Japanese Isle in Sea of Contention Weighs Fist Versus Open Hand
By MARTIN FACKLER
YONAGUNI ISLAND, Japan — This remote island in the rough East China Sea is known for its gigantic moths, fiery Okinawan alcohol and an offshore rock formation that some believe to be the submerged ruins of a lost, Atlantis-like civilization.
Now, Tokyo is drawing up plans to add something else: about 100 soldiers from the Self-Defense Force, Japan’s military.
Yonaguni, with three tiny villages and a small airport, is Japan’s westernmost point, a place from which Taiwan is visible on a clear day. It is also the closest spot of inhabited land to the Senkakus, a small group of uninhabited islets controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan, which call them the Diaoyu Islands.
This put Yonaguni and its 1,600 mostly aging residents uncomfortably close to a bruising diplomatic showdown with Beijing last September over a Chinese trawler detained near the Senkakus, which resulted in Tokyo’s backing down. The government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has since vowed to beef up defenses for Japan’s “outlying islands,” and it appears close to a decision on the small Yonaguni garrison, a plan that has been under discussion for years.
“China keeps coming, and all we have protecting us now is a pair of pistols,” said Yonaguni’s mayor, Shukichi Hokama, referring to the two policemen who are the island’s only security presence.
But the deployment plan has created an uncharacteristic uproar on this normally sleepy island. A local election held in September, in the midst of the trawler standoff, turned into a bitterly fought referendum over whether to accept the garrison, with supporters winning four of the six town council seats up for grabs.
The supporters of the garrison, led by Mr. Hokama, say they hope the base brings not only peace of mind but also an influx of badly needed jobs and youthful residents, especially if the soldiers come with their families. They hope this will provide a lift for an economically depressed island that currently lacks either a high school or a hospital, and where the number of residents has fallen by 250, or almost 15 percent of the population, during the past decade alone.
Still, the plan faces deep resistance in Yonaguni, a part of the Okinawan chain, where bitter memories linger of how the Japanese military turned its guns on Okinawan civilians during World War II.
Opponents also say they fear the soldiers would scare away what they see as the island’s best chance for an economic future — investors and tourists from vibrant Taiwan, just 65 miles away, which has been rapidly gaining on Japan in terms of economic development.
“Our choice is between seeking economic exchange with Taiwan, or bringing in the Self-Defense Forces,” said Shoichi Miyara, a sugar cane farmer. “Do we embrace or resist?”
For the leader of the opponents, Yosuke Azato, a 68-year-old retired phone-line repairman, the answer is clearly to embrace. Mr. Azato said that before the war, Yonaguni had close economic ties with Taiwan, then a Japanese colony. Growing up after the war, he said, he remembers Yonaguni as a thriving hub for smuggling into Taiwan, which swelled the island’s population to more than 12,000 until American occupation forces cracked down in the 1950s.
Last year, he began a one-man effort to revive trade links with Taiwan, though in a more legal form. He bought several tons of fertilizer in Taiwan, which he could sell to Yonaguni’s sugar cane farmers more cheaply than the high-priced fertilizer shipped from the main islands of Japan nearly 650 miles away.
“The best protection we can have is to be economic partners with them,” he said.
Other garrison opponents fear that the soldiers may bring noise and crime, echoing criticisms made on Okinawa’s main island about its large American military presence.
Mr. Miyara, the farmer, said he was turned against the base idea last year when 120 Self-Defense Force members came to Yonaguni as volunteers to help with an annual marathon.
“They littered the public toilets with cigarette butts and scolded our children,” said Mr. Miyara, 60. “They will ruin our peacefulness.”
That peace is already being disturbed. When Japan’s defense minister visited the island last March, opponents hung large banners along roads pledging to resist a Self-Defense Force presence.
The banners, which still hang flapping in the wind, seem out of place on this mountainous island where cows outnumber people, and where the only sound is often the crash of waves against cliffs, or the rustling of sugar cane fields.
Mr. Hokama, the mayor, rejected the opposition’s argument that the garrison would harm ties with Taiwan. Since taking office five years ago, he said, he has frequently visited Taiwan and has opened an office for the island in the Taiwanese city of Hualien.
“Taiwan has an army, too,” said Mr. Hokama, 62. “They understand the threat from mainland China better than anyone.”
He said many islanders also felt a personal connection to the Senkakus, which sit about 90 miles to the north. As a child, Mr. Hokama said, he visited the island group twice with his father, a fisherman who used to ferry supplies to a fish processing plant that once operated on one of the Senkakus but closed more than 30 years ago.
Mr. Hokama said he used to be a socialist who opposed the Self-Defense Force’s very existence as a violation of Japan’s pacifist Constitution. But he said he became a base proponent after Chinese ships began appearing in nearby waters a decade or so ago.
Shinko Kinjo, the owner of a small distillery that makes the island’s potent awamori spirits, underwent a similar political conversion. He said he used to vote for Japan’s Communist Party; now, he leads the Yonaguni Defense Association, a rightist group that calls for a stronger military.
“China will be claiming our island next,” said Mr. Kinjo, 67, who decorated his office with military photographs and a large United States flag given to him by the crew of a visiting American minesweeper.
While some like Mr. Kinjo said they believed that the United States would help Japan against Chinese threats, others said it was time for Japan to prepare to defend itself. Younger islanders said the September trawler showdown had a particularly large effect on pushing local attitudes to the right.
Hitomi Maehamamori, a 28-year-old part-time worker, said she used to be uninterested in politics. But Ms. Maehamamori, who wore a blue kimono as she joined a recent festival of Okinawa’s animist religion, said the trawler episode had shocked her.
“Why is China doing this?” she asked. “I am O.K. with the Self-Defense Forces if they keep away the Chinese ships.”
