Municipal officials in Otaru, Hokkaido, are upset about a planned port call in mid-October by the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk that is expected to coincide with a port call by a large freighter that was planned earlier.
Otaru has only one accessible wharf for a large ship and local government officials are concerned that a visit by the Kitty Hawk will disrupt its business.
"It is a commercial port and we basically put priority on commercial vessels," Otaru Mayor Katsumaro Yamada said Monday.
That principle, however, has been bent on occasions in the past.