Denny Tamaki, the son of a Japanese mother and a US Marine, became the first mixed-race governor in Japan on Sunday after winning a close election.
TOKYO — Denny Tamaki, the son of a Japanese mother and a US Marine, became the first mixed-race governor in Japan on Sunday after winning a close election in Okinawa, a southern archipelago heavily populated by US military installations.
His victory poses a setback to plans by the Japanese government and the United States to transfer a busy Marine air base on Okinawa from the city of Ginowan to a less-populated coastal area on the island.
Tamaki wants the base moved out of Okinawa. His opponent, Atsushi Sakima, who was backed by Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was until recently the mayor of Ginowan and supported the base’s transfer.
Tamaki, 58, succeeds Takeshi Onaga, an outspoken critic of the US bases who died in August from complications of pancreatic cancer.
Speaking after NHK, the public broadcaster, confirmed his victory, Tamaki told supporters he would carry on the legacy of his predecessor in opposing the Japanese government’s effort to build the new base.
“We have to know that even small ants can move an elephant’s foot,” Tamaki said.
Tamaki, who nine years ago became the first Amerasian elected to Japan’s House of Representatives, said he would not grant approval for landfill to be used in the construction of a new runway in Henoko, a fishing village on the northern coast of the main island of Okinawa, to facilitate a new air base.
According to an agreement signed between the American and Japanese governments, the new base would replace the Marine Corps’ Air Station Futenma, which currently sprawls across about 1,100 acres in the center of Ginowan on the southern half of the island, which is about 650 miles south of the Japanese mainland.
