Mayors of cities hosting military bases where the U.S. Navy practices night landings gathered Monday in Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture, and agreed that they will jointly call for an end to the exercises on mainland Japan.
It was the first time that heads of local municipalities hosting U.S. bases in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture; Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture; Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture; and Yokota in western Tokyo have met to deal with the noise from night landing exercises.
Iwakuni Mayor Katsusuke Ihara, who first proposed the gathering, said that protests by individual municipalities against night landing exercises have had no impact on the policies of the central government and U.S. military, adding that as a united group they may have more influence.
Although most night landing exercises had been conducted on Iwojima Island between 1993 and 1999, about 75 percent of the exercises in 2000 were carried out at the four bases on the mainland, according to the Defense Facilities Administration Agency. The Navy cited weather conditions as a reason for not using the Iwojima facility.
The four mayors and a vice mayor agreed that all night landing exercise should be conducted on Iwojima.
Yamoto Mayor Kimiyasu Tsuchiya said he believes that local governments should not hesitate to engage in diplomatic matters when the national government is inactive.