EDITORIAL
New base in Okinawa running out of reasons

Don't blame it on the dugongs.

There are plenty of other reasons to abandon plans to build a new U.S. military base atop a coral reef in Okinawa.

Environmentalists fear that the reef's dugongs, an endangered species of sea cow, would be wiped out during construction of the new Marine air base.

But 80 percent of the area's residents also oppose the idea.

The United States and Japan decided to build the new base in 1996, amid local anti-U.S. protests after the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemen. The new base, near the port of Heneko near Nago, would replace U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station, which sits smack in the middle of the crowded city of Ginowan.

Futenma was to have been closed by 2003 and returned to the more than 2,000 residents from whom it is leased. Construction of the new base has lagged, but pressure for the relocation increased last August when a Hawai'i-based Marine helicopter crashed near Futenma in a school yard.

Okinawans have borne more than their share of the burden of basing U.S. troops in Japan. It holds 75 percent of U.S. military facilities in Japan in terms of land area, while accounting for just 0.6 percent of the nation's total land area.

Before anyone seriously considers building the new Nago base, the United States and Japan must wrestle with the more basic question of whether a strategic need remains to keep 18,000 U.S. troops in Okinawa.

Given that the primary purpose of Marines in Okinawa is to reinforce South Korea in the event of war there, it makes sense to move them to mainland Japan, far closer to Korea.

But since the Pentagon is realigning U.S. troops in Korea, having announced the phased pullout of 12,500 of them, it may make even greater sense simply to bring the Okinawa troops home.

These larger, strategic questions as well as the sentiments of Okinawans must be addressed before considering a new base in Okinawa.