Guam gets ready for an invasion — by the Marines

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam — Over the next six years, nearly 25,000 U.S. Marines, soldiers, family members and civilian Defense Department employees are to descend on the tiny Pacific island of Guam, transforming the sleepy tropical outpost into a hub of America's military in the Pacific.

Guam's transformation will cost at least $15 billion — with Japan footing more than $6 billion of the bill — and will put some of the U.S. military's highest-profile assets within the fences of a vastly improved network of bases.

The newcomers will find an island already peppered with strip malls, fast-food franchises and high-rise hotels serving Japanese tourists who want a closer-to-home version of Hawaii. The plans for the base are fueling a fresh construction and real-estate boom.

But the U.S. territory is smaller than some Hawaiian islands, with a population of just 155,000, and many of its officials are worried that the military influx could leave the island's infrastructure — water, highways and seaport — overwhelmed and underfunded.

Felix Camacho, the elected Republican governor, says in the long run the troop influx will be "tremendous" for Guam's economy, but it will be "a difficult and complex process."

Focus on upside

Joe Murphy, in a recent editorial in the Pacific Daily News, Guam's main newspaper, focused on the upside.

"The shift of Marines may cause problems," he wrote, but "Transportation should get better. Our nightclubs should get better. So should our restaurants and movie theaters. It all should trigger an advancement in the social scene on Guam. This is a new era, and we've got to move forward."

The buildup is designed to ease the long-standing overconcentration of forces on Okinawa, the U.S. military's key Pacific outpost since the 1950s, without pulling them back too far from Taiwan and North Korea.

However, the whole plan could collapse if Japan fails to build a replacement for a busy Marine Corps air base on its southern island of Okinawa — a festering issue that one senior U.S. military official acknowledged is fraught with difficulties.

Major realignment

The buildup plan, to be carried out by 2014, represents a major realignment of U.S. forces in the Pacific:

• About 8,000 Marines are to be shifted 1,200 miles southeast, from Okinawa to Guam, making it the Corps' second largest permanent overseas staging and training area.

• The Navy has already deployed three nuclear-powered submarines to Guam and is seeking improvements to accommodate the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington, which carries about 5,000 sailors and airmen.

• The Army wants to deploy a ballistic-missile-defense task force, which would bring roughly 630 soldiers and 1,000 dependents to Guam.

• Long-range B-2 bombers have begun regularly deploying to Guam, along with squadrons of F-16 fighters. Military planners are considering bringing in the new F-22 fighters as well along with Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft and a dozen tankers.

By treaty with Tokyo, more than 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed throughout Japan, which pays billions of dollars each year to support them, more than any other country with a U.S. base on its territory.

Okinawans have long complained that their crowded island has to absorb too much of the presence, and of the crimes and other misbehavior of U.S. personnel stationed there. More than half of the U.S. troops in Japan are on Okinawa, as is Kadena, the biggest U.S. air base in the region.

Roughly 10,000 Marines are to stay on Okinawa, however, and Japan has run into serious opposition in trying to move the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to a less-congested part of Okinawa. Many Okinawans want it off the island altogether.