The United States has begun withdrawing thousands of its Marines from the Japanese island of Okinawa, Tokyo and Washington announced Saturday, after decades of mounting complaints from locals about the US military presence, AFP reports.
The United States announced in 2012 that it would redeploy 9,000 Marines from the island. Communities there complain that the military bases are an "unfair burden" - with objections ranging from environmental pollution to noise and helicopter crashes.
The move began with the departure of "a small detachment of approximately 100 Marine logistics support personnel" to the US island territory of Guam, the Japanese defence ministry and the US Marine Corps said.
"The start of the redeployment to Guam marks the first phase of the Marine Corps' departure to locations outside of Japan," Tokyo and Washington said in a joint statement.
There are currently about 19,000 US Marines in Okinawa, a strategic location east of Taiwan that has become a flashpoint for tensions between the United States and China.
Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to bring the self-governing island under its control.
Washington is Taiwan's most important supporter and its biggest arms supplier, but has long maintained "strategic ambiguity" about the possibility of backing it with ground forces, AFP reports.
The 9,000 redeployed Marines would be moved to another location in the Pacific - Guam, Hawaii or Australia, the United States said.
Okinawa makes up just 0.6 percent of Japan's territory, but more than half of the 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in the country are stationed there.
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