Domestic publics in both the US and Japan have questioned the need for US military forces in Japan, but for rather different reasons. The US public has speculated on Japan's "free ride" on US global and regional military deployments as Japanese economic strength revived, and in turn, the Japanese public has suggested that these forces - a symbol of US power and Japanese dependence - are a nuisance, especially since it has at times seemed unconvinced that they were necessary for Japan's own security. But from the 1970s forward, concerns about strategic choices and the resultant operational requirements of US military forces were never divorced from the on-going attempt to cope with a changing economic balance of power within the US-Japan alliance. In the United States, the domestic debate over US military deployments focuses on broader strategic choices to global developments. Should the US remain "engaged" in the Asia-Pacific region or not?(1) If so, what is the role of US forces in accomplishing that aim? This question is a recurring theme of US postwar diplomacy, and the most telling domestic challenge to the US military's global mission was the wrenching social cleavages that emerged over US involvement in the Vietnam War. By the end of the 1970s, however, the US was again dedicating its resources to the military competition with the former Soviet Union. While the US public seemed less critical than it had in the previous decade of the US military's global ambitions, it did become much more focused on the extent to which the United States was getting assistance from its allies. "Burden-sharing" became the central task for those who managed the US-Japan alliance.(2) Japan was economically recovered, and was indeed a prosperous state: Why should the US provide for its defense? This interpretation of the US domestic calculus was institutionalized when a Congressional subcommittee on "burdensharing" was formed to investigate US strategic planning and allied contributions to its effectiveness.(3) The fact that US military forces were not there simply to defend Japan has yet to be effectively countered in the US public debate.(4)
In contrast, US-Japan alliance has engaged domestic politics quite differently in Japan. In the early postwar decades, debates over the presence of US military forces on Japanese soil were informed by the same Constitutional questions that inhibited the Japanese government's rearmament process.(5) The conservative-progressive split over the alliance defined the axis of these debates, and the continued US military administration of Okinawa symbolized to the Japanese public the lingering role of the US military as an occupying force. Local grassroots protest movements developed around some of the major US bases, and an anti-war movement coalesced around the US (and Japanese government's) role in the Vietnam war. Public protest, and antagonism, also came to a head with the Vietnam conflict, as all three of these sources of opposition came together in Okinawa in protest of the US military and its operations.(6) And yet, bilateral efforts in the wake of that war to reduce and consolidate the US military presence through the 1970s seemed to have reduced domestic complaint and opposition to the US military presence in Japan. The reduction of US forces in the region in the first half of the 1970s lessened the pressure on Japanese communities that lived with US military bases.(7) At the time, two major base reduction and consolidation agreements were negotiated between the Tokyo and Washington.
In 1995, the rape of a 12 year old child in Okinawa, and the political protest that arose in response, reopened the debate over whether or not US military forces were required in Japan and on what scale. In a sense, the US and Japanese governments helped enhance the potency of the base protest movement by moving much too slowly on the base reduction agreement signed a decade earlier. But it is the unique history of Okinawa - its role as an all-or-nothing battleground between Japanese and American forces in the waning months of the Pacific War and its status as residual Japanese territory that remained under US military administration until 1972 - that has the strongest bearing on contemporary politics surrounding the US bases. The terms and conditions of the US military presence in Okinawa are much more problematic than they have been on the main islands.
The emergence of a protest movement against the US military presence in Japan - after more than a decade of relative quiet on this issue - reminds us of the domestic compact that is necessary to sustain foreign policy. In both the political debates that characterized US questioning of the alliance in the late 1980s, and in the contemporary debates that underlie the current attempt to assuage the concerns of Okinawans in Japan today, there is a common message to those who make foreign policy: domestic politics matter. What is harder to understand, however, is when and how domestic politics engage policy makers in the shaping (and reshaping) of foreign policy. In the 1980s, the domestic compact was challenged by the Congress in an attempt to force the Executive branch to renegotiate with Tokyo the division of labor within the alliance. Today, Tokyo is facing the demand from the prefectural governor of Okinawa to renegotiate its domestic compact with the localities that host US military forces in Japan.
This project will focus on these two episodes of negotiation between those responsible for managing the US military presence in Japan, and their respective domestic publics. On the US side, the influences on broader strategic choices and the resultant impact on the US bases in Japan will be examined. The bilateral negotiations between Tokyo and Washington then need to be investigated, and finally, the impact on the locality that hosts bases that are closed or that remain needs to be fully explored. This staged approach to considering the process by which the US military presence in Japan is affected by domestic politics - on both sides of the Pacific - should reveal changes over time in the interests and concerns of each society with regard to these bases. Regardless of the strategic rationale provided for these forces, each government has had to search for a formula that satisfies domestic critics, and it is that process that determines the status of US forces in Japan and their role in implementing alliance cooperation.
In a concluding section, this paper will explore the broader issue of whether or not these mechanisms for sustaining domestic support for the US-Japan alliance are sufficient to meet the demands of the next decade or so. The continued questioning of who pays the greater cost, and/or who bears the greater burden, with regard to the deployment of US military forces in Japan is, of course, related to the more essential question of whether or not two major powers such as the United States and Japan can sustain a relationship of security cooperation in which the respective burdens are perceived to be incomparable, and indeed immeasurable, by each country's domestic publics. US policy makers, concerned with the global role of those forces and of their utility in terms of broader US foreign policy goals, focus on rationalizing their goals in terms of strategic value (both at home and abroad). Japanese policy makers must in contrast convince their publics that the alliance with the US (and through it Japan's own security) is worth the social costs associated with the US military presence. The calculus in each country has shifted over the past couple of decades - the price each public is willing to pay for this relationship may in fact be less than each of the national government's are demanding.
US strategy is as vulnerable to domestic politics as that of any country. The cold war has suggested that the US (and perhaps the former Soviet Union), however, played central roles in the maintenance of the global balance of power, and for that reason, had less domestic challenges to its policies than other states. The military dominance of the US among the states allied against the former USSR was obvious, and the utility of the US military in competing with the former USSR was rarely questioned. The main domestic challenge to the US has always been the relative responsibility (and share of budget) consumed by the containment goal. Today, the question is even more relevant - why should the US military be responsible for global security?
US military strategy during the cold war was questioned at home in various ways. The cold war was costly, in terms of dollars and in terms of lives. The Vietnam War perhaps brought the question into focus most dramatically, and the US withdrawal from Vietnam spurred a widespread reduction in US military forces stationed in the Asian region. Naval and air forces remained, but the ground forces that had symbolized US committed to fight in Asia were brought home. The exception of course was the Korean peninsula, the one country in Asia that replicated the military division of Europe into the east and west of the cold war. By the end of the Vietnam War, however, the US government announced that it would maintain its treaty commitments in Asia, but it would fight no more ground wars there. Deterrence became the function of US deployments rather than potential war fighting capability.
The intensification of the US-Soviet rivalry by the end of the decade brought with it a renewed interest in the strategic choices of the early cold war decades. US "forward deployments" were not only a symbol of treaty commitment and presence, but they began to actively train with the militaries of regional allies as a war fighting force. Asia was again elevated to a significant and critical theater in the global contest between US and Soviet military forces. The import of US military deployments in Asia was also enhanced by Soviet strategy, and the "ocean bastion" strategy that made it opportune for the Soviet Pacific Fleet to demonstrate its conventional strength in the Western Pacific suggested to US maritime planners that the visibility of US naval and air forces in the region was important.
More than anything, the emergence of Japan as a recovered and prosperous economy focused domestic attention in the United States on the costs associated with deploying military forces there and in the Asia-Pacific region. By the 1970s, the real costs of US Forces Japan had risen tremendously, and the terms of responsibility indicated by the Status of Forces Agreement were reconsidered.(8) More importantly, the 1980s ushered in an era of bilateral debate over "burden-sharing," a debate that had entered the Atlantic Alliance much earlier in the cold war. Congressional pressure on the Pentagon to demonstrate that Japan was indeed paying a fair share of the costs of its security produced a detailed and intense debate over how to measure the "collective good" of the alliance. The terms of the debate were numerical, and therefore precise: the percentage of GNP dedicated to defense, the share of costs for the stationing of US forces in Japan, the amount of money Japan paid for "strategic aid" to other countries around the globe. In short, how much Japan was paying was the test of its commitment to the alliance, and even to a common cold war agenda around the globe.
With the end of the cold war, the rationale for continuing the alliance seemed less obvious, and the Gulf War experience had rephrased the domestic debate about Japan's status as a US ally. US policy makers began to worry about public concerns about Japan's commitment to the alliance, and the focus of the burden-sharing debate shifted from dollars (or yen) spent to blood spilled. The Gulf War generated significant fears among US and Japanese policy makers about what might happen to domestic support in the US if Japan was perceived as not assisting the US military. Today, as the two governments seek to "redefine" the alliance to cope with common concerns, it is the partly the fear that US public support is tenuous that drives the conversation over how to enhance the efficacy of military-to-military cooperation between the US and Japan.
Japan's role in the cold war, and its place in domestic political deliberations over foreign policy, was primarily defined in terms of US global strategy, and therefore changes in the constellation of support for US strategic aims around the globe ultimately impacted upon the bilateral alliance. What forces were necessary, for what missions, and how they were to be used have been rationalized not solely in terms of Japan's own defense needs, but in terms of Washington's strategic agenda for the region. The decisions that guided US strategic choices were not necessarily independent of what the Tokyo government considered important, but neither were they completely dependent upon the Japan's defense requirements.
US Bases in Japan and Washington's Strategic Choices
The type of forces deployed in the Asia-Pacific created various basing needs. As the composition of US forces changed, so too did the requirement for specific types of bases and facilities. Several periods of strategic rethinking impacted upon the US military presence in Japan: the end of the Occupation/end of Korean War, the end of the Vietnam War, the revival of the cold war military competition in the early 1980s, and the end of the cold war today. What remains less clear are the specific debates that influenced the reorganization of US military forces in the region, and the direct impact this had on the number and types of forces stationed in Japan.
At this stage, a rather sketchy statistical outline of the history of US Forces Japan, and other commands that maintain bases in Japan, can be provided. With the end of the US Occupation and the signature of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the mission of US forces shifted from occupying army to "foreign military" hosted by the Japanese government under the terms of the first bilateral US-Japan Security Treaty. Over time, there is a rather clear linear trend of reduction of US forces in Japan. In the early 1950s, the US maintained 2,824 military bases (covering 1,352 square kilometers) in Japan, and populated by 260,000 military personnel. By the time the bilateral treaty was revised eight years later, the US maintained 241 military facilities (335 square kilometers), and 46,000 military personnel remained in Japan. The statistics changed somewhat in 1972-1973 to reflect the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty, and the Japanese government reported the total number of US military personnel stationed in Japan as 65,000 in 1972, and in 1973 reported the total area occupied by US military facilities as 446 square kilometers (165 facilities). By the end of the 1970s, this had dropped by another 100 or so square kilometers, while the personnel figures remained relatively stable at about 50,000 from the mid-1970s forward.
The key decision points for changes in US military deployments in Japan are difficult to assess, and here further work needs to be done in drawing out the links between broad efforts to reorganize US military deployments in the region, and the direct impact on US Forces Japan. What factors determine changes in US military deployments, and the necessity of certain US bases in Japan? Strategy seems to be a necessary but not sufficient argument for basing requirements. While the downward trend gives a rough sketch of the decline in the US military presence in Japan, it does not capture the importance of the forces that remain there. Nor does it help us comprehend and explain specific deployment decisions that ultimately affect the domestic debates over the import of these forces within Japan. For example, the USS Enterprise visited Japan in 1968 amid great protest. And yet, in 1973, we find the USS Midway is home ported in Yokosuka - the first US aircraft carrier to be assigned a home port overseas. Budgetary concerns, as well as the desire to have families closer to crews, were reportedly decisive in this case. Other aspects of changing US deployment patterns must also be factored in, such as the closure of US bases in the Philippines.
Another distinction that needs to be made is that until 1972, US military deployments on Okinawa are not governed by the bilateral treaty nor the Status of Forces Agreement. Figures on the early period of the US military administration are not readily available. The Congressional hearings over US overseas deployments in the 1970s, the Symington Hearings, include a major discussion of the importance of US military facilities there.(9) However, much of the information on number and types of forces located on Okinawa have been removed from the public record. Information on the military forces in Okinawa prior to 1972 would reveal a great deal about the function that island served in the early decades of the cold war, but it would also reveal the extent to which Okinawa did or did not serve to offset US military deployments on the main Japanese islands.
The strategic rationale for the US military presence, and requirement for specific bases, is presented publicly as the determinant factor. And yet, while the broad brush strokes of postwar US strategy can be traced and correlated with changes in military deployments in Japan, other factors did come into play that may be much more revealing in terms of the US (DOD's?) calculus regarding the need for these bases. There is a growing argument that the cost of deploying US forces in Japan is now so favorable that this now outweighs strategic considerations as a justification for maintaining US forces there. The transformation of the fiscal contributions the Japanese government has made to offsetting operations costs of US Forces Japan has in a sense changed the US calculus about these bases. If the Japanese government is willing to pay the price of maintaining them, then arguments in Washington about cutting back on expensive overseas deployments carry less weight. Here the contemporary issue of the US Marines in Okinawa suggests that this might be the case. The Japanese government has offered to relocate Futenma Marine Air Station, at an estimated cost of $3 billion for a floating structure offshore. If the strategic value of this facility is not sufficient to warrant retaining the base, then why should it be relocated?
US Bases in Japan and Bilateral "Burden-Sharing"
US government efforts to persuade Tokyo to increase its defense efforts and to improve upon its "burden-sharing" within the alliance are visible throughout the postwar period in some form or another.(10) The transition in US strategic goals in the early 1970s revealed that a direct assumption of US costs by the Japanese government was not forthcoming. Japan's political leaders publicly rejected the notion of assuming direct financial responsibility for US military deployments, and the task of deciding what sorts of forces would remain in Japan was addressed through working level deliberations that focused on base closure and consolidation.(11) Rather than the negotiations of how to realign the share of national resources dedicated to military purposes, the US and Japan began their attempt to realign national responsibilities within the alliance by focusing on the costs associated with the US military presence. While this may seem to be a piecemeal and technical solution to a broader alliance dilemma, it also reveals the extent to which the US military bases in Japan were seen as the primary mechanism of security cooperation at the time.
Even reorganizing US bases in Japan in the early 1970s was a tricky problem for the two governments. Consolidating US military base and facilities on both the Japanese mainland and Okinawa required several years of negotiation, and the term so individual base reversions, the terms of cost-sharing, and the schedule of relocating US forces seemed to have been worked out separately for each base. In December 1970, the first draft of a consolidation plan for US base on mainland Japan was agreed upon and presented at the 12th meeting of the SCC. The plan covered all of the major operational bases maintained by the US in Japan, and outlined the impact of changes in US military needs for the status of those bases. Many of those US military facilities were transferred to joint use status with the Japanese Self Defense Force, which meant that a large share of the administrative costs of these facilities became the responsibility of the Japanese government.(12)
Two major base consolidation plans finally emerged from this process, and while further research needs to be done on the negotiation of these plans, it is clear that the costs of realigned the US military presence were almost entirely paid by the Japanese government.(13) Agreement was reached first on the Kanto Base Consolidation Plan in January 1973. The US agreed to return to Japan six miliary facilities in the Kanto plain, and to consolidate its USAF Headquarters and operations at Yokota Air Base. The cost to the Japanese government was initially estimated at 20 billion yen. The US government agreed to a phased plan for laying off the 2,600 Japanese employees on bases to be closed, and to making every effort to employ them elsewhere. The plan for consolidating US bases on Okinawa took longer, and was not announced until the 15th SCC meeting a year later.(14)
While the Kanto region witnessed a reorganization of US military bases over the decade or so after these deliberations took place, the US and Japanese government went on in the several years following this agreement to discuss other ways in which Tokyo could assume a greater share of the costs of US military bases in Japan. The introduction of the concept of the "omoiyari yosan," variously translated as the "compassion budget" or the "generosity budget" for assisting US military forces, suggested a new phase of consultation between the Japanese government and the US military bases located in Japan.(15) The Japanese government assumed responsibility for various labor related costs, facilities improvement plans, and other sorts of costs associated with the maintenance of the US military presence in Japan. The total spending of the Japanese government has increased exponentially over the course of the 1980s.
The continued presence of US military forces in Japan therefore has been accomplished in several ways. The domestic calculus in the US depended upon a strategic rationale that is persuasive, and increasingly in the latter decades of the cold war, on evidence that Japan was contributing to the alliance in a manner commensurate with its economic power. The negotiations between the Congress and Executive Branch in the 1980s over the indices of "burden-sharing" revealed an ambivalence over how much Japan should be encouraged to develop its own military power. But the focus on US military bases in Japan and Japan's assumption of Host Nation Support for these forces managed to satisfy domestic critics at least that the cost of maintaining US military forces in Japan was declining.
The impact of this history of realigning fiscal responsibility with regard to the US military bases suggests that the Japanese public has (thus far) been relatively acquiescent.(16) In contrast to the 1970s, when there were sufficient domestic reasons for the Japanese government to encourage a scaling down of US bases and facilities, there does not seem to be nation-wide support for withdrawing US forces even now that the cold war is over. There is increasing sympathy however with the plight of Okinawans, and very few localities have offered to take in more of the forces that Okinawa wants to be rid of. In the US, the Okinawa base protest has received relatively little press coverage, and the US-Japan alliance has receded from the front lines of deliberation over the future role of US military forces around the globe. Yet, policy makers argue, that in the worst case scenario - in case of a war, particularly one on the Korean peninsula - this phase of domestic disinterest on the part of the US public could easily turn into antagonism towards Japan as it did during the Gulf War.
While Tokyo's policy makers concerned themselves with how they would meet US criticism, and how they could devise visible demonstrations of Japan's commitment to global security, the Japanese public was relatively quiet on the issue of US bases. Some resolution perhaps had been reached in the 1970s, when a rather volatile Japanese public opinion focused on the question of whether or not the US presence was necessary during peace time. In the early 1970s, as the US and Japanese governments negotiated the pace and scale of a draw down in US force levels in Japan, the question was why any US forces were required to stay. The most discussed proposals emerged from study groups assigned to considered Japan's security, and these argued for "yuji kyoryoku," or cooperation between Japan and the US in times of conflict.(17) Removing the US forces during peace time was considered preferable to the Japanese public, and acceptable to those who worried about the implications this might have on Japan's security.
The question of whether or not Japan really needs, and the Japanese public really wants, US military forces on its territory has again focused domestic debate.(18) For the past year, attention has been riveted on the challenge posed by Governor Ota Masahide in Okinawa. Governor Ota's argument is not about how much of the aggregate national wealth is dedicated to the bilateral security bargain. Rather the debate has a much more human face, one not unfamiliar to communities in the United States that host military bases. The rape of a 12-year-old child in Okinawa in September 1995 prompted a widespread movement of opposition to the US military presence there, and the measure of domestic support for the alliance was calculated not in terms of budgets expended, but in terms of the social costs that had to be incurred by the local communities that hosted these forces. This "burden" on local communities of hosting US military forces is not measured in precise monetary terms, but it is a broader social calculus that resonates beyond the specific claims made by Okinawa.
While the impact of changes in the international environment that affect the US-Japan security treaty have been given increasing attention by the two governments in recent years, the impact of political change in Japan on the way in which security cooperation has been pursued by the Tokyo government remains unexamined. The interests that benefitted from the policy making structures that supported the US presence established under LDP rule for implementing security cooperation extend down to the local governments. Changing local interests suggest that a bottom-up challenge to this attempt to sustain local support for the US military presence is at the heart of the Okinawa case. The priorities of the national government, priorities that place the implementation of the US-Japan security treaty above that of the economic and social welfare of Okinawans and other residents of localities are in fact being called into question.
Several questions emerge from looking at the structure of national-local government relations with regard to the US military bases. Will this process of renegotiating the relationship between local and national political authority determine the viability of the US military presence in Japan? Can political change at the local level instigate a reformulation of national policy in Japan? Or, is the Okinawa case an exception that simply requires remedying inattention in the past? These questions require an examination of how the central government has affected local interests in its past policies.
National Policy and Local Interests: The US Military Bases
The constellation of interest groups that benefit from the presence of US military forces in Japan is most obvious at the local level. The question that faces the Japanese government today is whether or not that basis of support is dissolving. US bases in Japan have long been the fodder for domestic political contention; and yet, the impact of local interest on the policy-making process in Tokyo has been intermittent. The presence of US bases was a focal point of conservative progressive party dispute in the early decades of the cold war and this contention was exacerbated by US use of Japanese bases to conduct operations in the Vietnam War. National political strife over the bases expanded to include grassroots protests against specific bases as well as the increasingly effective anti-war protest movement.
Since the 1970s, however, local reaction to US military bases has focused on the specific characteristics of each base and its host community. Those who were directly affected by the bases included farmers and fishermen who complained of damage to their livelihoods and residents who live next door who complain of the damage to their environment brought about because of military operations on the bases. Moreover, local cities, towns and village governments have pointed out the loss of tax revenue that results from the economic distortions created by the base presence. Japan's national government has responded to these complaints and definitions of the local cost incurred by the deployment of US military forces by an expanding set of mechanisms by which local government and individuals can claim compensation.
What is revealed by the Okinawa challenge to Tokyo's method of implementing the US-Japan security treaty is the administrative nexus between national and local government in Japan, and specifically, the role played by the prefectural and local governments in the implementation of Japan's commitment to hosting US military forces on its territory. US bases have been administered by the Defense Facilities Administration Agency (DFAA), a national government agency created to oversee the various facilities and bases run by the US and Japanese militaries. The DFAA is responsible for land leases, employment of Japanese civilians on the bases, and the overall maintenance and upkeep of these facilities. Many of the administrative tasks performed by the DFAA are handles through local prefectural and local government offices, and in turn the prefectural offices and their staffs serve as conduits for local concerns and complaints related to the bases. Below the level of the prefecture, moreover, local city, town and village governments also mediate between US base personnel and the local communities. Depending on the locality, these local government offices handle relations with the US bases through military affairs offices or through peace promotion offices. In either case, those local officials engaged in local development planning spend much of their time and energy thinking about how the bases affect their communities' futures. If a problem should arise with a specific US command, then the Japanese citizen has multiple routes of complaint - at the local city, town or village level, at the prefectural level or at the national level of government. Moreover, the complaint can be circulated via bureaucratic channels or via elected representatives at all three levels.
In addition to this delegation from the national government of some of the day-to-day tasks associated with the administration of US military bases (and with the implementation therefore of the Status of Forces Agreement attached to the bilateral security treaty), the DFAA also began in the 1970s to contribute more directly to local economic development goals of the communities that host these bases. Various sources of compensation for damages incurred by local communities as a result of military bases and operations were available, and additional assistance to local governments was approved in 1970 when ad adjustment to these grants was made for compensation for lost tax revenue, etc. For areas with major military operations, such as airfields, ports and other significant facilities, "special adjustment grants" were also provided under the 1970 Adjustment Law. Other avenues of funding were also available by petition, and include special funds for communities interested in environmental protection and other types of local community assistance. The dependence of the national government on local governments for assistance in making sure the Japanese government's obligations were fulfilled, and the local government's dependence on the national government for the fiscal resources needed by their communities created a symbiotic relationship between national and local administrators that formed the underpinnings of support for the base presence.
This structure of compensation by the national government to local interests has assured to a certain degree that opposition to the bases does not develop into full blown political protest. In other words, the support of the local community is purchased through subsidies and development assistance. The question posed by the Okinawa case, however, is who ultimately has control over the base issue - the bureaucrats or elected politicians? While Washington and Tokyo deliberated on their respective responses to Governor Ota's challenge to existing policy, the real import of the Governor's complaints about the policy making process was the assertion that elected officials rather than bureaucrats should have the upper hand in determining policy.
Governor Ota took his claim for prefectural authority - and local autonomy - to the High Court and then in the summer of 1996, to Japan's Supreme Court. There he argued that social welfare - the right to a safe and peaceful community - should be granted to all Japanese, and that his duty as Governor was to protect the social welfare of Okinawa residents. His legal challenge was based on a revision of the Local Autonomy Law, a law that sought to redress the imbalance in administrative authority between the national and local governments in Japan. While his lawyers were not optimistic abut Ota's chances in Court, they did want to go on record as having identified Ota's position on the base leases as one of judicial interpretation of the lines of government authority and obligation. The question of how to interpret the Local Autonomy Law also helped put the Okinawa base protest issue within the rubric of contemporary debates about the nature of governance in Japan, a position that would create a common interest with other localities and local elected officials in Japan during a time of political change. It was a deft political statement, if not a successful legal challenge. This aspect of the domestic challenge posed by the events in Okinawa since 1995 suggest that a central goal is to change the way in which the Tokyo government implements the US-Japan alliance in the future.
A Comparative Perspective: Other Eras, Other Localities
While the Okinawa protest against US bases suggests a unique source of challenge to the US-Japan security treaty, it would be a mistake to conclude that other localities are impacted in similar ways. Indeed, the preponderate share of US forces stationed in Okinawa occasioned the claim to Tokyo for devising a way to achieve greater equity. An examination of other localities in Japan that host US military facilities is necessary to judge the limits of local tolerance for the US military presence. Whether or not the issues raised by Governor Ota will have resonance in other regions across Japan will most likely depend not only upon the commonality of complaints against the Tokyo Government, but also by the presence or absence (strength or weakness) of new interest groups seeking to gain entry into the policy making process. Divergence in both the economic impact of the US bases on these localities, as well as the perceived costs in terms of social welfare, may mitigate the potential for protest.
Thus far, similar claims for the prerogatives of local government put forward by Governor Ota have not yet been made by other localities that host US military bases. This final section of the paper will consider the potential impact of the Okinawa protest on other base communities. Three cases suggest a fruitful comparison. The first is a historical case that provides contrast to the experience of Okinawa prefecture, and that is the process of negotiated consolidation of US bases in the Kanto plain in the 1970s. Grassroots protest and the claim that the bases interfered with the economic needs of Kanto residents was instrumental in influencing the Tokyo government's pursuit of the closure and consolidation of US military facilities in this area. The Kanto base consolidation effort resulted in the closure of major US military facilities, most conspicuous among them Tachikawa Air Base, over the course of the 1970s, and the growing demand for housing, new urban infrastructure, and a competitive market for commercial land all contributed pressure on the Japanese government to remove and consolidate unnecessary US military facilities. In this case, the question is how local political activism factored into national government policy making. Was in fact the demand by local citizens for a better quality of life persuasive? Did the national government determine that these bases should be consolidated regardless of their strategic value to US forces? What was the cost of the consolidation plan? These questions are similar to those being discussed today with regard to the Okinawa bases, and the Kanto consolidation plan offers a potential example of a successful long-term effort to transform military bases into civilian use. The historical question raised by this case, too, is why it moved forward and a similar plan for Okinawa, discussed between the US and Japanese governments at the same time under similar conditions, did not.
There are localities in Japan, however that have been relatively hospitable to US military bases despite the various common problems faced by host communities. Two cases offer such a contrast with Okinawa. One is Misawa City in Aomori Prefecture, home to Misawa Air Base. This locality has been relatively acquiescent in the face of an expansion of US forces over the past decade (a result of the deployment of F-16 squadrons). Misawa too shares with Okinawa a lagging rate of economic growth and development compared with other regions of Japan. A second community to be investigated is Sasebo City in Kyushu. Here there has been intermittent grassroots protest against the naval base, and against the operations of US naval forces. Expanding population density, and increasing land pressures, have contributed to local disgruntlement, but local government has not responded with calls for decreasing the size of US deployments there. The absence to date of a conspicuous protest movement in either of these locales suggests the need for a closer look at the forces that sustain local support and/or the barriers to opposition at the local level of government. These cases also offer the potential for examining how local governments cope with the US military presence while accommodating the social welfare of their citizens.
Three specific areas need much greater attention and specificity in this project. The first is the underlying question about whether my approach to the decision-making process works. In other words, I have presented a three staged process of understanding how decisions are made about the US military presence in Japan: strategic choices made in Washington inform bilateral negotiations between the US and Japan which then must be implemented at the local level of Japanese communities hosting these US military forces. My research thus far has suggested that while this is generally correct, the decision-making is not quite so linear and not quite so unfettered. But the basic point I would like to make is that there are three separate arenas of policy making that affect the US military presence, and they are not always coordinated. Moreover, there are two national political arenas to consider, as well as two very different roles for each government at the implementation stage of policy.
Second, more data is needed to flesh out the key turning points in negotiations between the US and Japan on the size and status of the US military presence there. As noted above, the base reduction and consolidation process negotiated between the US and Japan in the 1970s would reveal much about the bilateral, national and local impact of this change in US deployments. (These deliberations have recently been declassified.) Moreover, it would offer some insights into the legal and economic impact of this process, much of which is relevant to the contemporary deliberations in Okinawa today. Data on the amount spent by the Japanese government on specific bases, on the amount of savings generated by transforming bases from US bases to SDF bases, and to the subsidies offered to specific communities may be difficult to obtain. A more complete investigation of the city, town and village responses to US bases in Okinawa is necessary to an analysis of the impact of local political change on US bases. Further work will need to be done there and in other localities.
Finally, the question remains - when and how do domestic politics matter to those who make and implement foreign policy? The nature of the issues that engage domestic publics seem to be fairly consistent in both countries. Budgets matter to the US public, and the perception that the US has born the brunt of the costs of the cold war feeds into the burdensharing debate. Japan remains very vulnerable to this criticism. On the other side of the Pacific, US strategy has been perceived as divorced form Japan's own foreign and security policy. It was only in the last decade of the cold war that the Japanese public seemed to accept that the US military presence was beneficial to Japan's own security. The question is one of tolerance - how much are the localities that host US bases willing to cope with the US military presence? How much is the Japanese government able to convince, persuade, cajole, induce these communities to live with the US military? The Okinawa case offers a chance to investigate the linkages between local and national politics in Japan, and the structure of compensation that has bound them in support of the US military presence.
(1) See the most recent rendition of this argument put forward in 1995 in the Foreign Affairs magazine between Joseph Nye, then Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs in the Department of Defense, and Chalmers Johnson and E.B. Keene's critique of "The Pentagon's Ossified Strategy." Foreign Affairs 74(4): 103-114.
(2) This was not new to US policy towards its cold war allies. The burden-sharing debate had characterized the Atlantic Alliance much earlier in the cold war. The US attempt to convince its European allies to share more of the fiscal "burden" of its global strategy of containing the former Soviet Union became most conspicuous in the 1960s when then Senator Mike Mansfield (later US Ambassador to Japan) threatened to initiate the withdrawal of US forces from Europe if Germany did not contribute more to offsetting the costs of stationing forces there. See David Schwartz, NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983), and for a historical treatment of the issues and terms of stationing US forces in Europe, see Simon W. Duke and Wolfgang Krieger, US Military Forces in Europe: The Early Years, 1945-1970 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993).
(3) See hearings before the Defense Burdensharing Panel of the Committee on Armed Services, US House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, 1988. Since the creation of the Congressional Burdensharing Panel in 1980, the Department of Defense has been required to submit annual reports to the Congress on its estimation of allied contributions to the "common defense." While Congress has sought to measure allied contributions in terms of fiscal commitments, the DOD has sought instead to evaluate allied military contributions in terms of their operational role within US global strategy. For an example of the DOD's mission-oriented approach, see the report submitted to Congress on December 22, 1988, entitled "Sharing the Roles, Risks and Responsibilities for Common Defense."
(4) This is despite efforts by the US government to argue that the US-Japan relationship is one of the most important relationships we have in the world. The Department of Defense reiterated this in its most recent review of US strategy in the region:
There is no more important bilateral relationship than the one we have with Japan. It is fundamental to both our Pacific security policy and our global strategic objectives...it is seen not just by the United States and Japan, but throughout the region, as a major factor for security stability in Asia.--United States Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region, Office of International Security Affairs, Department of Defense, February 1995, p. 10.
(5) The Constitution has been invoked to challenge the presence of US military forces in Japan, but this was resolved early in the postwar period in the Tachikawa Base case. The ruling was that the presence of foreign troops on Japanese soil was not in violation of the Constitution. However, there was another case, the Sunakawa case, that challenged the Japanese government's right to appropriate private land for the extension of the Tachikawa runway. This in turn produced a ruling that did not sanction the rights claimed by the Japanese government to appropriate land for use by the US military. This latter case was the precedent cited in Governor Ota's legal challenge over bases in Okinawa presented to the Supreme Court in 1996.
(6) For a description of this conjunction of protest groups during Vietnam, see Thomas Havens, Fire Across the Sea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
(7) According to one analyst's calculations, seventy percent of US military bases, by area, and seventy-seven percent of US military personnel were located within 60 miles of Tokyo in 1970. Moreover, some of the facilities in the Tokyo area were either exclusively for recreational purposes or were unused. For example, the ammunition depot at Tama, approximately 490 acres, was used as a recreation facility, and four of the US military's 10 golf courses were also on the Kanto plain. Another facility, the Tokorozawa Logistics Depot, approximately 740 acres, was simply set aside in case of future need. The US military was also provided with a hotel in downtown Tokyo in the midst of one of the most expensive commercial districts. See Roland A. Paul, American Military Commitments Abroad (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University, 1973), pp. 40-43.
(8) In the SOFA, the Japanese government was to provide the facilities needed by the US military, and the US was to bear all the costs "incident to the maintenance of US armed forces in Japan." While this delineation of responsibility for the costs of maintaining US bases in Japan seemed clear, in practice the two governments found they had different interpretations of their respective responsibilities. For example, in 1969, it was widely reported in the press that US Forces Japan had never paid their telephone bill - a bill that had reached 8.1 billion yen. The unresolved question at the time was whether or not telephone service should be covered by the Japanese government or whether in fact it was part of the costs of maintaining US forces, and therefore, a US government responsibility.
(9) Hearings before the Subcommittee on United States Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 91st Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970).
(10) Calculations with regard to the regional military balance were accompanied by efforts to get Japan to do more for its own defense. The terms of these talks seemed to be less specific than the "burden-sharing" deliberations in NATO. The notion that allied military forces needed to play a larger role in the implementation of a common cold war strategy was also a part of the Nixon Doctrine, although it was not publicly emphasized. The idea that Japan's own military forces could play a larger role in the regional balance was supported throughout the 1970s, and efforts to encourage Tokyo to increase its own national defense spending were not visibly successful. The problems this posed for the Tokyo government were obvious, and initiatives to focus on defense spending as an indicator of burden-sharing were soon abandoned.
(11) These deliberations were conducted within the Security Consultative Committee (SCC), which met on an ad hoc basis to discuss how to improve bilateral security cooperation in light of the new US strategic approach to the region. The SCC was the primary mechanisms for bilateral security talks, and the participants on the Japanese side were the Japanese Foreign Minister and the Director General of the Defense Agency. In contrast, the US side was represented by the US Ambassador to Japan and the Commander in Chief, Pacific. The unequal rank of the two sides, and the fact that these meetings were held only on an ad hoc basis at that point in the history of the alliance meant that there was no regular consultations on broader issues of strategy and long term security planning. The SCC meetings in the early 1970s focused almost exclusively on the issue of US military bases.
(12) Specifically, this initial consolidation plan announced the following decreases in US military operations:
(1) Misawa Air Field - The Japanese Air Self Defense Force was expected to increase its use of this base. US flight operations would decrease, but continued use of the base was expected. All F-4s deployed at Misawa would be redeployed elsewhere.
(2) Yokota Air Field - All activities would continues, except all F-4s would be moved to Okinawa by June 1971 and reconnaissance squadrons would be returned to the United States.
(3) Itazuke Air Field - All US Air Force and Navy operations would be reduced to limited transport flights only. An agreement for joint use would be concluded with the Government of Japan. The airport will primarily be for civilian use, and after July 1, 1971, the Government of Japan will assume operational and maintenance costs for the airfield.
(4) Atsugi Air Field - The majority of US forces and personnel will be transferred by the end of June 1971. The Japanese government will assume responsibility for operations and maintenance for this air field by June 30, 1971, and an agreement will be concluded for joint use that will allow entry and exit to those areas for remaining US forces.
(5) Yokosuka and Yokohama Region - US naval activities will be greatly reduced by the end of June 1971, with major reduction in scale at Yokosuka. Some ships and supply and logistics for Pacific submarine group will be moved to Sasebo. Partial return of some facilities to Japan is under consideration. -- Waga Kuni no Gaiko, 1971 (No. 15), pp. 170-71, p. 421-423.
(13) Base consolidation in the Kanto area was expensive, and the fiscal burden of relocation and transforming these facilities to civilian use is borne by the Japanese government. As such, it is a in the realm of the aggregate share of costs assume by the Japanese government for maintaining US forces. While the Japanese government has not made explicit the total amount of funds expended for this phase of downsizing US military bases in Japan an estimated 77.2 billion yen was spent between 1974 and 1978 in implementing the consolidation plans adopted for the Kanto and Okinawa plans in the early 1970s.
(14) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs only announced in the plan the status of specific bases. 7 facilities were completely closed, and facilities in 13 locations were partially returned by the US. After Okinawa reverted to Japanese sovereignty, 18 facilities would be partially or completely closed after the 2 countries agreed upon a plan for consolidating US forces elsewhere, and the status of 10 US military facilities would remain under consideration between the two governments as reversion proceeded.
(15) Labor cost-sharing agreements were signed in the mid-1970s between the US and Japan, but by early 1978, there was considerable agreement within the LDP that some sort of accommodation of US demands for greater cost-sharing regarding the US military bases would be necessary. The problem apparently was in convincing the opposition parties. In early 1978 Kanemaru Shin, then Director General of the Defense Agency began a process of consultations with opposition party leaders that appealed for their support to consider expanding budgetary allocations for improving US facilities in the "spirit of generosity" [omoiyari no seishin de].
(16) In fact, the public was relatively acquiescent in response to the growing calls by Japan's political leaders to have greater "compassion" for the budgetary plight of the US and to pay more of the costs associated with maintaining US forces in Japan. Today, however, there is some questioning of the premise that Japanese taxpayers should pay for the deployment of US forces in Japan. A citizen's group in Osaka has recently advertised that it will call on the government to return to the taxpayers the money it spent on "omoiyari yosan." See Asahi Shimbun report, February 7, 1997.
(17) A group of prominent academics and policy commentators belonging to the National Security Issues Research Group (Anzen Hosho Mondai Kenkyukai) issued a report that gained widespread attention in 1970 entitled "Prospects for US Military Bases in Japan" (Beigun Kichi Mondai no Tenbo). The report began by stating that the ultimate objective for Japan should be the complete withdraw of US forces operating on a regular basis from Japan, and suggested instead that the US and Japan needed to move to a strategy of "contingency cooperation [yuji kyoryoku]. The idea was that US bases in Japan would be consolidated in such a way as to be available for the US military in case of a conflict. The Japanese government should not, the report argued, give the US carte blanche use of these bases, but rather should retain the right to approve US deployments only in cases it deemed appropriate.
Another such group, made up of some of the same members as the National Security Issues Research Group, was formed to consider US military bases in Okinawa, and came up with similar recommendations for this type of "contingency cooperation" in response to the draw down that accompanied the Nixon Doctrine.
(18) There has been some recent attention to the notion of a US-Japan security alliance that does not call for the stationing of US forces in Japan (churyu naki anpo). The Democratic Party seems to like this idea, but it has not been fully developed in terms of a party policy. At best, contemporary discussions of this notion seem to focus on the Okinawa issue, and the potential withdrawal of the US Marines from Okinawa.