Word: narita
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...looked more like an armory than an airport. In fact, as Tzsuya Tsukushi, a Japanese television newscaster, put it, "Narita resembles nothing so much as Saigon airport during the Viet Nam War." All around the ultramodern terminal and along the highway leading to it, 14,000 Japanese security police stood at the ready, decked out for battle with shields and 4-ft. staves. Out in the nearby fields, clustered around "solidarity huts," more than 6,000 youthful protesters and wizened farmers brandished steel pipes and occasionally lobbed a fire bomb at the police flanks...
...hardly the opening Japanese officials had envisioned for their country's new $2.4 billion international airport at Narita, 40 miles northeast of Tokyo. But then, tensions being what they were, there was a measure of relief simply because nothing catastrophic occurred when the first aircraft, a Japan Air Lines cargo plane from Los Angeles, finally touched down on the runway early last week. Within two days all 33 airlines that will use Narita had moved into their terminal quarters, and an average of 150 flights a day were landing and taking off at the new facility, which replaces...
...long run. A 1,500-man permanent security force is planned, but it will be far from adequate if the current tempo of protest continues. Beyond protecting the 1,360-acre airport itself, authorities have to provide special antisabotage protection for jet fuel and other supplies transported to Narita from the outside. Then there is an expansion plan calling for construction of two runways to supplement the one now in use-requiring the purchase of still more private farm land...
...needed for the airport refused to sell and the government confiscated their land. That highhandedness, though achieved through legal channels, caused a storm of protest and quickly brought the youthful rebels to the farmers' cause. As air pollution, noise and other environmental issues acquired clout in the 1970s, Narita became the ritual target of militants with almost any quality-of-life complaint...
...happy about Narita's costs and security problems except the people who have caused them. Issaku Tomura, the 69-year-old leader of the demonstrators, crowed that last week's disorder constituted "a great victory. We have prevented the opening of the airport and will fight on until it is abandoned altogether." The government is not likely to abandon Narita easily, and the end-or the beginning-of the world's most troubled airport is still not in sight...