Photo/Illutration Self-Defense Forces members unload equipment from an Air SDF transport plane at Yonaguni Airport in Okinawa Prefecture. (Takashi Watanabe)

NAHA--Younger Okinawa residents, resigned to the fact that years of opposition on the U.S. bases issue have done nothing to change central government policy, are more likely to support using their prefecture as a bulwark in the nation’s defense strategy.

This is the conclusion of a team of researchers led by Hiroyuki Kumamoto, a sociology professor at Meisei University in Tokyo, who surveyed Okinawa residents about national security issues.

Most questions had five possible responses.

Those who said they favored or somewhat favored a position were grouped into the support group while those who were opposed or somewhat opposed were classified as the opposed group. The neither group had no opinion either way.

The survey was carried out soon after the Okinawa gubernatorial election in September. Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of 3,800 residents in 14 municipalities, and responses were received from 1,053.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents supported strengthening the Japan-U.S. security alliance, while 23 percent were opposed.

Similarly, 40 percent favored strengthening the Self-Defense Forces while 28 percent were opposed.

Eighty-one percent agreed that China’s military buildup represented a national security risk to Japan, while only 6 percent did not think so.

Eighty-three percent of respondents said they agreed or somewhat agreed that military facilities in Okinawa would become a target of attack during a military conflict.

Seventy percent agreed that it was unfair that U.S. military bases were concentrated in Okinawa.

On the issue of relocating the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan to the Henoko coastal district of Nago, 29 percent of respondents supported the move while 46 percent were opposed.

The research group concluded as an overall trend that many respondents sensed a crisis emerging in national security, but also felt it was unfair that U.S. military bases were concentrated in Okinawa.

Younger age groups tended to support beefing up defenses in Okinawa, the nation’s southernmost prefecture that accounts for about 70 percent of all U.S. military facilities in Japan.

On the question of whether to strengthen the Japan-U.S. security alliance, 49 percent of those between 18 and 34 were in favor, while only 43 percent of those between 35 and 49 were in support.

But 47 percent of those in both age groups supported strengthening the SDF.

When asked if the anti-base movement was meaningless because the central government has the sole authority to decide defense policy, 39 percent were in agreement while 41 percent said no.

But younger age groups tended to support that view, with 55 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 saying yes.

Younger age groups also tended to be less supportive of the view that concentrating U.S. military bases in Okinawa was unfair.

About 70 percent of respondents in all age groups agreed that relocating the Futenma base to Henoko would not reduce the base burden on Okinawa. But close to half of those aged 49 and younger agreed that the move was inevitable since there is little chance of land reclamation work being stopped now.

Kumamoto has conducted field work in Henoko for about 20 years.

He suggested that young people regard the anti-base movement as a waste of time and left them resigned to accepting the unfair burden on Okinawa because years of confrontation between the central and Okinawa prefectural governments had gone nowhere. 

The only visible progress was in continuing land reclamation work at Henoko that many islanders bitterly oppose to this day.

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