Tokyo,
\nJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe welcomed on Monday the victory of a ruling party-backed candidate in a mayoral election on Okinawa, vowing to press<\/p>\n
ahead with a controversial plan to move a US Marines air base on the southern island.<\/p>\n
The candidate, Taketoyo Toguchi, backed by Abe\u2019s ruling coalition, defeated incumbent Susumu Inamine, who opposed moving the US Marines\u2019 Futenma air<\/p>\n
base to his city of Nago in Okinawa\u2019s north from a more populous part of the island.<\/p>\n
The victory by Toguchi \u2014 who stressed boosting Okinawa\u2019s economy in his campaign \u2014 is expected to give impetus to the long-stalled plan to relocate the<\/p>\n
base.<\/p>\n
The election came just days before US Vice-President Mike Pence was scheduled to visit Japan this week on a trip expected to focus on security ties in face of<\/p>\n
North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to proceed (with the relocation) based on a ruling by the Supreme Court of Japan, while seeking understanding of the public,\u201d Abe told reporters.<\/p>\n
He said he wanted to support Okinawa\u2019s development.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s Supreme Court ruled in 2016 in favour of a government plan to relocate the US military base, dealing a blow to islanders\u2019 efforts to get rid of the base<\/p>\n
altogether.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s central government and authorities on Okinawa – reluctant host to the bulk of US military forces in the country – have bickered for years over the plan,<\/p>\n
first agreed between Tokyo and Washington in 1996.<\/p>\n
Many Okinawa residents have long associated the US military presence with crime, pollution and accidents, and resentment was rekindled by a spate of<\/p>\n
incidents involving US military aircraft. In December, a window fell from a US helicopter onto a school sports field, fanning safety concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe welcomed on Monday the victory of a ruling party-backed candidate in a mayoral election on Okinawa, vowing to press ahead with a controversial plan to move a US Marines air base on the southern island. The candidate, Taketoyo Toguchi, backed by Abe\u2019s ruling coalition, defeated incumbent Susumu Inamine, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20985,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20983\/revisions\/20985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}