Neighbors upset that Hansen training site won’t open until 2009

[unhappycamper]

Neighbors upset that Hansen training site won’t open until 2009
By David Allen, and Chiyomi Sumida, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, January 12, 2008

KIN, Okinawa — Some residents of this town adjoining Camp Hansen are unhappy that activity at a controversial urban warfare training area on the base will continue until mid-2009.

“Residents were shocked and upset to learn that their suffering will go on another year and half,” said Masafumi Ikehara, district mayor of Igei, the closest community to the combat complex.

The Range 4 complex, which cost $3.8 million, opened in July 2005. After a year of protests that it was too close to residential neighborhoods, the Japanese government agreed to build a replacement facility near Camp Hansen’s Range 16. The new facility was scheduled to open in March.

But construction of the new urban warfare complex required the military to move training to other areas of Camp Hansen, making it impossible to complete the new facility on time, a Japan Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday.

“The bureau initially planned to start building three replacement facilities at the same time,” said Morimasa Ganekothe, spokesman for the ministry’s Naha Bureau. But the Army and Marines could not halt training in all three areas at the same time, he said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51558



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