Japan: Cutting Back the Bases

In the 23 years since the end of World War II, the Japanese have created an economic miracle out of the war time ruins. To some degree at least, this progress was made possible by the American military shield; Japan has needed to spend less than 1% of its gross national product on defense. (The U.S. figure: nearly 10%.) U.S. military facilities are scattered across the nation’s four main islands, and these have played an important part in the Korean and Viet Nam wars — as well as in guaranteeing Japan’s safety. The U.S.

presence, however, has produced severe problems as well as benefits.

For more than a decade, the American bases have provided an easy target of opportunity for Japanese radicals, who have been agitating for a U.S. pull-out for years. There are 148 U.S. military holdings in the islands, manned by 41,000 Army, Air Force and Navy men. An establishment of such a size has inevitably at times caused frictions with the civilian population. Since the end of the Korean War, Washington has made sizable reductions in the size of the permanent U.S. troop commitment — but the friction continues.

Prostitutes Descend. At the U.S.

Army hospital in the Tokyo suburb of Oji, for instance, a scandal recently swirled up over the fact that recuperating G.I. patients had been seen slipping out of their wards to seek the companionship of the local bar girls. It was hardly a major issue, but a Tokyo paper trumpeted the story with a headline that shrieked: PROSTITUTES DESCEND ON OJI; PUBLIC MORALE ENDANGERED.

Protest demonstrations blossomed at once. In a graver incident, an American reconnaissance jet last June crashed into a college computer center near the Itazuke Air Base. No one was hurt, but another wave of demonstrations spread throughout the country. The jet’s wreckage still lies on the campus; radical students have prevented its removal.

With the vital U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty coming up for renewal in 1970, it seemed increasingly obvious that U.S. concessions to the newly re-elected government of Premier Eisaku Sato might be in order, if only to give Sato a stronger hand in calming the anti-U.S. protesters. Last summer, after the Itazuke crash, both Japanese and U.S. officials began drawing up a list of facilities that might be given up. When a formal Japanese request for a scaling-down of the American presence arrived, the Americans were ready for discussions. The result: last week the U.S. announced that 50 military areas would be returned, relocated or shared with Japan’s forces.

The Power Remains. That sounded impressive, but the largest and most important facilities were not on the list, such as the giant airbases at Tachikawa and Yokota near Tokyo, the sprawling naval bases at Yokosuka and Sasebo in Kyushu. And many of the items on the U.S. roster were small indeed: a brace of tiny and long-unused airstrips near Tokyo, a handful of gunnery ranges, a maneuver area near the base of Mt. Fuji, a golf course and a laundry.

Clearly, the U.S. had not given away any substantial military potential. U.S. power remains, and so, unfortunately, does the bases issue. Indeed, there was concern in Tokyo that once the cutbacks take effect, they might well spark new demonstrations intended to force more sweeping concessions.