Incumbent mayor to be re-elected in Japan's Iwakuni, plans to bolster U.S. base pending

Incumbent Iwakuni Mayor Yoshihiko Fukuda is likely to secure a third four-year term following Sunday's election in Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Japan, according to local media reports.

The reports said Fukuda, 45, who is backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition ally Komeito party, is ahead in the polls and has likely beaten out his rival Atsuko Himeno, 56, an ex-assemblywoman of Iwakuni City.

Himeno was staunchly opposed to the United States plans to transfer 59 fighter jets to the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni from an airbase in Atsugi pegged for 2017. The transfer of the jets is part of the U.S. realignment of forces here.

Debate on the transfer of the jets was one of the central themes of the election, according to local reports from Yamaguchi Prefecture, which lies in the Chugoku region of Japan on Honshu island.

Fukuda, however, has yet to state unequivocally whether he will back the transfer of the jets, saying that the issue will be pending further discussions with the central government over safety concerns and noise pollution.

In October last year, a court in Japan handed down a ruling ordering the state to pay 558 million yen (4.7 million U.S. dollars) in damages to residents in the area over excessive noise from aircraft at the Iwakuni base which is jointly used by the U.S. military and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces.

But while the Iwakuni branch of the Yamaguchi District Court ordered the unprecedented penalty for excessive noise at the base to the residents in the locale in western Japan, calls for the suspension of overnight flights and flights in the early morning from the Air Station Iwakuni were rejected by the district court.

More than 650 residents living near the base, which is set to become the largest U.S. base in East Asia over the next couple of years, filed the law suit in 2009 with lawyers seeking compensation to the tune of 1.8 billion yen for the residents' prior exposure to excessive noise and a further 23,000 yen in compensation payable monthly per person for future noise that would have to be endured.

The plaintiffs also petitioned the central government to suspend some of the flights from the base, and called for U.S. fighter jets flying to Iwakuni from the Atsugi base near Tokyo that are involved in aircraft carrier maneuvers to be canceled, as well as a blanket ban on flights from the notorious, accident prone MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircrafts.

The Iwakuni base, as well as being a new hub for the Osprey tilt rotor aircraft, also hosts FA-18 Hornets fighter jets, and will possibly see the total number of military aircraft and carrier-based aircraft based there reach 112 in 2017, according to military officials. Enditem