Japanese Court Rejects Injunction against Flights at Atsugi Air Base

Yokohama, Nov. 20 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese district court on Wednesday rejected a request for an injunction against nighttime and early morning flights at Atsugi Air Base in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, which is used jointly by the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military.

Presiding Judge Nobuhiro Okada at Yokohama District Court rejected the request regarding SDF and U.S. military aircraft, filed by some 8,700 residents in eight cities around the base, which straddles the Kanagawa cities of Yamato and Ayase.

But the judge ordered the state to pay a total of roughly 5.9 billion yen in damages to the plaintiffs over past noise pollution linked to the base. He denied a damages claim for future noise pollution.

The plaintiffs said that they will appeal the decision.

The lawsuit, the fifth of its kind, focused on changes in levels of base-related noise since U.S. carrier-based aircraft were relocated to the Iwakuni base in Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Japan.

Okada said that, according to a map of noise pollution distribution created by the government in fiscal 2020, after the completion of the relocation of U.S. aircraft, areas affected by noise exceeding a certain threshold on a loudness index designed for aircraft noise has shrunk significantly.

The judge awarded damages payments of 5,000 yen to 25,000 yen per person per month based on the loudness index.

He upheld a Supreme Court ruling on the previous fourth lawsuit, which concluded that operations of SDF aircraft were highly public in nature, and said that flights could not be deemed severely lacking appropriateness even when considering the noise pollution.

The plaintiffs had argued that the so-called day-evening-night sound level, or Lden, standard adopted in Japan in 2013 shows that noise from military aircraft has been underrepresented compared with noise from civilian airplanes, and that noise pollution has continued even since the relocation of U.S. aircraft. They demanded damages payments of 46,000 yen per person per month.

In the fourth lawsuit, district and high courts ruled in favor of an injunction against nighttime and early morning flights by SDF aircraft. The Supreme Court in 2016 overturned this decision while dismissing the high court order for damages linked to future noise.

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