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Marine Corps Air Station Futenma

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Marine Corps Air Station Futenma (MCAS Futenma) is a United States Marine Corps base located in the city of Ginowan on the island of Okinawa at [26.27° N 127.76° E]. Its ICAO airport code is ROTM. It is home to approximately 4,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing and has been a key US military airbase since the island was occupied following the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

The base includes a 2,800 meter-long runway as well as extensive housing, administrative and logistical facilities. The air station is tasked with operating a variety of fixed and rotary-wing aircraft in support of the III Marine Expeditionary Force. The base is also used as a United Nations air facility.

Contents

Air Groups and Squadrons

* [Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron]

Base to move

MCAS Futenma is a key American airbase where Marine Corps pilots and aircrew are assigned for training, providing the air complement to other land-based Marines in Okinawa, and to help fulfil the 1952 treaty commitment of the United States to defend Japan. But noise and air pollution from the base has become a controversial issue in Ginowan City. In 1997, it was decided that the base should be relocated to a more expensive but much quieter off-shore location at Henoko. This was, and remains, an extremely controversial decision, since the base is to be constructed on a living coral reef, and in a 1997 referendum, a majority of local people voted against it. Construction has yet to begin, and at present it is the subject of an international Greenpeace campaign.

The governments of the United States and Japan agreed on October 26, 2005 to move the relocation site for Futenma from the reef area off Henoko to the interior and coastal portions of the existing Marine infantry base at Camp Schwab, just a few hundred meters away. The main reason for the change is to dramatically reduce the engineering challenge associated with building a runway on a reef in deep water; experts estimate that rather than the 15-plus years required to construct a new airbase at the previous reef location, the new Camp Schwab plan will enable Futenma to be relocated within 6-8 years.

Reaction to the new plan for Futenma relocation has been widespread in Okinawa. The local media, which for ideological reasons are opposed to relocations of military bases, claim the relocation is an unreasonable "increase in burden" of hosting bases. However, the newly-elected mayor of Nago (which hosts Camp Schwab) formally agreed to accept the relocation when he signed an agreement with Defense Minister Nukaga on April 8, 2006. Mayor Shimabukuro was later joined by all five of the mayors of northern Okinawa. An anti-relocation "prefectural peoples rally" in March was an embarrassing failure for the sponsors when only 6,000 attendees showed up, instead of the 35,000 claimed.

References

  1. redirect[[Template:Portal]]

External links

 

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