TOKYO, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga on Wednesday rebuked remarks made by the U.S. military, which claimed that the decision of two helicopter pilots to make emergency landings in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost Prefecture, were correct.
U.S. Pacific Command chief Adm. Harry Harris had said that he was satisfied that the helicopter crews' decisions to make emergency landings on a sandy beach close to a residential home and at a waste disposal site near a resort hotel were correct.
He believed that the choices the crews made were preferable to the two aircraft returning to their base at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, located in a densely populated area of Okinawa.
Onaga, a staunch proponent of easing the base-hosting burdens of the people of Okinawa, slammed Harris' remarks, saying that the issue was not as much to do with the crews' decision making at the time, but the "sloppy" safety standards of the U.S. military's maintenance protocols that led to the incidents in the first place.
Onaga was referring to two incidents involving military choppers making emergency landings in quick succession recently in Okinawa.
On Monday, an AH-1 attack helicopter was forced to land in the village of Yomitan, after a UH-1 helicopter made a forced landing on Ikei Island in the city of Uruma on Jan. 6.
Along with officials in Okinawa, local residents are becoming increasingly incensed at the frequency of U.S. military-linked mishaps and anti-U.S. sentiment is steadily growing on the tiny sub-tropical island that hosts the bulk of U.S. military bases in Japan.
