page_title: Okinawa Prefecture
section_title: 1973–2006
hierarchical_section_title: Okinawa Prefecture / History / 1973–2006
context_page_description: Okinawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the Ryukyu Islands. Okinawa Prefecture has a population of 1,457,162 and has a geographic area of 2,280 km².
  Naha is the capital and largest city of Okinawa Prefecture, with other major cities including Okinawa, Uruma, and Urasoe. Okinawa Prefecture encompasses two thirds of the Ryukyu Islands, including the Okinawa, Daitō and Sakishima groups, extending 1,000 kilometres southwest from the Satsunan Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture to Taiwan. Okinawa Prefecture's largest island, Okinawa Island, is the fifth-largest, smallest, and southernmost of the Japan's main islands and home to a majority of the population. Okinawa Prefecture's indigenous people is the Ryukyuan people, comprising the Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni subgroups, and another Ryukyuan subgroup, the Amami people, live in the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture.
  Okinawa Prefecture was ruled by the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1429 and unofficially annexed by Japan after the Invasion of Ryukyu in 1609. Okinawa Prefecture was officially founded in 1879 by the Empire of Japan after seven years as the Ryukyu Domain, the last domain of the Han system.
context_section_description: In a 1981 interview with the Mainichi Shimbun, Edwin O. Reischauer, former U.S. ambassador to Japan, said that U.S. naval ships armed with nuclear weapons stopped at Japanese ports on a routine duty, and this was approved by the Japanese government.
  The 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by U.S. servicemen triggered large protests in Okinawa. Reports by the local media of accidents and crimes committed by U.S. servicemen have reduced the local population's support for the U.S. military bases. A strong emotional response has emerged from certain incidents. As a result, the media has drawn renewed interest in the Ryukyu independence movement.
  Documents declassified in 1997 proved that both tactical and strategic weapons have been maintained in Okinawa.  In 1999 and 2002, the Japan Times and the Okinawa Times reported speculation that not all weapons were removed from Okinawa.  On October 25, 2005, after a decade of negotiations, the governments of the US and Japan officially agreed to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from its location in the densely populated city of Ginowan to the more northerly and remote Camp Schwab in Nago by building a heliport with a shorter runway, partly on Camp Schwab land and partly running into the sea.  The move is partly an attempt to relieve tensions between the people of Okinawa and the Marine Corps.
  Okinawa prefecture constitutes 0.6 percent of Japan's land surface, yet as of 2006, 75 percent of all USFJ bases were located on Okinawa, and U.S. military bases occupied 18 percent of the main island.
caption: U.S. military facilities in Okinawa