Angry Japanese residents sue US air force over sleepless nights

THEY have been angry at the American ‘occupiers’ before, but this time emotions have gone far beyond that.

Residents of the Okinawa city of Ginowan - many of whom cannot remember an uninterrupted night’s sleep - are furious at the contempt with which senior staff at the US air base in Futenma are treating a lawsuit over "intolerable noise levels".

For more than half a century, the people of the town that surrounds the US marine corps’ base on Japan’s southernmost island have borne the burden of the American presence, but not any more.

"Every day and every night, I am scared," says Chuuji Chinen, 69, a retired journalist and local council member. "But now we are more angry than scared."

Chinen’s anger - along with that of 403 other plaintiffs - has been provoked by the decision of Futenma’s commanding officer, Colonel Richard Leuking, to ignore a request to appear in court to respond to a lawsuit filed against him.

The lawsuit was first filed in October 2002 and names the Japanese government and Leuking as defendants. The plaintiffs had wanted to sue the US government, but were told Japanese law has no provision for suing foreign governments.

Chinen said: "Our first - and very minimum - demand is that the base suspend aircraft flights between 7pm and 7am," he said. "We also want compensation for the mental and physical damage caused by the noise, and, thirdly, we demand that day-time noise be reduced to a maximum of 65 decibels."

Local residents regularly have to put up with 75 decibels, while they have occasionally been exposed to 100, he said. "And that’s no way to live."

Total compensation has been set at $2.56m (1.41m).

Officials at Futenma Air Station refused to comment on the case. Colonel Victor Warzinski, a spokesman for US forces in Japan, would not specifically discuss the Futenma case on the grounds that the litigation is ongoing. "Typically these matters are a government-to-government issue and are dealt with through the appropriate channels, but I have never experienced a local commander being taken to court over a noise complaint," he said.

"Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld underlined the importance of the US forces in Japan when he was here in November last year. The bottom line is that we have a long-standing relationship, a relationship that the US values and is mutually beneficial for both Japan and the US, and meets our national security interests in this part of the world."

Rumsfeld visited Okinawa during his three-day trip to Japan last year, where he was met by protestors outside US military facilities on the island and accepted a petition from governor Keiichi Inamine calling on Washington to reduce the number of personnel stationed in the prefecture and close down bases. There are 41,000 US service personnel in Japan, 28,000 of them in Okinawa. And while US facilities can be found the length of Japan, 75% of the total are in Okinawa.

Futenma is one of the few examples of local pressure forcing Washington and Tokyo to act. Under a 1996 accord, the base is to be relocated to a facility to be built in northern Okinawa - although work has not yet started due to environmental concerns.

While the plaintiffs may have the sympathy of the government, they have little support from anyone in power. Regional security concerns are simply too serious.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiro Okuyama said: "We fully recognise that the issue of noise from air bases is a very serious issue for people in local areas and, in order to lessen that burden, we have reached agreements on noise-reduction measures at various US bases.

"We are in constant contact with the US side on this matter and, basically, what we hope for is the effective maintenance of the deterrence that the US forces have in this region," he said, adding that he foresees "not much movement" in the future on the level of the US presence in Japan.

But Chinen is undeterred. "I’m an optimist," he said. "Before the reversion to Japanese rule, we thought that would take 100 years, but we struggled on steadily and it only took 27 years. Other Asian countries managed to get rid of their colonial rulers. We are still like that, but we believe someday we will achieve the removal of all bases from Okinawa. And after that, they will be gone from all of Japan."