THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Okinawa has been fighting the relocation of the Marine airbase since it was first proposed despite heavy pressure from Toyyo and Washington for the move.

She’s spent more than half her life fighting a proposal to place new Marine air strips near the village where she grew up on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. Her side has thwarted the plan year after year.

But the day when Marine planes land near her may be inching closer, with Tokyo and Washington insisting that the runways must be built. They’d expand a base on the front lines of a standoff where traditional U.S. allies are guarding against China’s growing military might in the South and East China seas.

The military urgency behind the plan, however, crashes against a perennial stalemate over what to do with the dense and unpopular concentration of Marine forces the American military has kept on Okinawa since World War II.

“We don’t need bases that generate wars. I want to start the peace from Okinawa,” Shimabukuro said.

Both countries want to close Futenma, but the only solution they’ve found to shut the base while retaining Marine combat power in the western Pacific centers on a plan to lay two runways in the coral-filled waters of Oura Bay.

That agreement sounds ideal in world capitals.

It would ease tension in the city around Futenma and allow the governments to build on land that’s already used by the Marines at an infantry base called Camp Schwab. That base sits next to Henoko village, which has a reputation as the most pro-military community on Okinawa.

But it’s a nonstarter on Okinawa, where daily protests outside Camp Schwab’s gates are reminders that local residents and international activists have been willing to put their bodies on the line to protect the bay from a construction that would partially fill it.

“We never give up,” said Ooshiro Satoru, an Okinawa labor union leader who joined a protest outside of Camp Schwab on its 383rd consecutive day last summer on the eve of a typhoon’s expected landfall.

Okinawa voters made their preferences clear last year when they elected a wild-card governor in Takeshi Onaga to upend the already long-delayed pact.

And out in the Pacific, residents of Guam are upset by plans to greatly expand the Marine presence on the islands of Guam, Tinian and Pagan.

This U.S. territory in the Western Pacific, long a way station for passing jets and submarines, is about to become a hub for a force of 4,800 Marines who’ll be charged with readying for war and disasters in East Asia.

The trouble is the Pentagon has not yet persuaded two nearby islands to accept a proposal that would give the Marines a space to train during their Pacific patrols. And some are suggesting, subtly, that it may be difficult to station so many military service members on Guam if they cannot train nearby.

On one island, Tinian, a Marine plan to practice ground maneuvers is setting off fears that the sounds of mortars and rocket blasts will quash a budding Chinese-backed tourism-casino industry. The companies behind the casinos have been hinting they’d pull out if the Marine proposal becomes a reality.

On the other, Pagan, a proposal to make a massive international military training zone on an island known for its namesake volcano is hitting a nerve among people who dream of returning to it three decades after an eruption forced their evacuation.

Both islands are governed by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a separate U.S. territory that revealed its concerns when it hired an attorney known for fighting Pentagon plans in the Pacific.

“Having a place to fire cannons and practice obviously is essential, but this just isn’t the right place,” said Nick Yost, the San Francisco attorney hired by the commonwealth...

Japan, which hosts most of the troops who would be sent to Guam, is paying for more than a third of the estimated $8.7 billion cost of creating the new Marine facilities. Japan likely would participate in joint exercises if the training grounds are built, and Marines on Guam would be expected to respond to a disaster in Japan, 1,400 miles to the west.

A real problem for the military. When they aren't blowing up things for real, where can they get real practice in blowing things up.