NAHA, Okinawa Pref. — The re-election of Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima on Sunday is a much-needed victory for Prime Minister Naoto Kan's government, which clearly wanted him to win, and the United States, who saw his opponent as a threat to the entire U.S. military presence in the prefecture.
With a decade-long central government economic assistance program for Okinawa expiring in 2012, attention is shifting to how Tokyo will deal with Nakaima on extending that assistance in exchange for authorizing construction of a new U.S. base on the Henoko coast of Nago as a replacement site for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is farther south on Okinawa Island in the city of Ginowan.
The final results showed Nakaima winning 335,708 votes to challenger Yoichi Iha's 297,082. But any joy Tokyo and Washington experience over Nakaima's win over Iha — one of the prefecture's leading antibase politicians and an opponent of Japan's security treaty with the U.S. — will be short-lived.