TOKYO -- In a vote against the U.S. military's presence, residents of Japan's southernmost island re-elected a governor Sunday who has pushed for fewer U.S. troops as part of a broader campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the nation's poorest region.
Okinawa's incumbent Gov. Keiichi Inamine led his supporters in a "banzai" cheer aired nationwide by NHK TV after a preliminary tally by the public broadcaster showed he had been elected to a second four-year term.
His three rivals -- former vice governor Masanori Yoshimoto, and independents Shigenobu Arakaki and Matsuo Matayoshi -- conceded defeat late Sunday, NHK said.
Okinawa prefecture spokesman Yoshiyasu Maeda said Inamine had 274,891 votes with 77 percent of the ballots counted. Yoshimoto trailed with 120,218 votes, the spokesman said, but he had no chance of overtaking Inamine.
Inamine has attracted considerable support by calling on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to press Washington to reduce its troop presence in Japan. More than half the 47,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan are in Okinawa, some 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo.
In recent years, several high-profile crimes by American servicemen have angered Okinawans.
The debate over how to soothe tensions between residents and the U.S. military has brought national politics to bear in the far-flung state, where officials want more assistance to deal with an economic slowdown that has hit it particularly hard.
But Inamine's re-election is unlikely to lead to a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops. With an economy that ranks as the poorest of the 47 states, Okinawa has become even more dependent on revenues from U.S. troops and their families.
The governor -- an independent supported by the Liberal Democratic Party's ruling bloc -- is likely to focus instead on a plan to relocate a U.S. Marine heliport out of crowded central Okinawa to an offshore site.
Tokyo and Washington agreed in July to move Futenma Air Station, and the project promises to pump billions of dollars into the local economy.
But the facility continues to stir deep-rooted resentment among Okinawans, and Inamine has pushed for a 15-year cap on the United States' use of the new heliport -- a condition that Koizumi's government and Washington refuse to commit to.
Unemployment in Okinawa is about twice the national average of roughly 5 percent and wage levels are the lowest in the country.
TOKYO - An incumbent backed by Japan's ruling three-party coalition was re-elected on Sunday as governor of the southern island of Okinawa, home to the bulk of the U.S. military presence in the country.
As expected, Governor Keiichi Inamine, 69, defeated three rivals in a race during which he mostly steered clear of the touchy topic of the U.S. bases and focused on pledges to improve the local economy, Kyodo news agency said, citing early returns.
Many residents of Okinawa, which hosts some 26,000 of the 48,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan, have long resented what they see as their unfair burden in supporting the U.S.-Japan security alliance, the pillar of Tokyo's post-war policies.
Inamine is a supporter of the central government's plan to build a U.S. Marine heliport on reclaimed land near Okinawa's coastal city of Nago to replace the Futenma airbase.
But he has also demanded that a 15-year limit be placed on U.S. use of the facility, a stance Washington rejects.
Inamine also wants Japan's central government to consider revising the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), the pact governing the conduct of the U.S. military in Japan.
Under the treaty, the United States need not hand over crime suspects until they are charged by Japanese prosecutors, except in the case of "heinous crimes" such as rape and murder.
Last March, U.S. airman Timothy Woodland was found guilty and sentenced to 32 months in jail for raping a local woman.
The rape and Washington's delay in handing over Woodland to the Japanese authorities soured relations between the two countries and reignited calls for a revision of the treaty.
Worries about the local economy, however, have overshadowed the debate on the U.S. military presence recently.
Okinawa's jobless rate hit 9.4 percent in September compared to 5.4 percent nationwide.
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