ABSTRACT
Look at a map of Japan, and you will see that Okinawa is a mere speck in the ocean 1,000 miles south of Tokyo. But as host to tens of thousands of US troops and several sprawling military bases, the fate of this subtropical island is inextricably linked to Japan’s security and its postwar military alliance with the United States. Seven decades after the end of the Pacific War, simmering tensions over the base issue between the island’s people and the government in Tokyo have boiled over amid plans to build a new offshore military facility along Okinawa’s remote northeast coast. The Henoko base relocation has not only divided the Japanese public; it has emerged as one of the most polarizing issues for decades for the country’s mass media, pitting two small, but irrepressible, local newspapers against the might of the Tokyo-based conservative media.
