Word: okinawa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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RELATIONS between the two greatest industrial powers in the non-Communist world, the U.S. and Japan, are becoming increasingly strained. Japan's campaign to regain Okinawa is only a part of the problem. An acrimonious dispute over trade is moving to the point of showdown. The issue will be debated at a joint meeting of the U.S. and Japanese cabinet members in Tokyo this month, and again when Prime Minister Eisaku Sato meets President Nixon in Washington in November. The expanding argument centers on the protectionist policies of both countries, but the U.S. has brought the trouble...
Fortunately, opportunities still exist for a compromise. Nixon himself has speculated that the U.S. might make concessions in its Okinawa policy if the Japanese accepted textile quotas. The U.S. might also be willing to make the quotas fairly liberal, provided that Japan would open its domestic economy more widely. Indeed, if the U.S. settled for mild textile quotas, the Japanese might permit U.S. auto firms to start joint manufacturing ventures in Japan, as Ford and Chrysler are already negotiating to do. Prime Minister Sato is expected to tell Nixon in Washington that the Japanese auto industry will be opened...
...cutting back however slightly the number of Americans fighting in Viet Nam, Nixon sought to mollify the domestic impatience with the war; that dissatisfaction had helped him win election last November. There were countervailing risks. Although some of the troops will be pulled back no farther than Okinawa, Nixon would surely evoke deafening protest in the U.S. in the highly unlikely event that serious military reversals made it necessary to send some of the troops back. The greater danger, however, is that the enemy will simply ignore Nixon's initiative?on the assumption that continued popular op position...
...Pentagon is unhappy about the prospect of losing Okinawa. Strategically, however, removal of nuclear weapons and bombers should have little effect on overall U.S. capability. The four Polaris submarines and five Navy aircraft carriers now in the area, plus nuclear-armed planes in South Korea and possibly the Philippines, could take up the slack. A logical pullback position for long-range bombers and ground troops would be Guam, a U.S. possession 1,400 miles southeast of Okinawa...
Meanwhile, Washington has little choice but to say sayonara, Okinawa. If the U.S. were to cling to the island, it might produce an anti-American regime in Tokyo and destroy the Security Treaty with Japan. That would represent a far greater loss than Okinawa for the long-term security of Asia...