By The Japanese government is trying to show the Okinawans the money:
Japan is planning to shovel billions of dollars in unrestricted funding on Okinawa this year in hopes of buying public support for keeping a U.S. Marine Corps base on the island, experts say.
Under a budget plan hammered out this winter, Tokyo will give the small island prefecture $2.05 billion to spend as the local government sees fit and also increase its total annual funding by $826 million.
Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima negotiated the generous subsidies as part of the upcoming national budget and received nearly everything the island requested. The island will receive $3.8 billion of the $3.9 billion in total funding it requested from Tokyo, even as the country reels from disaster and a currency crisis.
The governor and the central government claim that the funding plan is not related to Futenma, but Moritake Tomikawa, president of Okinawa International University, said the intentions behind the subsidies are clear.
“It is obviously an appeasement policy by the government,” Tomikawa said. “It was as if they are slapping your face with a thick bundle of green notes and people here are weary of such policy from the central government.”
The controversial funding plan comes as Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s administration prepares to ask Okinawa for permission to build an offshore airfield — the next step in relocating U.S. Marine forces from the Futenma air station in urban Ginowan. But not even the cash infusion is likely to overcome growing public resentment toward Tokyo and convince the island to sign off on the troubled project, according to U.S. and Japanese observers. [Stars & Stripes]
So $2.05 billion + $3.8 billion = $6.3 billion in total funding for one year. The population of Okinawa is roughly 1.4 million people. If you do the math on this it comes out to the Japanese government subsidizing the island of Okinawa to the tune of $4,500 a person. It will be interesting to see if this will be enough to buy off the government on the island to get the new airfield built?
11:25 am on January 17th, 2012 1
From 1945 to 1972, the US occupied Okinawa. It was the last piece of land to revert to Japan. At the time of reversion, I think the Okinawans themselves had no say in the thing. Their major problem under the US occupation/trusteeship was that Okinawans were technically stateless, and this caused problems for shipping and fishing in other waters. They might have preferred some other arrangement, like becoming a US commonwealth like Guam or the PR.
I was in DoD school on Okinawa when it reverted, and over the next 5 years I saw the Japanese government pour money into the province to bring standards of living up to those of the mainland, -at least this was the stated goal.
Under US occupation, the military government did as little as possible for the island, and that little bit only as dictated by military necessity. At one time we had 4 airfields, a huge warehouse and shipping terminal at Machinato, the Marines’ Northern Training Area (took up half the land mass), and the 173rd ABN BDE, as well as all of 1st SFG.
So it’s no surprise that Japan still subsidizes the Ryukyus. Remember that in 1945, just about everything above ground was reduced to rubble. And then for the next 27 years we used it as an aircraft carrier.
3:24 pm on January 17th, 2012 2
#2
Laughing at the last sentence.
“And then for the next 27 years we used it as an aircraft carrier.”
8:38 am on January 18th, 2012 3
It’s pretty much what we did with it. Once it was reverted, the Japanese tried to fashion the island as the “Hawaii of Japan”. As if the US government could try painting Newark as “the Venice of America”.