TOKYO, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Municipalities in Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa on Tuesday were informed by the U.S. military that flights of its CH-53E transport helicopters will be suspending until the cause of a recent crash-landing of one of the choppers is released.
According to local media reports, the mayor of Uruma, Toshio Shimabukuro, visited Camp Zukeran on Tuesday to lodge a protest over the crash-landing of a CH-53E on Oct. 11 near the U.S. Northern Training Area.
The area, which straddles the villages of Higashi and Kunigami, has six new helipads, and drills over residential areas increased of late, leading to growing concerns about accidents, local officials said.
Shimabukuro heard from a senior Marine Corp officer that the CH-53E helicopters will remain grounded until investigations determine whether the problem was only with the chopper that made a crash-landing or is a fault in all of the choppers.
Japan's Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera had said that he expected the helicopters to be grounded indefinitely until their safety can be ensured.
But following the crash, the U.S. Marine Corps in Japan said that it had ordered a "96-hour operational pause" for the CH-53E helicopters stationed in Okinawa.
On Tuesday, the local assemblies of the village of Higashi and the city of Ginowan unanimously adopted resolutions protesting the accident.
The move follows the Okinawa prefectural assembly on Monday unanimously adopting a similar resolution, which also referred to the increased drills over private land since the new helipads were built at the Northern Training Area.
The assembly also sent a strongly worded statement to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying that last Wednesday's crash-landing of a U.S. military CH-53E transport helicopter was "on the verge of being a major disaster."
The assembly called for a halt to the use of the helipads by the U.S. military and demanded that training exercises over private and residential areas be stopped.
Okinawa hosts the majority of U.S. military facilities in Japan, yet the tiny sub-tropical island accounts for just a tiny percentage of Japan's total land mass.
Officials and citizens in Okinawa have long-suffered from incidents of U.S. military accidents and crimes committed by military or affiliated personnel and are calling for their base-hosting burdens to be lifted.
The latest aviation incident involved a CH-53E transport helicopter catching fire in mid-air during a training drill last Wednesday and bursting into flames as it made an emergency landing near the Northern Training Area, which is located just 300 meters away from a residential area.
The U.S. Naval Safety Center rated the accident as the most serious "Class A." It said that a fire broke out in the helicopter's engine, which forced it to make a crash-landing.
The CH-53E helicopter belongs to the controversial Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa.
The base is central to a relocation spat between the local and central government.
Okinawan officials and residents want to see the base relocated outside the prefecture, whereas the central government maintains that relocating it to a pristine coastal region within Okinawa remains the only solution.
Accidents involving helicopters have been frequent in Okinawa, the citizens of which have also had to contend, more recently, with accidents involving the controversial tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft, which can take off and land like a helicopter but fly like a fixed-wing plane.
Separately on Tuesday, Defense Minister Onodera told a press briefing in Tokyo that he will ask the U.S. military to halt its missile countermeasure drills being conducted over land in Japan.
The exercises involved fighter planes deploying decoy flares, which have caused local residents, such as those who live close to the Marines' Air Station Iwakuni, in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan, to voice their concerns over the drills' safety.
