Editorial: Onaga’s Victory Means More Delays for the Futenma Replacement Facility
Editorial by David Fouse, Ph.D. The long and winding road to building a replacement facility for the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture has hit another substantial obstacle with victory of Former Naha Mayor Takeshi Onaga in the recent Okinawa governor’s election. Onaga won a convincing victory over incumbent Hirokazu Nakaima, gaining 360,820 votes, nearly 100,000 more than Nakaima, who received 261,076. Onaga campaigned against the planned relocation and is now well positioned to throw some major kinks into a process that was already scheduled to take another eight to nine years to complete. Although Japan’s [...]