New York Times (November 3)
“Washington needs to be more responsive to legitimate Okinawan concerns. It should impose stricter limits on its troops’ behavior and more effective training and oversight. And it should move swiftly to lighten its presence on Okinawa, by shifting troops to Guam, Hawaii and elsewhere in Japan. Okinawans will feel safer and less aggrieved only when they believe that Japan and the United States are taking their objections seriously.”
Washington Post (May 1)
Tokyo and Washington made “a welcome step forward” with the decision to move 9,000 marines to other Pacific bases. This “small but significant diplomatic breakthrough” will finally ease “the two-year-old standoff over U.S. bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa.” The deal will strengthen “an alliance that both countries need more than ever” and may even “open the way for an invigoration of strategic cooperation at just the right time in East Asia.”
