Fisheries minister Yoshimasa Hayashi on Monday suspended an order by the governor of Okinawa to halt work on the replacement site for the Futenma military base amid the continuing conflict between the central and prefectural governments.
The decision came after the Okinawa Defense Bureau, an arm of the Defense Ministry, filed a complaint seeking to invalidate Gov. Takeshi Onaga's recent order to halt its work off the Henoko coastal area in Nago.
The area has been chosen as the site for the new base needed to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which sits in a densely populated area in the city of Ginowan, further south in Okinawa.