This week's US-Japanese agreement removing thousands of Marines from Okinawa breaks an 18-year deadlock over the realignment of US forces in Japan by a simple expedient: sidestepping the key obstacle that has bedeviled the issue. Okinawa plays reluctant host to nearly half of the 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan, including 18,000 Marines.
But though the agreement marks "movement in some direction," it represents "only symbolic progress," says Masaru Kohno, a politics professor at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The deal does not close the Futenma Marine airbase in the middle of Ginowa City, which residents complain is noisy and dangerous, and which successive Japanese governments have promised - and failed - to shutter. (csmonitor.com)
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