Japanese official: Consider moving Marines to Kadena

[unhappycamper]

Japanese official: Consider moving Marines to Kadena
By David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Wednesday, November 18, 2009

NAHA, Okinawa — Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada wrapped up his two-day visit to Okinawa on Monday promising to continue to look into alternatives to replacing Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

Okada said he will pursue the possibility of scrapping plans to build a new Marine airstrip on Camp Schwab and instead moving Marines to Kadena Air Base.

“I can say that we are now reviewing every possibility, including the Kadena plan,” he said during a news conference Monday in Naha.

In 2006 the U.S. and Japan agreed to close MCAS Futenma, in urban central Okinawa, and move its operations to a more remote location on the island’s northeast coast. But Japan’s new government that took office in September has questioned whether the Marine air operations should be moved elsewhere.

Without the new base, U.S. officials have stated, the entire realignment plan for Okinawa would disintegrate. Okada agrees.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66150

[Possumpoint]

1. Relocate all 730

Foreign bases to US soil. Down size the military to then needed levels. Close down the empire. These actions would go a long way towards correcting the economic misery in this country.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Yep. I've often wondered how it is that we are scraping the barrel

for troops to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, accepting sub-par recruits and gang members to meet the quotas, when we have a half million troops doing garrison duty around the world. We don't really need a dozen large bases in Germany to protect us against a resurgence of the Third Reich, nor do we need the bases in England as a forward defense against Soviet aggression.

They cost an absurd amount of money and they tie up manpower that could be better used elsewhere, not to mention engender distrust and antipathy toward Americans around the world.

And I speak as one who was raised in that world, on bases in Germany, Spain and England.