By RICHARD LLOYD PARRY
UWAJIMA - Until a week ago, and that short, frantic 10 minutes when everything changed, Uwajima was the last town in Japan that anyone would regard as a place of upheaval or political controversy.
Squeezed between the mountains and the sea on the far west coast of the island of Shikoku, it is a port of 60,000 where nothing happens.
The Ehime Maru was the pride of Uwajima, a 500-tonne trawler that left the port a month ago for a 10-week voyage.
The boat was a training ship of the Uwajima Marine and Fisheries High School, one of 50 such schools across Japan that reflect the country's vast and unquenchable appetite for fish.
And then, last Saturday, off the coast of Hawaii, the Ehime Maru met its destiny in the shape of the USS Greeneville.
The consequences are being felt far beyond the little town. On the outcome of the Ehime Maru tragedy depend several senior military careers, the job of the Japanese Prime Minister and the future of one of the most important military alliances in the world.
Rarely has the United States-Japan military relationship been so beset by tensions and uncertainties.
More and more Japanese, particularly on Okinawa, have come to question the costs of the US-Japan Security Treaty.
Of the 48,000 troops stationed in Japan, 27,000 are on Okinawa.
Hardly a month passes without some crime or outrage being perpetrated by an American serviceman.
In 1995 came the unforgivable act - the brutal rape of a 12-year-old local girl by three Americans. Huge demonstrations followed, demanding the withdrawal of the US forces.
The Japanese and American governments did their best to calm things down, and agreed to shuffle round a few of the bases and slowly emotions calmed down.
Then last month came General Earl Hailston's unfortunate email.
The general is the commander of US forces on Okinawa; the email was a private message to his senior officers, in which he emphasised the need for discipline.
One reason it was so important, he said, was the sensitivity of local politicians. "I think they are all nuts and a bunch of wimps." Someone leaked the memo to the local paper.
Never was there a greater need to defuse the perception of the American military as arrogant, gung-ho clodhoppers - and then came the tragedy of the Ehime Maru.
It is clear by now that all the missing are dead. But it is equally clear that their deaths were the result of carelessness verging on criminal negligence.
The Greeneville was carrying out a manoeuvre designed to propel the sub as rapidly as possible to the surface in emergencies.
Investigators in Honolulu say checks were carried out to make sure that there was no surface shipping anywhere in the area, but they failed to detect the 57m trawler.
The Greeneville had 16 civilian passengers, along for the ride.
To make matters worse, the joy ride was organised by a retired admiral, who was forced to resign in 1996 after remarks about the rape in Okinawa (he observed that the young rapists had been particularly foolish, because they could simply have bought a local prostitute).
The bilateral security treaty will survive this time, but the Japanese Prime Minister, the epically inept Yoshiro Mori, may not. He was informed of the accident while he was playing golf and remained on the links for another two hours.
There have been angry calls for his resignation.
- HERALD CORRESPONDENT
Sub disaster strains US relations with Japan
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