CAMP GONSALVES, Okinawa -- The platoon is moving along the jungle trail slowly, silently, when a Marine shouts: "Enemy. Front!"
Before he can hit the muddy ground, a projectile slams into his chest and explodes in a burst of orange paint. Within minutes, most of his buddies are hit as well.Each year, thousands of U.S. Marines are brought to this huge training facility for some of the most realistic simulations of jungle and urban warfare they are likely to get anywhere.
For decades, however, the real battle has been off base. And on this front, a fragile truce may finally be in the works.
Voters in Japan's poorest region surprised the rest of the country in mid-November by ousting a governor who for eight years led a vociferously anti-military administration and demanded the total withdrawal of American troops from their biggest Asian outpost by 2015.
To replace Gov. Masahide Ota, a respected historian, Okinawans chose his mirror opposite -- Keiichi Inamine, a former oil executive who has vowed to focus not on the U.S. military's presence but on reviving Okinawa's suffocating economy.
Inamine, who took office Dec. 10, said in an interview he would like to see a gradual reduction in American troop levels. But he slammed Ota's withdrawal plan, calling it unreasonable.
"Ota was an idealist," the new governor said. "I am a realist."
Reality on Okinawa is increasingly bleak.
Unemployment is at about 9 percent, twice the national average, and roughly three-quarters of the unemployed are under 35. Wages are well below the norm elsewhere in Japan, and Asia's economic slowdown threatens to further erode public works spending and tourism, Okinawa's main source of revenue.
Inamine stressed that Okinawa's reliance on the U.S. military has dwindled. Military-related spending accounted for a fifth of the local economy 25 years ago; it is now roughly 5 percent.
But thinking of Okinawa without U.S. troops is hard to do.
The contingent of nearly 20,000 Marines on this southern Japanese island is the corps' largest force outside the United States. The Air Force also maintains one of its biggest overseas bases here, and the Army and Navy are represented as well.