Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki in an undated photograph. (Denny Tamaki)
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa – Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki, a firm opponent of the U.S. military presence within the prefecture, in elections this week lost his majority support in the prefectural assembly.
Tamaki, who was reelected in 2022, has spent six years trying to halt the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from densely packed Ginowan city to the Marines’ Camp Schwab in rural Henoko. Tamaki favors shutting down MCAS Futenma altogether.
Tamaki’s administration has filed four, and lost three, suits trying to stop the runway construction in Henoko.
His camp suffered a heavy blow after losing four seats in the election Sunday. His coalition, which includes the Okinawa Social Mass Party, the Japanese Communist Party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Social Democratic Party, now holds just 20 of the 48 assembly seats.
“I take the results of this assembly elections very seriously. Let’s work together for the citizens of Okinawa,” Tamaki wrote Monday in a post on X.
The election drew a record low turnout, 45.26% of the prefecture’s 1.2 million voters, or 505,783 votes cast. That’s 1.7% lower than the last assembly elections in 2020, according to the prefectural election committee.
For the first time since 2008, the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito hold the assembly majority, with the Japan Innovation Party, with 28 seats
“We think that with this result, the citizens of Okinawa showed their NO to Tamaki’s administration,” Hiroki Nakada, director of the Liberal Democratic Party of Okinawa, said on a statement posted Monday on the party website. “We think that we need to continue checking strictly the prefecture’s administration.”
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi at a press conference Monday in Tokyo refrained from commenting directly on the Okinawa election results.
“A situation that Marine Corps Air Station Futenma becomes fixed in its current location must absolutely be avoided, we think that this is the common understanding between the local community and the government,” he said on a video uploaded to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s website. Relocating the airfield to the Henoko region of Okinawa “is the only solution” Hayashi said.
