Court rejects Kadena residents' demand to night flight halt
NAHA, Okinawa Pref. (Kyodo) Almost 4,000 residents near the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa were awarded a combined 2.8 billion yen from the state Thursday in the largest redress amount for an aircraft noise pollution suit.
Plaintiffs seeking compensation for jet noise from the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture air their demands outside the Okinawa branch of the Naha District Court.
The Okinawa branch of the Naha District Court, however, turned down a request by the residents to ban nighttime flights at the largest U.S. air base in East Asia.
The court rejected the government's argument that the redress should be lessened as the residents chose to live around the base, knowing it would be noisy.
The plaintiffs included four who were diagnosed by the prefecture with losing some hearing loss due to noise. Presiding Judge Kyoji Iida, however, said the court could not establish a causal link between the noise pollution and their hearing problems, dismissing a claim made in a 1999 prefectural report that laid their hearing loss chiefly to aircraft noise.
The court awarded 3,881 residents from six municipalities around the base a combined 2.802 billion yen, far less than the 16 billion yen sought in the suit, which was filed in March 2000.
The award -- the largest compensation amount for air base or airport noise -- surpasses the roughly 2.74 billion yen the Yokohama District Court ordered the state to pay in October 2002 in a suit over noise from the Atsugi naval air facility in Kanagawa Prefecture, which is used jointly by U.S. and Japanese forces.
The plaintiffs in the Kadena case had demanded the Japanese and U.S. governments halt the night flights.
The court dismissed the demand made on the Japanese government "because it seeks to halt an act by the third party," referring to the the U.S., and brushed aside the demand on the U.S. on grounds that the matter is "outside of the jurisdiction of a civil trial."
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they intend to appeal.
"This is the worst court decision. I don't think the court ever seriously examined the damage suffered by the residents," said Toshio Ikemiyagi, chief lawyer for the plaintiffs.
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