By PAUL KALLENDER-UMEZU
TOKYO — An effort by Japan to put boots on the ground and install a radar monitoring station on one of its islands could be derailed by a few hundred islanders as the country’s new administration tries to provide a more muscular, in-your-face defense posture to China.
Things had been going well with the deployment, which involves building a barracks for a garrison of 100 to 200 Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) troops in the center of Yonaguni Island with a coastal monitoring facility and a mobile radar unit on its eastern tip by 2015. Both sides agreed to the move after negotiations that began in June 2009 when islanders invited the Defense Ministry to Yonaguni in the hope of bringing more money to the tiny local economy. The island, closer to Taiwan than the Japanese mainland, has 1,600 residents.
Things changed March 20, when local Mayor Shukichi Hokama suddenly presented the MoD with a sudden extra ¥1 billion (US $10 million) demand for a “nuisance payment” to compensate local landowners for the deployment.
The standoff gained national attention a week later when Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera publicly threatened to pull the plug on the deployment, a threat reiterated by MoD spokesman Takaaki Ohno to Defense News. Ohno said the MoD fails to see the validity of the claim, adding that it breaks prior agreements. “The MoD will continue to negotiate positively with the islanders, but if we do not see any progress, we will have no choice but to review the plan, including whether to deploy the troops on the island,” he said.
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