Tachikawa Air Base History Walk: The Sunagawa Struggle and After

The Date ruling and the Supreme Court judgment in the Sunagawa case

8 July 1957. The Supreme Court’s judgment states the date clearly. As of 8 July 1957, land inside Tachikawa Airfield, located in Sunagawa Town, was being used by the US armed forces. That day, part of a demonstration against surveying for the expansion broke down the boundary fence and went a few metres onto the base. In September the same year, 23 people, students and union members among them, were arrested, and seven were indicted for violating the Special Criminal Law that accompanied the administrative agreement under the Japan–US Security Treaty.

That is all the incident amounted to. The supplementary opinion of Justice Kotaro Tanaka, attached to the judgment, says the same: the legal issue in this case is extremely simple and clear, merely that the defendants entered, without legitimate reason, a facility they were forbidden to enter.

That simple case did not end simply. On 30 March 1959, Presiding Judge Akio Date of the Tokyo District Court ruled that the stationing of US forces amounted to maintaining “war potential,” which Article 9, paragraph 2 of Japan’s constitution forbids, held the Special Criminal Law’s provision unconstitutional, and acquitted all seven. This is the Date ruling.

The prosecutors skipped the appeal to the High Court and went straight to the Supreme Court, a procedure called a leap appeal (hiyaku jokoku). On 16 December the same year, the Grand Bench of the Supreme Court quashed the original ruling and sent the case back to the Tokyo District Court.

According to the summary of the judgment published by the courts, the Supreme Court held that foreign forces which Japan cannot command or control do not constitute “war potential” under Article 9, paragraph 2, even if stationed in Japan. It further stated that a treaty of a highly political nature, such as the security treaty, falls outside the scope of judicial review unless it is clearly and obviously unconstitutional and void at first glance.

At the end of the judgment are listed the names of the fifteen justices of the Grand Bench. The judgment is described as the unanimous opinion of all the justices, but seven of them, Kotaro Tanaka, Tamotsu Shima, Hachiro Fujita, Toshio Irie, Katsumi Tarumi, Daisuke Kawamura and Shuichi Ishizaka, wrote supplementary opinions, and three, Katsushige Kotani, Ken’ichi Okuno and Kiyoshi Takahashi, wrote separate opinions. Ten of fifteen agreed with the conclusion yet could not resist adding words of their own. That is part of the reason a judgment about a few metres of trespass ran to 52 pages.

Wayfarer’s detour quiz

After the Tokyo District Court ruling of 30 March 1959, what did the prosecutors do?

• A. Appealed to the Tokyo High Court
• B. Appealed directly to the Supreme Court
• C. Did not appeal

The answer is near the end of this article.

In the retrial after the case was sent back, the seven were eventually found guilty, and the verdict became final in December 1963. According to Kyodo News’s glossary, the penalty was a fine of 2,000 yen.

The story did not end there. The Tachikawa City Library guide records, among recent developments, that US declassified documents on the Sunagawa case were found between 2008 and 2013, and that in 2014 and 2015 the Sunagawa judgment was cited as grounds in the debate over allowing Japan to exercise collective self-defence. Opinions on how to read the judgment remain divided. All I can say here is that a few metres inside a fence are still at the centre of debate more than sixty years on.

The year 1959 has another entry in Tachikawa’s chronology. Tachikawa became a sister city of San Bernardino, California. In the same year that the stationing of US forces was being fought over in court, the city joined hands with an American town. A year of conflict was also a year of exchange. Life is usually made of two layers like that.

Sunagawa merges with Tachikawa, and another trial over the fields

The criminal case was not the only thing that went to court.

According to the city chronology, in 1960 the Tachikawa City Assembly proposed a merger to the Sunagawa Town Assembly, and in 1963 Tachikawa City and Sunagawa Town merged. The library’s guide “Researching the Tachikawa–Sunagawa Merger” notes that photo collections from the time include pictures of commemorative arches, a memorial tower and celebratory events. Two towns that had sat north and south of the base became one city.

The chronology for the same year, 1963, also notes a Tokyo District Court ruling on the Sunagawa land expropriation issue. Even in the year the merger arches went up, the town was still in court.

The fight over the land of farmers in the expansion zone went on. A 2017 on-site report on a news website summarises it: Ichigoro Aoki, the action-corps leader, filed a lawsuit over surrendering his land in April 1956; when the Governor of Tokyo changed in 1967, approval for expropriating the land was withdrawn; and in 1976 the Aoki family’s case was settled and the land’s return confirmed. According to the report, the land measures 1,002 tsubo (a traditional unit), about 3,300 square metres, and is now a stand of woodland.

1,002 tsubo. Over that much ground, twenty years passed between the lawsuit and the settlement.

So how was the expansion itself stopped?

The expansion is cancelled in 1968, the base returned in 1977

The chronology in “The History of Tachikawa Airfield” says that in December 1968, the US Air Force commander announced the cancellation of the plan to extend Tachikawa Air Base’s runway. The thirteen-year extension plan ended there. In October 1969, the US military announced the end of flying at Tachikawa.

After that, the chronology ticks forward in small steps towards the return. In 1971, the Japan–US Joint Committee agreed to return part of Tachikawa Air Base. In 1972, a signing ceremony for the return of Areas A and B was held at the base officers’ club. The same year, the Self-Defense Forces moved into the US Tachikawa Air Base; the city chronology even gives the numbers, 127 personnel and five helicopters. The place where the return papers were stamped was the officers’ club. Right to the end, very much a base town.

In 1973 the Japan–US Security Consultative Committee decided that US Tachikawa Air Base would be fully returned in 1976. In 1976, a citizens’ rally was held against a plan to divide the former base land into three parts to be sold for payment. The return was settled. Next, the town raised its voice about who would use the land, and how.

And on 30 November 1977, Tachikawa Air Base was fully returned. The chronology for that year also lists a plan for using the former base land, drawn up by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Tachikawa City and Akishima City, and the opening of the city’s Kashiwa Primary School. In the year the base came back, the town was still opening primary schools.

On why the expansion was cancelled, the public chronologies I read say no more. The expansion was cancelled, flying stopped, the base was returned. In between were more than thirteen years of residents’ resistance, court cases, and the changing role of the base. I did not find a source that names the deciding factor in a single line. The other half of the answer I leave to the library shelves.

The land that came back was vast. How did the town use all that space? This is the part I most wanted to write.

What the people of Tachikawa did with the land

Tachikawa City’s material says the returned land is now used for Showa Kinen Park (the national Showa Memorial Park), a regional disaster-prevention base, and ordinary city districts. Follow the chronology and you can see the town’s hand at work. 1978: Tachikawa City Library established. 1979: draft outline of the plan for using the former base land decided. 1981: the main roads linked to the former base land and the area of Showa Kinen Park fixed in city planning. 1983: Showa Kinen Park partly opens, and in the same year Musashi-Sunagawa Station opens on the Seibu Haijima Line. It was also the year a station came to the town north of the base. 1985: the Museum of History and Folklore opens. How Tachikawa’s people came to lie on the lawns of Showa Kinen Park I leave to another article in this series.

The disaster-prevention base deserves to be better known. According to the Cabinet Office’s disaster-management section, if a major earthquake directly under the capital or a similar disaster badly damaged the Prime Minister’s Office or the Cabinet Office, so that the government’s disaster headquarters could not operate, the headquarters would be set up in a backup facility inside the Tachikawa Regional Disaster Prevention Base, which would become the hub of the nation’s emergency response. The 2001 White Paper on Disaster Management says that this backup facility is set up so that about 500 assembled staff can work there for a week, and that it is staffed around the clock, holidays included. Land where transport planes once took off and landed is now the country’s waiting room for emergencies. A town called plain is also the town held in reserve for the capital’s worst day.

According to material from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, five research and training institutions of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Internal Affairs moved to the districts on the former base land, and later a joint government building housing the Tokyo District Court and others moved to the same area, with Tachikawa City Hall moving in next door. The 1957 case was tried in the Tokyo District Court. Today a joint building of that same court stands on the grounds of that same base. It is a little too neat to call coincidence.

Tachikawa still has an airfield

There is one thing I must add here. Tachikawa still has an airfield.

The city chronology records that a new runway came into service in 1982: the new Tachikawa Airfield. Since the US forces left, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s Tachikawa Airfield has been operating in one corner of the former base. According to the operating guidelines published by Tachikawa City, flights normally take place on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with take-offs and landings averaging roughly 50 a day. As a rule, there is no training flying on Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays.

Near the end of those guidelines I found a line I had to read twice. During entrance examinations, they make every effort to avoid flying over the exam venues and to reduce aircraft noise.

In the 1950s, at a junior high school 200 metres from the runway, lessons stopped with every roar. Today the same town’s airfield flies around the heads of students sitting their exams. One line of an agreement holds the whole distance this town has travelled in seventy years.

And one more thing. Every October, the qualifying race for the Hakone Ekiden (the Tokyo–Hakone inter-university relay, a New Year’s sporting event watched by much of the country on television) has been held as a 21.0975 km half marathon that starts at the JGSDF Camp Tachikawa, runs through the streets of Tachikawa and finishes in Showa Kinen Park. On land that was once inside the wire, hundreds of student runners break into a run all at once. The road to Hakone in the New Year starts on a Tachikawa runway. Surprisingly few of the people watching on television know it.

In the library on the base land, the records of the base

By the North Exit there is a library. Tachikawa City Central Library opened on 12 January 1995 in the Center Square building of Faret Tachikawa, the district born on former base land. The library collects material on Tachikawa Air Base and the airfield as a special collection, gathered in one place on the shelves numbered W-3-10. “Bunshu Sunagawa,” reproductions of the trial records leading up to the Date ruling, and the record written by the deputy leader of the opposition league’s action corps all sit on the same shelves. The library guide also lists “Tachikawa Base,” a booklet compiled by the city; a collection of newspaper clippings by the assembly secretariat; photo books of the inside of the US base; and even an English-language photo book compiled by former US military personnel.

The library on the old base land keeps the records of that base most carefully of all. Material from both sides of the dispute sits side by side on the same shelf. Like the children who sat at neighbouring desks.

I copied the shelf number into my notebook and felt, from that alone, slightly richer. W-3-10. Twenty-two years of a town fit into one shelf number.

What the runway that never grew left to the town

Back to the first questions.

Why did extending a runway become a question about the constitution? Half the answer was in the judgment. Trace the basis of the Special Criminal Law that punished a few metres of trespass, and you arrive at the stationing of US forces itself. Unless you asked whether that stationing fitted the constitution, you could not judge those few metres inside the fence. The Date ruling stepped into that question; the Supreme Court drew a line around how far the courts could answer it.

Why did a base that never expanded vanish? Here I can give only half an answer. In 1968 the expansion was cancelled, the next year flying stopped, and in 1977 the base was returned. In between there were people who tried to protect their fields, people who looked for terms, and people who stood at the scene as police officers. To say the base vanished because of any one of them alone would probably be inaccurate to people in every camp.

And what did the town do with the land that came back? It made a park, welcomed research institutes, placed a court and a city hall, built a library, and took on the role of standby for the capital in an emergency. The airfield that remains flies around the heads of exam-takers, and in autumn it becomes the starting line for student runners. Land that was inside the wire is now a lawn anyone can walk on, shelves from which anyone can borrow books, and a starting line from which someone can break into a run.

Some people call Tachikawa a plain town. But I know few other towns that have turned land where entry was forbidden into so many places where everyone may enter. Those who achieved it were not someone far away, but the people of this town, who protected their fields, opened shops, opened primary schools and turned out for citizens’ rallies.

Tired from walking, I come back to the deck at the North Exit, and the same crowd as before is being drawn into the department stores as if nothing had ever happened. Some of them know what lay under the paving at their feet. Some do not.

One train on the Chuo Line from Shinjuku, or one train on the Nambu Line from Kawasaki. In half a weekend you can walk, on your own feet, over land that post-war Japan argued about at the top of its voice. A town like that exists in the west of Tokyo.

Quiz answer

The answer is B. Skipping the appeal to the Tokyo High Court, the prosecutors appealed directly to the Supreme Court, a procedure called a leap appeal. The Grand Bench handed down its judgment on 16 December 1959, a little over eight months after the Tokyo District Court ruling.

Before you go

• Getting there: from Shinjuku, take the JR Chuo Line to Tachikawa with no change. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Bureau of Environment walking guide gives the trip from Shinjuku to Tachikawa as 30 minutes on the Chuo Line. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line links Kawasaki Station and Tachikawa Station with no change. Carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO.
• Tachikawa City Museum of History and Folklore: 3-12-34 Fujimicho, Tachikawa. 20 minutes on foot from Nishi-Tachikawa Station on the JR Ome Line. Or from the South Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, take a bus bound for “Shindo Fukushima” or “Fujimicho Soshajo,” get off at “Danchi Nishi,” and walk 5 minutes (according to Tachikawa City). Admission is free. “The History of Tachikawa Airfield” can also be read on the city website (in Japanese). Check opening hours and closing days on the official page: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004849/1004905.html
• Tachikawa City Central Library: 2-36-2 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, floors 2–4 of Faret Tachikawa Center Square. From the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, follow the pedestrian deck to Faret Tachikawa, about 3 minutes on foot (according to the Faret Tachikawa Art official site). Material on Tachikawa Air Base and the airfield is at W-3-10. Research questions can be taken to the reference room on the 3rd floor. Check opening hours and closing days on the official site: https://www.library.tachikawa.tokyo.jp/contents?pid=32
• Library guide “Researching the Sunagawa Struggle” (PDF, Japanese): https://www.library.tachikawa.tokyo.jp/images/upload/tachishira03_202007.pdf
• Tachikawa City walking course “Walking the Modern Era,” which goes from the North Exit to the site of the main gate of the army’s 5th Air Regiment and along Sakae Ryokuchi, the green strip on a railway spur about 1.7 km long: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004848/1004891.html
• The Supreme Court judgment in the Sunagawa case (court case search; the full text PDF is available, in Japanese): https://www.courts.go.jp/hanrei/55816/detail2/index.html
• Operation of Tachikawa Airfield (Tachikawa City): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/shisei/kichi/1005271/1023744.html
• To combine: in the morning, the Faret Tachikawa artworks and the Central Library by the North Exit; in the afternoon, Showa Kinen Park. Go on to the fields of Sunagawa and the Tamagawa Aqueduct and you will feel in your legs how big the land north of the base, where the expansion was planned, really is. The Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum in Midoricho, among the research institutes, is on the same former base land.

Close the old chronology, then the North Exit

A day following the traces of the base involves more walking than you expect. From the North Exit deck to the library, by bus to the museum, onto the park lawns. Chasing the chronology, your legs turn to sticks, and your neck and shoulders stiffen in front of the shelves.

A minute’s walk from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station, on the 3rd floor of the Etoile Building at 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo, is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店). It stands in Akebonocho 2-chome, the same neighbourhood the base’s main gate once faced. It is a lava-stone hot yoga studio, and also offers room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons alone.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30, so even after an evening of research at the library there is time to drop in.

The trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and mat rental included. Pregnant guests cannot join lava-stone hot yoga, but room-temperature maternity yoga is available. Many of our yoga instructors speak English, and the studio’s owner, Naomi Fujita, who holds Japan’s top English qualification (Eiken Grade 1) and a perfect TOEIC score and once worked as a translator and overseas interpreter at Nomura Securities, and who lived in Alaska for three years, often helps guests from the US bases in English herself (visitors from abroad have even left Google reviews about the care they received in English); if you would like an English-friendly lesson, just say so when you book.

• On the Shore: https://ontheshore.jp/
• Book a trial lesson: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

Under the North Exit sky, where a wire fence once stood, everyone now comes and goes freely on business of their own.

Cover photo: Tachikawa Airfield seen from the sky to the north, with green former base land beyond (2023). (Photo: ブルーノ・プラス / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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