Ospreys in Okinawa
NEW YORK TIMS Published: September 14, 2012
Tens of thousands of people rallied on Sunday in Okinawa to protest plans to
deploy the MV-22 Osprey, the trouble-plagued tilt-rotor aircraft, at the United
States Marine Corps base in the city of Ginowan. The Marines want to bring in
24 Ospreys to replace a fleet of Vietnam-era helicopters, but Okinawans, turning out in one of the largest anti-American protests in years, are bristling.
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The Osprey has a terrible reputation as a prime example of a hugely expensive,
dubiously useful weapons systems. Okinawans don’t care about the misspent
money. They worry that the plane is prone to crashing. To many residents, who
deploying the Osprey on the island is rubbing salt into an old wound.
The first dozen Ospreys to reach Japan have been grounded while the Japanese government reviews the plane’s safety record. Marine officials insist that the
Osprey’s notorious defects have been worked out and that it is safe and reliable. But, in April, an Osprey crashed in Morocco, killing two Marines. Another crashed
in Florida in June. Though officials blame pilot error for the accidents, that has
hardly eased local fears in densely crowded Okinawa, which has seen hundreds
of crashes and emergency landings of military jets and helicopters since the
1950s, several of them fatal.
The anger on Sunday was not just about two dozen planes. It reflects frustration over islanders’ long-stymied efforts to get the Marines entirely out of Okinawa.
Japan and the United States struck a deal in 2006 to close Futenma, move
several thousand Marines off the island and shift others to a new base on
Okinawa’s less-populated northeast coast. But many Okinawans saw this
agreement as inadequate, and it went nowhere. A deal reached in April to move 9,000 Marines has also been stalled.
For too long, Okinawans have seen promises but no movement. The United
States has an obligation to tread lightly in Okinawa and to listen to the concerns of the residents. It can start by putting the Ospreys someplace else.
