Quote Originally Posted by airshifter

The US bases consume about 20% of the land on Okinawa, and though it's true that many bases are bordered by residential areas, many of these areas were built after the bases. It is also rarely mentioned that somewhere around 30% of the land leased to the US is private land, not land owned by the government.
What difference does it make if the land is private or owned by the government? After the war, Finland had to lease land to a Soviet military base on the south cost of Finland (the Soviets abandoned it in 1956). The land was privately owned, but the owners had no say in it. The Finnish government just relocated them elsewhere.