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)

Okinawa Prefecture and the Japanese government currently have a window of opportunity to have their voices heard on the prefecture’s U.S. base burden, according to foreign policy experts.

Their read on the current political climate is that Washington values its allies more than ever amid rocky relations with China and is more than willing to lend an ear to its closest allies. 

A council of experts reached that conclusion in a report delivered to Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki on March 31, saying now is the perfect time to make a concerted push to curtail the U.S. military presence in the southernmost prefecture.

“Okinawa should speak out about what it wants, as the United States is now more willing to listen to what its ally has to say,” said the head of the council, Kyoji Yanagisawa, a former Defense Ministry bureaucrat and assistant chief Cabinet secretary in charge of national security and crisis management.

Five other experts on defense and Japan-U.S. relations sit on the council.

The council is called Bankoku Shinryo Kaigi, which means bridge between nations. It was set up in 2019 to explore ways to ease the U.S. base burden on Okinawa Prefecture, home to 70 percent of the U.S. military installations on Japan.

The group conducted an analysis of the current global security environment and developments in Japan and discussed ways to achieve a reduction in the number of U.S. bases in the prefecture.

It said advocates for a new U.S. strategy called on Washington to relocate military bases from Okinawa to other areas because they are within range of Chinese missiles, which renders them vulnerable. 

Despite that, bases in the prefecture are still currently regarded as a core part of the U.S. military presence in Asia, the experts said.

As a result, Okinawa Prefecture could be forced to shoulder even more U.S. military facilities and serve as a training site for U.S. forces while the risks of becoming a target of Chinse missiles will only increase, according to the council.

But the council said that in a departure from the previous Trump administration, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden values cooperation with its allies, which provides Japan and Okinawa with the chance to become more vocal about their interests.

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