Okinawa on the Eve of the G–8 Summit

Abstract

In July 2000 Okinawa, Japan, will host the main meeting of the annual G--8 summit, bringing together representatives from Canada, Prance, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, along with the president of the European Commission. The government of Japan picked Okinawa from among wealth of possible settings for resolutely political reasons; certainly geography and propinquity were nonstarters in site consideration. The location of Okinawa offers few advantages and many drawbacks. Thoroughly subtropical, the island is extremely hot and humid in midsummer and faces the threat of typhoons that boast average sustained wind speeds of up to 160 miles per hour. Its transportation infrastructure, with limited and frequently congested roadways and no rail service, is unsuitable for the expected influx of 26,000 guests and foreign dignitaries. The site of the summit meeting, Busena Resort, is ostensibly close to the coastal city of Nago in Okinawa's north (Figure 1). But although the distance by road from Naha International Airport to Busena Resort is less than 60 miles, the trip often takes two hours, given heavy and slow traffic flows on coastal Route 58. There could hardly be less central location for meeting of foreign leaders. Yet Okinawa remains as important political issue for the U.S.-Japan relationship as it is an inconvenient place in which to host an international summit. The small island is host to approximately 60 percent of the U.S. servicemen and dependents present in Japan and to larger proportion, some 75 percent, of the U.S. military facilities in that country. It is also the scene of continued controversy, for many Okinawans resent the presence of U.S. bases. The anti-base movement is complex and composed of disparate elements. Although associated at times with larger Japanese peace movements, local quality-of-life issues and the deep-seated feeling among many Okinawans that historic Japanese ill treatment has relegated them to second-class status within the Japanese nation are of greater importance. There is enduring resentment of the United States, but especially of Japan, for many matters, including the annexation of Okinawa by Japan in 1879; the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, in which Okinawa was used as the fi nal battle to allow Japan to prepare for an invasion of its home islands and an estimated one-fourth to one-third of the Okinawan population was killed; the postwar agreement that Okinawa be governed by U.S. trusteeship for an indefinite period; and the eventual reversion agreement in which Okinawa was returned to Japan in 1972, but with the U.S. military bases remaining in place. Okinawa is fairly small island, around 485 square miles, located midway between the main Japanese island of Kyushu and Taiwan. Historically Okinawa was, in the words of one historian, a quasi-independent country (Smits 1999,48), the sovereign Kingdom of the Ryukyus from 1429 until the late nineteenth century, existing in fragile tributary relationship to China and under the partial control of Japan since 1609. From relatively peaceful native economy--based largely on agriculture, with limited fishing and an early though important footing in international trade--Okinawa was transformed during the World War II Battle of Okinawa, first into wasteland of rubble, with denuded fields and forests, and then into the United States' Keystone of the Pacific after the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed in 1951. Although military bases were initially built by Japan and then expanded by the United States during World War II, in the early 1950S land seizures escalated, and an elaborate network of airstrips nd bases was constructed that continues to occupy around 20 percent of the Okinawan land area. The unsettled nature of the U.S.-Japan security relationship during the 1994-1998 period, with international political crises concerning North Korea and Taiwan, pressure from the United States on trade issues, and Japan's own economic woes, was complicated by turmoil in Okinawa surrounding forced land leases on the bases and the rape of twelve-year-old Okinawan girl by three U. …