Ro Manabe will be reappointed chief of the Okinawa Defense Bureau in the wake of the November sacking of Satoshi Tanaka over inflammatory remarks he made in a bar in connection with the contentious relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within Okinawa, Defense Ministry sources said Wednesday.
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| Ro Manabe |
The move, considered unusual, to return Manabe, 54, to a post he served at for three years and seven months until August will be officially announced Monday, the sources said.
Manabe, current deputy director general of the ministry’s local cooperation bureau, was picked due to the need to have a veteran in the slot to help speed up efforts to restore relations with Okinawa damaged by Tanaka’s remarks regarding when the government plans to give the prefecture its environmental assessment report on the Futenma relocation site. The report, expected this month, is seen as an important step to move forward the stalled Futenma relocation, the sources said.
Tanaka, while drinking with reporters, had effectively said that a man planning to rape a woman doesn’t let her know beforehand. Besides being promptly removed, Tanaka was also suspended from duty for 40 days.
His remarks sparked anger in Okinawa, further complicating the government’s efforts to gain local consent on the Japan-U.S. plan to relocate the base now in crowded Ginowan to the Henoko coast of Nago.
Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa also sparked anger in Okinawa by saying he lacked detailed knowledge of the 1995 rape in the prefecture of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemen — an incident that triggered the review of U.S. forces in Okinawa.
