Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

meter runway built on a coral reef more than a mile offshore.

The Americans liked the idea of an airfield surrounded by water, which would eliminate protests from nearby residents over accidents and noise; and the politically powerful Japanese construction industry liked the exceedingly expensive, unconventional plans for constructing it. (Japan had agreed to pay for the new airfield.) Even though the proposed location was directly in the Pacific Ocean s “typhoon alley” and nothing like it had ever been built before, the United States enthusiastically endorsed the proposal. The Okinawan government, however, accepted the relocation only on two conditions: that the airport would be for joint civil-military use and that the American military presence would end after fifteen years. The United States went along with the planning while stonewalling on the conditions. What neither the Tokyo government nor the Americans had factored in was the reaction of local Okinawans, who deeply resented the potential destruction of one of the few coral reefs still surrounding their semitropical island.

Environmentalists further pointed out that the airport would ruin the habitat of an endangered, protected, and iconic sea mammal, the dugong. In 2004, when the Japanese government began to construct seabed drilling platforms over the reef, some thirty thousand Okinawans joined by supporters from other prefectures and overseas sympathizers (including representatives of the environmental group Greenpeace) began a sit-in that brought the work to a halt. The protesters occupied the drilling rigs and went to sea in small boats and canoes to chase away the surveyors. Tokyo had planned to drill in some sixty-three locations, but by mid-2004 no work had begun.⁵⁴

Then, on Friday, August 13, the accident that Secretary Rumsfeld had predicted occurred. A thirty-year-old Marine Corps CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter took off from Futenma—widely described in the Okinawan press as “the most dangerous base on earth”—and crashed into the main administration building of nearby Okinawa International University. It was the forty-first military helicopter crash in Okinawa since Japan regained sovereignty in 1972, and it transformed the 2004 situation.⁵⁵ In an unexpected way, the crash again raised the issue of the SOFA, set off massive Okinawan protests, forced the Pentagon to make closing Futenma a priority in its global force transformation schemes, and caused the Japanese government finally to try to break the domestic standoff over where Futenma’s replacement should go.

The three-man crew of the helicopter that crashed survived without life-threatening injuries and, miraculously, no one on the ground was killed. The rear vertical stabilizer and rotor of the helicopter broke off in flight, falling to the street, but the university itself was closed for summer vacation. This accident raised at once the issue of slipshod maintenance. And what happened immediately afterward turned it into a major political incident.

Within minutes of the crash, a woman in the neighborhood called the fire department, which promptly dispatched four fire engines. Simultaneously, some twenty marines from Futenma showed up and began assisting the Ginowan firemen in rescuing the crew and bringing the fire under control. However, the moment the local firemen withdrew, the marines surrounded the crash site with yellow tape carrying the English words, “No Entry.” They barred everyone, including firefighters, from returning to the crash scene, ran through the university administration building and ordered everyone out, halted all traffic on an adjacent street, and tried to stop TV cameramen from photographing the wreck. By then, several hundred people had gathered nearby and on the university grounds, shouting, “What kind of authority do they have? Whose country is this? The occupation isn’t over.”

Yoichi Iha, the mayor of Ginowan, was also barred from the site. It was “too dangerous,” he was told, even though relaxed American troops could be seen lounging about and pizza-delivery motorbikes were allowed into the crash scene.⁵⁶ The following morning a large delegation of Ginowan police officers visited the scene armed with a court order to investigate possible violations of aviation safety laws, but they, too, were prevented from entering and informed that they could do so only with the permission of U.S. military authorities. The marines, they were assured, would investigate the crash and let the Japanese government know their findings.

That morning, Shogo Arai, a Liberal Democratic member of the Diet and parliamentary vice minister of foreign affairs, flew in from Tokyo to view the scene. Afterward, he called a press conference to announce: “I myself was not allowed onto the crash site. Japan is not Iraq. To claim American sovereignty in this situation is ridiculous.”⁵⁷ The police formally asked Lieutenant General Robert L. Blackman, the marine commanding general in Okinawa, for authorization to investigate the cause of the crash. He vacillated for several days and then denied the request. Without getting permission from the university, the marines used chain saws to cut down over thirty trees on the campus, hauled away the helicopter’s burned fuselage, and scraped off the topsoil where the helicopter had come down. When the Japanese were finally allowed in, there was nothing left to inspect.

It soon became clear that the marines were relying on a section of the so-called Agreed Minutes to the SOFA. These additional rules included article 17, paragraph 10(b): “The Japanese authorities will normally not exercise the right to search, seizure, or inspection with respect to any person or property within facilities and areas in use by and guarded under the authority of the United States or with respect to property of the United States armed forces wherever situated, except in cases where the competent authorities of the United States armed forces consent to such search, seizure, or inspection by the Japanese authorities of such persons or property.”⁵⁸

This provision of the SOFA had been unknown to the Japanese public. Okinawa and virtually all other Japanese prefectures housing U.S. bases demanded an instant revision of the SOFA. It was pointed out that both Germany and Italy have the right to investigate military accidents occurring on their territories, while Okinawan authorities were unable even to interview the helicopter pilots or gather other valuable evidence. The nationwide newspaper Asahi Shimbun asked rhetorically, “Is Japan Still Under U.S. Occupation?”⁵⁹ The widespread outrage reflected a new popular understanding of just how unequal and colonial Japan s relations with the United States really were.

Okinawans suspected that there might have been secret technology involved in the crash, explaining why the Americans were so eager to keep them away, but the CH-53D is actually so old that everything connected with it is public knowledge. It was possible that the helicopter might have been transporting depleted-uranium ammunition, in violation of American agreements with Japan, which would explain why some marines were spotted carrying Geiger counters around the site and why all the topsoil was removed. But the most persuasive reason the Japanese press could come up with for the incident was simply to maintain the “almighty SOFA,” the forty-five-year-old license governing America’s imperial presence in their country.⁶⁰

The next year, on July 29, 2005, the association of governors of prefectures housing U.S. bases submitted to the Japanese Defense Agency and Foreign Ministry a list of seventy-one changes to the SOFA that it said were desperately needed.⁶¹ The governors argued that Tokyo was far too obsequious toward the Pentagon and indifferent to the hardships the bases inflicted on ordinary Japanese. Their view was bolstered by the fact that, at the time of the crash, Prime Minister Koizumi was spending a two-week vacation in an upscale Tokyo hotel room watching the summer Olympics and refused even to meet with Governor Inamine until he returned to work nor did he ever visit the crash site in Ginowan.⁶² Many commentators observed that had the crash occurred on the campus of Keio University in Tokyo—the Princeton of Japan—vacation or no, he would have been there in a flash.

The official American accident report was not released to the public, but a few leaked details confirmed American negligence. The CH-53D that crashed was one of several being prepared for shipment to Iraq on board the amphibious assault ship USS Essex. Maintenance crews were working night and day to get the helicopters ready. One mechanic testified that after three consecutive days of seventeen-hour shifts, he