Nago mayor-elect Inamine opposes the relocation of the U.S. military base from Ginowan to Henoko/Oura.  This adds momentum to the movement to remove the bases from Okinawa.

But the relocation of the troops and bases to Guam or Hawai’i are not acceptable options either.  The U.S. bases are an oppressive and harmful presence in each of these islands.   It’s time the U.S. stop using our islands as platforms for American power projection.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/asia/25okinawa.html?hp

Mayor-Elect in Okinawan City Opposes U.S. Base

By MARTIN FACKLER

Published: January 24, 2010

TOKYO — A candidate who opposes the relocation of an American air base on Okinawa won a crucial mayoral election on Sunday, raising pressure on Japan’s prime minister to move the base off the island, a move opposed by the United States.

The election in the small city of Nago could force Japan to scrap, or at least significantly modify, a 2006 deal with the United States to build a replacement facility in the city for the busy Futenma United States Marine air station. The base is currently in a crowded part of the southern Japanese island.

The fate of that deal has already become the focus of a growing diplomatic rift between the United States and Japan, its closest Asian ally. The Obama administration has been pushing Japan to honor the deal, but the new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has said he will take until May to decide whether to support it or name a new site for the base.

Political experts have said losing Nago as a site for the base would complicate Mr. Hatoyama’s decision, because few other Japanese communities appear willing to host the base and its noisy helicopters.

This means that Mr. Hatoyama could try to merge the Marine base with a nearby United States Air Force base, or move it to Guam; both are options that the Obama administration has resisted.

Before his Democratic Party’s historic victory in national elections last summer, Mr. Hatoyama campaigned on promises to move the base off Okinawa or out of Japan altogether. In doing so, he was tapping deep misgivings in Japan about the 2006 agreement, which was signed by Mr. Hatoyama’s predecessors, the Liberal Democrats.

Many Japanese say the move to Nago would cause excessive environmental damage and impose an unfair burden on Okinawa, where almost half of the 50,000 United States military personnel in Japan are located.

In deciding whether to support the 2006 deal, Mr. Hatoyama has said he will heed the voice of Okinawa, which overwhelmingly supported his party in the election, which ended a half century of government by the Liberal Democrats. That made Sunday’s vote in Nago, a city of 60,000 in the island’s underdeveloped north, widely watched here as an important litmus test of Okinawan public opinion ahead of Mr. Hatoyama’s self-imposed deadline.

On Sunday, Susumu Inamine, the city’s school board chairman and an opponent of the base, defeated the incumbent mayor, Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, who supports it as a source of jobs and investment. Mr. Inamine, 64, won 52 percent of the vote, according to the Kyodo News Service.

The plans for the base, which had also been supported by two previous mayors of Nago, call for building two runways partly on landfill that extends into the coral-filled waters near Henoko, a tiny fishing village administered by Nago.