A cargo ship carrying controversial US aircraft is scheduled to arrive in Japan next week despite fierce opposition among residents on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima urged Defence Minister Satoshi Morimoto to reject a US plan to deploy the Marine Corps' MV-22 Osprey aircraft at an American military base on the island, citing safety concerns about the helicopter-plane hybrids.
An Osprey crashed in Morocco in April, killing two, and a crash in Florida in June injured an entire crew. An Osprey's emergency landing in the US last week added to their concerns. Accidents during the plane's development killed 30 Marines.
Washington promised to inform Tokyo speedily of the findings of its probe into the crashes. The plane will not be deployed until after the report is published, according to Japanese media reports. The incidents, however, remind islanders of the 2004 crash of a CH-53D helicopter into Okinawa International University, adjacent to US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, located in the middle of residential areas. Three crew members were injured but no one on the ground.
Tens of thousands of Okinawans, including the governor, will hold a rally in early August to oppose the deployment of the 24 Osprey aircraft to the Futenma air base. In April 2010, islanders staged a rally on a similar scale, to protest a plan to build a US base in an ecologically sensitive area in the north of the tiny island, which already hosts nearly 75 per cent of all US military facilities in Japan.
Okinawans have long been critical of the US military presence on their island and crimes committed by US troops there. US military facilities occupy some 20 per cent of the island's land mass. Washington told Japan that the Osprey would be delivered to the Marines' Iwakuni Air Station in Yamaguchi prefecture on Monday, but citizens groups in western Japan are planning to block the deployment at sea and on land. After safety checks and trial flights at the Iwakuni base, the tilt-rotor aircraft will be eventually deployed to the Futenma base on Okinawa to replace CH-46 choppers there. Yamaguchi Governor Sekinari Nii and Iwakuni Mayor Yoshihiko Fukuda also reiterated their opposition to the deployment as they doubt the Osprey's safety.
In Washington, Pentagon press secretary George Little stressed last week the importance of the deployment. "Overall, the Osprey is doing very well and has been deployed in various parts of the world, including the war zones, and has a very effective track record and is a very important part of our fleet," Little told reporters, according to the Kyodo News agency.
But a US defence expert has repeatedly questioned the flight safety of the Osprey, Kyodo reported Tuesday. Rex Rivolo, a former chief analyst at the Institute for Defence Analyses, said in a 2003 report that the Osprey could be knocked off-balance and out of the sky by the turbulence from nearby aircraft, Kyodo said.
Tokyo's indifferent response to the locals' concerns was criticized by one of the closest allies of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. Noda and Chief Cabinet Minister Osamu Fujimura "make light of locals' opinion in Okinawa and Yamaguchi," Seiji Maehara, policy chief of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, told a news conference Tuesday.
"If the Japan-US alliance is really important, I believe that big-picture thinking would be renegotiating with the United States," Maehara, a former foreign minister, said. But his criticism came too late, analysts said. Noda and ministers discussed on Tuesday how to ensure the safety of the deployment. Noda said Japan has no choice but to accept the deployment.
"The deployment itself is a plan by the US government" and the Japanese government does not play a part in Washington's decision, the premier said. Minoru Morita, a political analyst, said Noda was being "absolutely irresponsible." "We all know the prime minister is kow-towing to the US. But he himself acknowledged that Japan is a dependency of the US."