Oxford Studies in Culture and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. xv, 228 pp. (Tables, figures, maps.) US$83.00, cloth. ISBN 9780197665275.
Claudia Junghyun Kim’s history of local opposition to US military bases in Japan and South Korea is meticulously researched and smoothly written. The author describes “varying degrees of discontent, resistance, and acquiescence” (161). She categorizes opponents as “activists [who are] already staunchly opposed to US military bases, usually for political and philosophical reasons”; “latent adherents with dormant grievances” (7) usually arising from the negative effects of bases on local communities; and “local elites,” especially prefectural and municipal governments who support and sometimes lead the opposition. She writes of “professional activists” (164) without specifying who is paying them, but emphasizes that “activists alone … cannot build a broad-based movement … Contrary to the familiar accusations that cast anti-base activists as agitators manipulating innocent locals, it is actually those local residents who get to determine whether activists’ mobilization attempts succeed or fail” (164).
Opposition movements often evolve in their purposes and participants. In South Korea during the early 2000s, the Association of Anti-American Women and the Campaign for the Return of Yongsan Base led protests against “the Yongsan Base, which tramples on our nation’s pride and sovereignty [and] is undeniably a place of humiliation” (122). Yet, Kim points out that “the only anti-Yongsan campaign that won widespread public support was a decisively environmental, rather than nationalistic, one,” while protests against US Forces Japan Headquarters in western Tokyo “alternate between dogmatism and pragmatism” (123).
The Nishitana Association for the Removal of Yokota Base began monthly sit-ins in 2009 declaring that the US military presence in Japan violates war-renouncing Article Nine of the Japanese Constitution. The title of the group’s newsletter was “Peace to the World; we do not need a base of war.” However, in 2012, with planned deployment of the notoriously accident-prone CV-22 Osprey dual function turbo-prop plane, turnouts for protests increased and continued after the official decision was announced in 2015. During this time, the Nishitama Association publicized the Osprey’s dismal safety record of accidents killing crew and adopted the rallying call, “Stop the flights!” (123–124).
In Okinawa among local elites, a prefectural governor and a city mayor have played leading roles in opposition to construction of an airbase in the city of Nago intended to replace the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in Ginowan. Onaga Takeshi’s victory in the 2014 gubernatorial election over the incumbent Nakaima Hirokazu “was attributed to [Nakaima’s] backpedaling on his promise to resist construction of [the replacement airbase at Nago] and his permitting the landfill, a prerequisite for construction” (133). Nago Mayor Inamine Susumu, who served from 2010 to 2018, was elected as an unequivocal opponent of base construction “after more than a decade of wishy-washiness on the part of the city leadership” (132). Mayor Inamine became a leader of the opposition movement in Okinawa whose influence was noted in the United States. The New York Times predicted that his election could widen a “diplomatic rift” between the US and Japan, an “embarrassing blow” to Washington that could increase calls for US troop reductions (132–133).
Local elites in South Korea are less likely to oppose US bases directly, preferring to seek compensation for “sacrifices” the bases impose on communities. “When twelve municipalities came together in 2000 to officially protest US bases, for example, the sole aim of the otherwise bold initiative was to pressure the state into shelling out compensation” (49).
The national governments in Korea and Japan deal with local elites in differing ways. In Korea, the central government prefers monetary compensation. In Japan, Tokyo wields both the carrot and the stick, offering subsidies to localities where elites accept the bases, and withdrawing or denying them to communities where elites oppose them. This strategy seems to have succeeded in defeating Nago Mayor Inamine in his second bid for re-election in 2018. Under the previous mayor, Kishimoto Tateo, who had accepted construction of the airbase, the city of Nago received some 1.5 billion yen (US $17 million) in national government funding. This stopped abruptly with Inamine’s election in 2010. His opponent in 2018, Toguchi Taketoyo, blamed Inamine for a “lost [eight] years” of “stagnation” (135). During the campaign, Toguchi refused to express an opinion about the airbase. After Toguchi’s narrow victory, government subsidies to Nago resumed immediately (135).
Early in her book, Kim writes that “the importance of US forward presence in Korea and Japan is likely to endure, given their proximity to the largest US rival: China” and, that “the two Asian allies are arguably more dependent on US security commitments than any other allied nations” (13). She goes on to describe the many serious problems the bases cause for their host countries, such as aircraft noise and accidents, environmental pollution, and crimes including rape and murder. Yet, US bases in the two countries do not always enhance their security—surely not when they were the major support in the region for America’s catastrophic intervention in Vietnam, or when Marines trained in Okinawa for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it is difficult to see how the two countries benefit from increasing US militarization of relations with China. People in Okinawa, including Prefectural Governor Denny Tamaki, argue that the grossly disproportionate US military presence there, 70 percent of the total in all of Japan, greatly increases the risk of Okinawa’s devastation again (after the 1945 battle) in a war between the two superpowers. Former Pentagon official and Harvard professor Joseph Nye has written that China’s advanced missile capabilities have rendered large, land-based US bases in Japan obsolete (Ryukyu Shimpo, September 1, 2014).
Kim addresses this contradiction in her last chapter. “As American interests as a Pacific power evolve from the defense of its allies to the management of China’s rise local skepticisms about the purpose of US bases in their backyards are bound to grow” (169). She quotes a 2013 RAND Corporation study concluding that it is becoming “more difficult to create a direct and enduring tie between US bases and the security of a hostnation” and, another in 2020 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies conceding that “[We] have forces present in Asia, not to protect the Asians themselves, but mostly for our own American interest” (169–170).
Steve Rabson
Brown University, Providence