Roundup: Okinawa governor slams Abe-Obama commitment to relocate U.S. base on island

Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga on Wednesday slammed remarks made by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U. S. President Barack Obama at a meeting one day earlier in Washington, reaffirming both countries' commitment to move forward with the controversial relocation of a U.S. military base within Okinawa prefecture.

Speaking at a news conference in Naha, Okinawa, Onaga said he now plans to visit the United States himself to convey his opposition to the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma air station to the coastal Henoko district of Nago City, also on the island.

Onaga, who came into office last December on a platform opposed to the Henoko relocation, said his visit to the U.S. to protest the move in person could come as early as May.

"We will use every means available to us to prevent a new base from being built in Henoko," Onaga told local reporters Wednesday, adding that he was also hugely disappointed at a joint statement issued by Japan and U.S. foreign and defense chiefs earlier this week, as it omitted to mention the central government's promise to Okinawa to halt operations at the Futnema base within five years.

Onaga suggested that he now believes the written pledge made by Tokyo was insincere and merely a strategy by the central government to curry favor from Okinawa's then governor Hirokazu Nakaima to approve landfill work off Henoko as part of the new base's construction.

Onaga's condemnation and self-described "strong resentment" towards Abe and Obama's renewed resolve to forge ahead with the unpopular base move was reflected in the mood on the island, which saw protests erupt in Henoko one day earlier, involving rallies comprised of both ordinary citizens and assembly members.

April 28 marked the anniversary of Japan regaining its sovereignty under the San Francisco Treaty, yet Okinawa remained under U.S. control for 20 years after the treaty was inked in 1952.

Demonstrators said that the island and its people had made disproportionate sacrifices in the war compared to the mainland 70 years ago, and as such the added burden of relocating the base was inappropriate and unacceptable.

Protestors took to small boats to show their opposition to drilling work in the sea off Henoko and one of the boats was capsized by the coast guard, throwing all four of its occupants into the sea and hospitalizing one of them.

Onaga, since December, has shown his commitment to the local citizens and to preventing the construction of the new U.S. base on the tiny southern island, and in his first face-to-face meeting with Abe earlier this month he told Abe to convey the dissatisfaction and opposition of the Okinawan people over the base issue to Obama.

The people of Okinawa do not support the plan to relocate the air base, was the basic message that Onaga wanted passed on to Obama, but the governor's mistrust of Abe will now likely see him visit Washington, as indicated Wednesday, to pass on this message to the president in person.

Abe has tried and failed to explain to Onaga the central government's stance on the base's relocation, which is part of a broader realignment of U.S. forces in Japan. Abe has said that the building of a new base partly on reclaimed land from the waters of Oura Bay in the coastal Henoko region of Okinawa, remained the only solution.

The central government believes it is necessary to move the base from its current location due to the dangers it poses, as it operates in a densely populated area, close to homes, schools and businesses.

Onaga has repeatedly said, however, that the plans are unacceptable and that the government is overly fixated on the base 's relocation to Henoko as being the only solution and should be more empathetic to the base hosting burdens of the Okinawa people.

Recent polls show that the majority of Japanese people, including those on the mainland and on Okinawa island, believe Abe and his administration are mishandling the base relocation issue, with the generality in Japan's southernmost prefecture wanting the new base relocated off the island at least, and out of Japan if possible.

Despite Abe and Obama's commitment to relocate the base within the island, the impasse remains between the central and prefectural government and will be a source of concern to Washington who has said that the base's relocation should ideally be predicated on the acceptance and understanding of the local people of Okinawa. Endi