Sayonara, Okinawa

In the 24 years since U.S. troops wrested Okinawa from Japan at a cost of 12,500 American lives, the 60-mile-long island in the East China Sea has been built up as the Pentagon's "Keystone of the Pacific," its most vital staging area for operations from Korea to Viet Nam. A bustling bastion just 500 miles southeast of Shanghai, it is honeycombed with 91 military installations accommodating 45,000 U.S. troops, It is also, however, a growing threat to harmonious U.S.-Japanese relations. A quarter-century after the war, the continued rule of 1,000,000 citizens of Okinawa and the 140 other islands of the Ryukyu chain by a U.S. military commander is a constant source of irritation to both the islanders and the Japanese. Both want political control of the chain returned to Tokyo.

Burning Issue. The U.S. presence, and its use of the island as an operations base for Viet Nam, have provided ultranationalist rightists and anti-American leftists in Japan with a burning issue against the pro-U.S. government of Premier Eisaku Sato. Last week the U.S. approached the difficult decision. As Japan's Foreign Minister visited the White House to open formal talks on reversion, the Nixon Administration let it be known that it will soon move to return Okinawa and the other Ryukyus to Japanese control.

Formal announcement of the decision is expected in November, when Sato visits Washington. Reversion will probably come in 1972. The U.S. is prepared to agree to remove all nuclear weapons and its force of 20 B-52 bombers from the island. In addition, Washington is expected to consent to prior consultation with Japan before launching combat operations against any other Asian nation from Okinawa bases. This agreement, satisfactory to Tokyo, would allow continued U.S. military operations on the island, but under the same restrictions now imposed on the 148 U.S. bases in Japan itself.

Dynamite Defused. These U.S. concessions are probably essential to continuation of the U.S.-Japan Security Pact, a prime target for Sato's extremist opposition. It becomes subject to renegotiation for the first time next year. The hope in both capitals is that, by defusing Okinawa's potential as political dynamite in Japan, Sato will retain enough public support to avoid reopening negotiations. If neither nation demands new talks, the pact will continue automatically. Without such a compromise, it is doubtful if either the Sato regime or a successor could weather home-front outrage and maintain friendly relations with the U.S.

The Pentagon is unhappy about the prospect of losing Okinawa. Strategically, however, removal of nuclear weapons and bombers should have little effect on overall U.S. capability. The four Polaris submarines and five Navy aircraft carriers now in the area, plus nuclear-armed planes in South Korea and possibly the Philippines, could take up the slack. A logical pullback position for long-range bombers and ground troops would be Guam, a U.S. possession 1,400 miles southeast of Okinawa.

Meanwhile, Washington has little choice but to say sayonara, Okinawa. If the U.S. were to cling to the island, it might produce an anti-American regime in Tokyo and destroy the Security Treaty with Japan. That would represent a far greater loss than Okinawa for the long-term security of Asia.

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