Open but Still Embattled

The troubles seem far from over for Tokyo's new airport

It looked more like an armory than an airport. In fact, as Tzsuya Tsukushi, a Japanese television newscaster, put it, "Narita resembles nothing so much as Saigon airport during the Viet Nam War." All around the ultramodern terminal and along the highway leading to it, 14,000 Japanese security police stood at the ready, decked out for battle with shields and 4-ft. staves. Out in the nearby fields, clustered around "solidarity huts," more than 6,000 youthful protesters and wizened farmers brandished steel pipes and occasionally lobbed a fire bomb at the police flanks.

It was hardly the opening Japanese officials had envisioned for their country's new $2.4 billion international airport at Narita, 40 miles northeast of Tokyo. But then, tensions being what they were, there was a measure of relief simply because nothing catastrophic occurred when the first aircraft, a Japan Air Lines cargo plane from Los Angeles, finally touched down on the runway early last week. Within two days all 33 airlines that will use Narita had moved into their terminal quarters, and an average of 150 flights a day were landing and taking off at the new facility, which replaces the older Haneda airport across Tokyo Bay.

Even so, the trouble seemed far from over. On the eve of the official opening, radicals cut air-traffic communications cables serving the airport, paralyzing air traffic all over the country for four hours. Some 500 protesters also tried to crash through one of the airport gates with fire bombs. Other groups attacked a radar station and a tactical air navigation site, leaving 24 policemen injured.

Though the ranks of protesters thinned as the week progressed, the government faces serious problems in providing security at the airport over the long run. A 1,500-man permanent security force is planned, but it will be far from adequate if the current tempo of protest continues. Beyond protecting the 1,360-acre airport itself, authorities have to provide special antisabotage protection for jet fuel and other supplies transported to Narita from the outside. Then there is an expansion plan calling for construction of two runways to supplement the one now in use--requiring the purchase of still more private farm land.

Not since Tokyo's support of U.S. policy in Viet Nam provoked violent demonstrations in the 1960s has an issue so inflamed and coalesced the Japanese radical movement. Beginning in 1967, when the project got under way, there have been 56 major riots and demonstrations, five deaths, 8,100 injuries and 1,900 arrests. The first protests occurred when a group of farmers holding acreage needed for the airport refused to sell and the government confiscated their land. That highhandedness, though achieved through legal channels, caused a storm of protest and quickly brought the youthful rebels to the farmers' cause. As air pollution, noise and other environmental issues acquired clout in the 1970s, Narita became the ritual target of militants with almost any quality-of-life complaint.

The Narita protest, however, showed that Japanese radicalism for the most part has become a weekend affair. Its main support still comes from the former student militants of the 1960s, who by now are employed in government offices and ordinary businesses. By day they look like typical, polite, hard-working Japanese employees. At night and on Saturdays and Sundays, they become part-time "soldiers," demonstrating for radical causes. The 6,000 demonstrators at Narita's weekend opening, for example, dwindled to a mere 400 the following Monday. There is evidence that some of the radicals have used their inside positions in key government ministries to gain valuable information. Police say the cutting of the communications cable prior to the opening required detailed technical information obtainable only from those familiar with the facilities.

Demonstration tactics have also changed. Where once they carried only bamboo staves and fire bombs, the radicals now wield steel pipes, bows and arrows with steel tips, giant slingshots that use rocks as ammunition and battery-powered spear guns powerful enough to knock a policeman unconscious. Japan's strict firearms law, however, prevents them from obtaining guns.

Structurally, the radical youth movement has fragmented into scores of small bickering factions. This development was largely triggered by the transformation of the Japanese Communist Party into an orthodox political party that no longer advocates violent revolution. Police have so far found no indication that the terrorist Japanese Red Army, which has carried out several hijackings and the shoot-up of the Tel Aviv airport in 1972, has had any active contact with the Narita demonstrators. But authorities remain very much on the lookout for any sign of Red Army terrorists at Narita. Airports, after all, have always been their chosen battleground.

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