The problem is that a sizable chunk of the island’s residents demand that the American military be removed altogether – not just removed from view. In 2006, Washington and Tokyo agreed that the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma would move to Camp Schwab, an existing U.S. base further north on the island. Once that happens, the U.S. has agreed to move some 8000 marines off Okinawa to the American territory of Guam.
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/12/30/as-tokyo-cozies-up-to-washington-tensions-flare-over-u-s-military-in-okinawa/
The deal has been stalled for years due to Okinawans’ objections over the presence of the U.S. military. Roughly a quarter of the island’s civilian population was killed in the long and bloody Battle of Okinawa in World War II, and after the war ended, the island was under U.S. occupation until 1972, when it was handed back over to Japan.
Today Okinawa still hosts about half of America’s 50,000 military personnel in Japan – a burden activists say is unfair considering their history and relative population to mainland Japan. In the 1990s, the rape of a young girl by U.S. servicemen and two fatal car crashes involving U.S. personnel and Japanese civilians further fueled Okinawans’ anger toward the American presence. In 2010, protests over the base reached a crescendo when over 90,000 demonstrators showed up to oppose the relocation. The uprising eventually led to the resignation of then Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who had been elected in part on a promise to move the base off Okinawa, but ultimately found no mutually beneficial way to renegotiate Japan’s agreement with a vital economic and defense partner.
From Time.com. And encouraging article of resistance against the US military presence in Okinawa.
