Japan, eager to say goodbye to 5,000 Marines, checks up on the island where they'll relocate
TAMUNING, Guam — Japan’s chief cabinet secretary arrived Thursday for a two-day visit to follow up on progress to relocate almost 5,000 Marines from Japan to a base that has yet to be built on Guam.
Yoshihide Suga’s trip builds on Japan Prime Minister Abe’s most recent Washington visit, said U.S. congressional Delegate Madeleine Bordallo, D-Guam. The U.S.-Japan alliance in the Asia-Pacific is important, she said in a press conference with Suga.
Japan's government initially was confused because of mixed signals from the U.S. government after Congress froze some money for the Marine relocation, Suga said. The freeze now has been lifted.
The Navy signed off on a plan Aug. 29 to move the Marines and 1,300 family members from Okinawa to Guam by 2026. It's a smaller force than what the Marine Corps first proposed in 2009 when it wanted to send 8,600 Marines, 9,000 dependents and 1,900 government workers to Guam by 2020.
That would have put a full brigade-size force on the island with about 170,000 residents.
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One of Suga's responsibilities is mitigating the effect of the large presence of U.S. troops on Okinawa and said he was encouraged by Guam's progress in developing facilities that would host Marines being relocated.
Suga, speaking through a translator, said he wanted “see the status of the relocation, ... the progress in Guam, and to see it with my own eyes.”
About 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Okinawa, and Japan looks forward to the eventual relocation about 9,000 of them, Suga said. Guam is about 1,400 miles southeast of Okinawa.
In Japanese media reports, Suga is described as Abe’s point man on the issue of alleviating U.S. military presence in Okinawa, which has had U.S. troops since Japan was invaded in 1945 during World War II. On Thursday and Friday, he is visiting military construction projects paid in part with Japanese government money to support the Marines being relocated from Okinawa.
He’s the second high-level Japanese official to visit Guam in two years. In 2013, Japan Minister of Defense Itsunori Onodera also visited U.S. military facilities in Guam to check on the progress of the relocation efforts.
The cost to relocate Marines to Guam from Okinawa has been reduced from a previous estimate of more than $10 billion to $8.7 billion, according to a January 2015 inspectors general report. Japan is contributing $3 billion to the Guam relocation and about $1 billion has been paid to the U.S. government, previous military relocation documents show.
A new Marine base is proposed for existing federal land near Andersen Air Force Base in Yigo, Guam, and housing for the Marines will be developed within the fence at Andersen to avoid using more of Guam’s scarce civilian land.
Contributing: Gidget Fuentes, Marine Corps Times. Follow Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno on Twitter: @Guamjournalist