ogawa, Mayor of Sagamihara, where Camp Zama and other two U.S. military bases are located, explains his situation using aerial photographs. Few mayors there, if any, want American troops camped near their towns, fearing noise, air crashes and crime.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

SAGAMIHARA, Japan — Half a world away from the debates at the Pentagon over how to realign U.S. military forces in East Asia, Mayor Isao Ogawa lays out his own aerial photos of a local U.S. base, Camp Zama, and wonders aloud how his city might cope with more U.S. soldiers.

"There is not enough space for them," Ogawa said, noting the dense urban growth around the camp, not far from Japan's famed Mount Fuji.

Japan and the United States are in the throes of evaluating their defense alliance, and the exercise is bringing anxiety to cities like this one. Few, if any, mayors want U.S. troops camped nearby, fearing noise, air crashes and crime, even as Japan's citizenry generally supports the U.S. security umbrella over the world's second biggest economy.

The municipal uneasiness is made more acute because Japan and the United States have agreed to shift some U.S. military presence from Okinawa, the far southern island, to other sites in Japan, putting a number of localities on watch.

City councils in Sagamihara and Zama, two adjoining cities with a combined population of 750,000 people, recently passed resolutions strongly opposing putting more troops in Camp Zama, the headquarters of the U.S. Army in Japan.

Ogawa, a white-haired mayor with an easy smile, came up with his own action plan. He delivered letters of protest to U.S. Ambassador Howard Baker, met with the foreign minister, the chief of Japan's defense agency and pestered Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's office with questions and requests for meetings.

Will more U.S. troops be brought to Sagamihara? Is it true that Camp Zama will double in size with a proposed move of the headquarters of the Army's I Corps from Fort Lewis to Japan, bringing some 500 to 800 officers?

Ogawa got no definitive answers, underscoring a dilemma for local officials: Such weighty strategic decisions are usually made at the highest government levels with little consultation below.

The debate over redistribution of U.S. forces in Japan comes amid a broader discussion within Japan about its vulnerability in an uncertain East Asia. The evolution began in 1998, experts say, when North Korea test-fired a Taepodong-1 ballistic missile over Japan, stunning the nation. Since then, North Korea has boasted of acquiring nuclear weapons, and Japan is working with the United States to develop a missile defense system.

Last month, in a sign of sometimes-testy relations with Beijing, an advisory board to Koizumi suggested that China should be viewed as a potential military threat. There's talk of turning the self-defense forces into a regular army.

The more immediate decision, however, is how to redistribute the 53,000 U.S. troops in Japan, about half of them stationed on Okinawa, the major U.S. forward logistics base in the Western Pacific, close to potential flash points in Korea and Taiwan and a favored spot for jungle-warfare training.

The goal is to relieve pressure on Okinawa, where anti-U.S. tensions on Okinawa have soared since 1995, when three U.S. soldiers gang-raped a 12-year-old schoolgirl. Since then, other crimes have been increasing.

On Oct. 12, Koizumi told parliament that new talks with the United States on reshaping the defense alliance would focus on U.S. protection for Japan against modern threats and on "reducing the excessive burden on local residents, such as the people in Okinawa."

The talks got off to a poor start. U.S. officials made a series of proposals for specific movements, and the Japanese generally rejected them.

"We perhaps began in the wrong spot," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in Tokyo, noting discussion about "individual locations ... rather than starting from a philosophical discussion of how we — that is, Japan and the U.S. — saw our alliance in say 15 years or 20 years."

Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to set a more positive tone when he visited Tokyo last Sunday. In a roundtable with Japanese reporters, Powell urged them not to focus on "what's going to happen to this airbase or that airbase or how many troops are leaving or how many troops are coming."

The Japanese press is awash in different proposals about U.S. troop realignment, including the suggestion that 2,000 Marines from Okinawa may be sent to a training range in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, and that the U.S. Air Force headquarters functions at Tokyo's Yokota Air Base would be relocated to Guam.

Although no decision has been made, Camp Zama may find itself the new headquarters of the I Corps, which from its base at Fort Lewis, oversees deployments of 40,000 active duty and reserves, including some operating as far away as the Middle East.

Ogawa, the mayor, pointed on a map to show how residents have to travel a long way around Camp Zama to run errands because of the lack of roads traversing the base.

Camp Zama comprises three parcels of land with a total area of 1,255.3 acres. It has 1,200 U.S. soldiers, according to Lt. Col. John Amberg, the public affairs officer for U.S. Army Japan, rising to 3,500 when dependents, teachers and civilian employees are included.

Ogawa said moving the I Corps headquarters to Camp Zama would go against a 1960 U.S. defense treaty with Japan that limits U.S. forces there to ensuring "peace and security in the Far East" — not the Middle East where I Corps units are sometimes active.

Experts said the treaty language had been interpreted in increasingly malleable ways and that Japan may offer generous subsidies to soften opposition from cities.

"This is an opportunity for them [municipal officials] to bargain," said Sheila Smith, a scholar of U.S. security issues in East Asia at the East-West Center, a research center in Honolulu. "So they can say, 'If we get X number of forces, then we want this and that.' "

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More nation & world headlines...