Ruling Democratic Party of Japan kingpin Ichiro Ozawa has suggested relocating Okinawa's U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to one of two small islands in the prefecture, coalition lawmakers said Wednesday.
It remains unclear how viable the islands of Shimoji or Ie can be, given that they were written off in the process of formulating the 2006 Japan-U.S. accord to relocate the air base, now in Ginowan on the main Okinawa Island, to a point farther north on the same island.
Reiterating his reservations about the 2006 plan, which entails building a new airfield to accommodate Futenma's aircraft operations at Camp Schwab in a less-populated part of Okinawa Island, Ozawa, the DPJ secretary general, noted during a dinner Tuesday night: "There is an airport not being used on Shimoji Island."