Japanese leader concedes to U.S. on Okinawa

TOKYO — Reneging on a prominent campaign promise, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told outraged residents of Okinawa on Sunday that a U.S. air base would be moved only to the north side of the island rather than off it.

The announcement, a victory for the Obama administration and a humiliating setback for Hatoyama, confirmed what Japanese media had been reporting for weeks: that he would accept Washington's demands to honor a 2006 agreement to move the U.S. Marine Air Station Futenma to the island's less populated north.

Irate crowds greeted the prime minister's arrival Sunday with bright yellow signs that said "Anger," and showered him with cries of "Go home!"

In Tokyo, opposition leaders and even members of his own governing coalition assailed him for having turned the relocation into a huge political issue, only to go back to the original agreement.

While defending his decision on strategic grounds, Hatoyama conceded it was "heartbreaking" and offered the islanders his "heartfelt apology for causing much confusion."

Hatoyama's historic election victory last August, ending a half-century of nearly unbroken Liberal Democratic Party leadership, had raised concerns in the U.S. that Japan would pull support for American priorities like the war in Afghanistan.

He had opposed the Iraq war, spoken out against American-led globalization and, after decades of reflexive Japanese support for U.S. policies, promised to redefine Tokyo's relationship with Washington as an "equal partnership."

The concrete symbol of that new relationship was his vow to move the Marine airfield off Okinawa, home to nearly half the 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan, or even out of the country.

While the promise was popular in some quarters — especially on Okinawa, where relations with the Marines have been tense since three U.S. raped a 12-year-old girl in 1995 — keeping it was another matter.

Once in power, facing a nuclear-armed North Korea and an increasingly assertive China, Hatoyama gave greater weight to the risk of damaging Japan's critical security alliance with the United States.

But his efforts to seek some kind of accommodation proved politically damaging, fueling a perception of indecisiveness that could still bring down his government.

Ultimately, the U.S. insistence that Japan honor the 2006 agreement to move Futenma and its noisy helicopters to a new base in Camp Schwab, near the northern Okinawan fishing village of Henoko, won out.

Visiting Okinawa for the second time this month, Hatoyama said that since taking office, he had learned to appreciate the role the Marines play as a deterrent in the region, and that Okinawa was the most strategic location for them.

As if to underscore that point, he made the announcement on a day the region was grappling with a response to the sinking of a South Korean warship by what appears to have been a North Korean torpedo.