Fussa Day Trip from Tachikawa: Yokota Air Base History, Route 16 Walk

Route 16 and the 1.6 kilometres of Base Side Street

Here is how the Fussa tourism association describes the shopping street along Route 16: “The shopping street along National Route 16 is so full of exotic atmosphere you’ll wonder, ‘Is this really Japan?'” A tourism association putting a question mark over whether its own town is in Japan: that too is rare.

According to the same association’s “Yokota Air Base Story,” the shopping street along Route 16 in front of the base runs a total of 1.6 kilometres north to south. It is also one of the “Ten Views of Fussa,” a set of scenic spots chosen with reference to residents’ opinions in January 1991 to mark the city’s 20th anniversary. The sightseeing guide of Ishikawa Brewery calls the road “Base Side Street (Route 16)” and says you can enjoy its American atmosphere.

Where should you start? According to the encyclopedia, the base lies along Route 16 about 600 metres east of Ushihama Station, and around here are “American houses,” US-style rental homes once let to American service members, along with military surplus shops and American food. The east side of Fussa Station is the nearest point to the base’s Gate 2, the so-called Main Gate. On one side, the fence and the green of the base; on the other, signs in English. The most natural walk in this town is north or south along the wide highway, following that border.

The line of Route 16 itself bears the marks of the base’s history. Fussa City’s chronology says that after the 1973 Kanto Plain Consolidation Plan for air force facilities, part of the base was returned to widen the adjoining National Route 16. To widen the road, the base gave back a little land. The fence moved back just a little, and the highway got that much fatter. If you walk here, you are walking on a strip that used to be base.

The Kanto Plain Consolidation Plan, known as the “Kanto Plan,” was, according to the Tokyo government document, agreed between Japan and the US in January 1973 to concentrate US Air Force facilities on the Kanto Plain at Yokota. In November 1974, the headquarters of US Forces Japan and of the Fifth Air Force moved from Fuchu to Yokota. The Fuchu Fifth Air Force headquarters that had issued the 1969 announcement thus moved itself, five years later, to Fussa, which had taken in the planes from Tachikawa. People, machines and headquarters all moved west. Fussa became something like the place where the Kanto skies drifted and settled.

Fussa City, meanwhile, writes that today’s Yokota Air Base has changed character, from a US military airlift staging base to a base jointly used by Japan and the US with functions for Japan’s air defence and missile defence. On 26 March 2012, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force’s Air Defense Command headquarters and other units moved from Fuchu, and JASDF Yokota Air Base officially began operating. From Fuchu to Yokota again. The westward drift was still going on in the 21st century.

Behind the fence, the tourism association writes, are a hospital, post office, fire station, schools, an officers’ club, a golf course, churches and housing. A whole town fits inside. To enter, you need three things: a sponsor on the base who comes to the gate to meet you, identification, and a nationality that is not considered hostile by the United States. A few times a year, though, the base is open to the public within permitted areas: the Japanese-American Friendship Festival, the cherry blossom open day, a marathon run inside the base. On those days, the tourism association says, “you can even hear authentic jazz and blues inside the base, which you normally can’t enter.”

The encyclopedia records one more fact that will please Tachikawa people a little. The nearest station to the East Gate (Gate 17), the entrance for the spring Sakura Festival, is the North Exit of Seibu-Tachikawa Station. Seibu-Tachikawa Station is in Tachikawa City. The spring entrance to Fussa’s base is close to a Tachikawa station.

What catches the eye most on this street may not be the shop signs or the fence. It may be the white single-storey houses dotted along the back streets.

American houses: when were the white bungalows built?

“Beigun hausu,” US military houses. The tourism association describes them as white single-storey houses with gardens. The encyclopedia defines them as privately run rental homes outside the base, detached houses for Americans. Because they were built on the assumption that people would not take off their shoes at the door, many have no genkan, the small entrance area where Japanese homes have you remove your shoes; you open the door and step straight into the living room. Trying to take off your shoes on the way in, finding nowhere to do it, and standing there at a loss: a Japanese resident’s first day probably began something like that.

So when were they built? Here the sources part company.

A 2019 article in a business magazine says the American houses were built from 1950, when the Korean War began, as homes for US service members in Japan and their families. At their peak there were nearly 10,000; only about 100 to 200 remain. The encyclopedia also says they were built in a concentrated burst just after the Second World War. But the Fussa tourism association’s “Yokota Air Base Story” says that around 1970 the base’s personnel increased, creating a need for housing outside the base, and many houses called American houses were built.

1950 or 1970? A difference of twenty years. I spent a while looking back and forth between the two texts. The clue is that both sources describe what happened afterwards in the same way. The business magazine says that by the mid-1970s most were empty, and young Japanese began to live in them. The encyclopedia says that from around 1970 American servicemen began to move into housing areas inside the base, and young Japanese came to like living in the houses. The tourism association, too, says that as base personnel were reduced, houses fell empty and Japanese people began to live in them. If they were falling empty in the 1970s, it seems natural to think they were built earlier. The Tokyo government document also says 275 homes were built inside the base between 1973 and 1978. Build houses inside the base, and the houses outside empty.

That much the sources allow us to say. What the tourism association’s “around 1970” refers to, I could not establish for certain. Perhaps the memory of when the need to build outside arose and the memory of when empty houses began to stand out merged somewhere into one. That is half guesswork, so I hand it over to you as it is.

Those who came to the empty houses were the young. In the business magazine article, someone from an NPO that has long worked on Fussa’s community-building from an American house looks back: the American houses were cheap to rent, so people who had dropped out of school or society, and creative people, moved in and shared them. Musicians, novelists and painters worked from here too, and a unique culture was born. The encyclopedia likewise says the phenomenon arose of many famous musicians, novelists and painters emerging from there.

The tourism association’s words today are bright: “The ‘Fussa American House,’ symbol of Fussa as a base town. Built for US military families, today they are home to many young people in the arts, who send out a culture all their own.” Some are used as cafés, photo studios and community spaces, and the association recommends them as places for souvenir photos. Houses built for the American military became homes for young Japanese, and are now the face of the town. The houses are the same; only the nationality and the age of the people living in them have changed.

Here, too, Tachikawa’s name comes up. Listing well-known places with American houses, the encyclopedia names the areas around Fussa, Mizuho and Akishima near Yokota, and alongside them the “American Village” that was on Tachikawa Air Base. Tachikawa once had its own cluster of the same white houses. Tachikawa’s base was returned, and the land became parks and government offices. Fussa’s white houses, more than half of them gone, still stand behind the main road.

A detour quiz

At the temporary stop at Ushihama, opened in haste on the Ome Line for Tama Airfield, who could get a ticket?

1. Only local merchants supplying the base
2. Only military personnel holding season tickets
3. Only students and children

The answer is at the end of this article.

The other face of the town nobody can read

I have talked mostly about the base, but the name Fussa is far older than the base.

“The Origin of the City’s Name,” written by Fussa City’s cultural properties section, makes good reading. The Edo-period gazetteer Musashi Meisho Zue records that the local people “pronounce it futcha.” Even today, the elders of the area call it “futcha” or “futtsa.” According to the city history, in the Muromachi period (14th to 16th centuries) this area was the northern front line of the Komiya clan, whose power was based towards the Aki River, and “fussa” may have meant a strategic point that “blocks” (fusagu) enemies coming from the north. To this were applied the auspicious characters 福 (“fortune”) and 生 (“life”), in line with the cult of the gods of good fortune that was popular in the Muromachi period. The city writes that a place name written 福生 probably came into being in the 15th or 16th century.

Land that blocks the north. Today, to its north-east, stands the largest US Air Force base in mainland Japan. I am not going to say the place name was a prophecy. But I do want to note that the idea of a front line of defence has survived here, in slightly altered form, for five hundred years.

The city believes the oldest document in which the characters 福生 definitely appear is a decree from the age of civil war. In 1561, Hojo Ujiteru, lord of Takiyama Castle, issued a notice board forbidding his troops from looting and violence in Fussa village. The city’s text says this decree was probably obtained by the villagers paying Ujiteru a large sum of money to issue it. Villages on the borders of war bought their own safety by paying half their tax to each side, or paying large sums to the enemy army. To eyes that have been following the history of a base town, the image of a village trying to protect its life on the border between great powers feels strangely vivid.

And this town has long had a whiff of money about it. In 1995, landscaping work in the Kumagawa district of the city turned up more than 5,000 coins about a metre underground. There were 62 types. The oldest was the Kaigen Tsuho, first minted in 621; the newest was the Ryukyu Sekou Tsuho, first minted in 1461. The most common was the Ming dynasty’s Eiraku Tsuho, with 681 coins. Someone set out to plant a garden tree and dug up a Muromachi-period piggy bank. Whatever wish their forebears put into the characters for “fortune” and “life,” it had at least come true underground.

Fussa has one more face today: Tanabata, the star festival. The first Fussa Tanabata Festival was held in July 1951 (according to the encyclopedia). According to the tourism association, it is held every August centred on the west exit of Fussa Station, with lavish bamboo decorations adorning the shopping streets, and draws a crowd of about 400,000 a year. For a city of about 57,000, that is roughly seven times its population. West of Fussa Station, a town of bamboo; east of it, a town of the base. With the station in between, a Japanese summer and an American street stand back to back.

So where did the line through Fussa Station come from? The answer lies in the direction I came from.