Photo/Illutration The U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, located in the heart of a residential area in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, in September 2019 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

At least 160 written statements have been submitted by municipal and prefectural assemblies asking for a revision of the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which grants broad privileges to the U.S. armed forces in Japan.

The documents have been approved at local assemblies across the nation over the past two years, according to the Lower House.

In Okinawa Prefecture where U.S. military bases are concentrated, many residents and officials, including members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, have been asking for a revision of the SOFA, which was concluded in 1960.

As a similar sentiment is spreading around the nation, Okinawa Prefecture marked the 48th anniversary since its reversion to Japan on May 15.

At the request of then Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga, the Association of Prefectural Governors proposed drastic revisions to the SOFA for the first time in July 2018.

The proposal asks that U.S. forces be subject to domestic laws and that local governments be given the right to enter U.S. bases.

According to the Lower House, after the association proposed the revisions, 160 written statements asking for SOFA revisions were sent to it by the end of April 2020.

The opinions came from the nine prefectural assemblies of Hokkaido, Iwate, Shizuoka, Nagano, Wakayama, Nara, Saga, Miyazaki and Okinawa, and 151 from municipal assemblies, including Sapporo, Nagano and Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture.

In Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, an F-16 fighter jet from Misawa Air Base in the prefecture accidentally dropped a dummy bomb weighing about 230 kilograms onto private property in November 2019.

However, the U.S. forces did not report the incident to local officials until the day after it occurred. The accident caused more distrust, prompting the local assembly to approve the statement on revising the SOFA.

Through the media, Fumio Takahashi, 66, the assembly chairman, had seen Okinawan residents angered by the refusal of U.S. forces to allow Japanese officials access to U.S. military plane accident sites.

“After the accident, the people and the politicians in the village changed their opinions,” he said. “U.S. military planes are flying all over Japan, so the SOFA issue should be discussed not only by Okinawans but by all Japanese.”

The agreement has never been revised in the 60 years since it took effect, although such requests have been made.

The Japanese government has tried to improve the functioning of the SOFA by reviewing the guidelines and reaching supplemental agreements whenever incidents and accidents occurred.

However, U.S. forces still retain broad leeway in its operations in Japan.

Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki said, “Revising the SOFA, such as applying domestic laws to U.S. forces, will drastically help solve the problem.”

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