Commentary : U.S. Armed Forces Are on Tenterhooks in Okinawa : Military:Island residents were shocked by a girl’s rape in 1995. What would they do if there was a serious air accident?

It will be four years on Saturday since the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by two U.S. Marines and a Navy seaman came close to forcing the 3rd Marine Division to come home. The 1.3 million people of Okinawa have long protested that their small tropical island is forced to host more than two-thirds of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan, plus an almost equal number of their dependents and other Department of Defense civilians.

Islandwide protests against the bases erupted in 1995 after the rape, and automobile accidents and other crimes continue to sour the atmosphere between the American troops and their Okinawan “hosts.” So far, however, Japanese living on the main islands and the Japanese government have looked the other way. They tolerate the U.S.-Japan security treaty so long as the Marines can be kept well out of sight, in Okinawa.

All this could change in an instant if a serious aviation accident occurred in Okinawa, whose leading industry is Japanese tourism. The U.S. military not only occupies 20% of Okinawa’s territory, it also controls virtually all of Okinawa’s air space. Okinawans and Japanese may not know it, but U.S. military personnel who oversee the safety of these skies are being pushed to the brink with overwork, poor equipment and training, and a lack of enforcement of air safety regulations.

A senior noncommissioned officer who serves as an air traffic controller at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa--the largest airfield, civilian or military, in East Asia--warns that “the sky over the island of Okinawa is unsafe.” In a signed letter circulating widely on the Internet in Japan, an Air Force chief master sergeant has put his career on the line to get the word out that flying into Okinawa is more dangerous than it should be.

He writes: “Let me paint you my picture here at Kadena. Both facilities [Kadena and Futenma Marine Corps Air Station] are below emergency staffing level; duty schedule is six [days on] and one [day off]; controllers are tired, fatigued, burned-out, and no relief [is] in sight. Training workload has increased 2,000%; trainers have three to four trainees; controllers are working sick rather than going to the Flight Surgeon because they don’t want to make manning even worse.

“Operational infractions have increased tremendously since I arrived. Actually, we came within a split second of a mid-air collision with a Japan airliner. Over 400 people [could have been] dead in a split second: An inexperienced controller was working. For me, with these civilian air carriers, that poses another challenge of an international incident. If a controller is found negligent, then he or she would probably spend time in a Japanese prison.

“Morale is down. . . . Something catastrophic is going to happen and we are going to kill people.”

The solution to these accidents-waiting-to-happen is very simple, and it could be set in motion by either the Japanese or the American governments. Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi could ask the Americans to give up their Marine bases in Okinawa and the Americans, as they did in the Philippines, would have no choice but to comply. This would not involve a rupture of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, as American ships could continue to call at Japanese bases and American military airplanes and troops could reach any trouble spot in Asia from either Guam or Hawaii or the West Coast of the U.S.

Alternatively, President Clinton could order the reduction of forward-deployed American troops in Okinawa and a return of the bases to Japan without insisting that alternative sites be found.

A third response would be to vastly improve the U.S. military air control system over Okinawa, but this option is probably not viable, because the Air Force is currently facing its greatest personnel shortage in peacetime.

If some steps are not taken, then the accident envisioned by the flight controller almost surely will occur, and matters will be taken out of the hands of both governments by angry and distraught citizens.

Next July, the G-8 summit of advanced industrial nations will be hosted by Japan in Nago, Okinawa. Nago, a small rundown community north of the island’s capital, was the site of a local referendum in late 1997 over whether its citizens would accept the proposed relocation of the U.S. Marine base at Futenma. The vote: six to one against.

Okinawans wonder whether Obuchi is using the summit, which would bring huge business to their community, as an incentive to get them to accept the relocation of the Marines to Nago.

Maybe, instead, they should be worried about air safety on Okinawa.