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US and Japan plan floating runway
August 30th, 2005 at 16:39 Björn Hallberg
Japan and the US are planning to build a giant floating runway off the coast of western Japan in a bid to reduce noise pollution by US military aircraft, local media reported yesterday.
The “megafloat” will be built six miles off Iwakuni, home to a US marine base, at a cost of up to ¥500bn (£2.5bn), the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said, quoting government sources.
The countries will include the plans in an interim report on the realignment of US forces in Japan due in October.
How about abandoning Yokosuka and Okinawa and removing the 47,000 or more US military personnel stationed in Japan? Ever considered that instead of a “megafloat?” I guess not.
Yokosuka is characterized as “America’s most important naval facility in the Western Pacific, and the largest, most strategically important overseas US Naval installation in the world.” One could wonder what it would take to do that. If ideological change of leadership in Japan would help? If there is indeed an opposition to speak of? The only thing one can say with relative certainty is that the new generation seems to be far less comfortable with the current arrangement.
Entry 229 filed under: Asia. This entry was posted 3 years, 3 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.
