October 18, 2026

It has been revealed that the assessed value of U.S. military bases in Japan exceeds 203. 4 billion dollars (approximately 31.94 trillion yen). Japan surpasses both Germany (ranked 2nd) and South Korea (ranked 3rd) in terms of U.S. military base area and military manpower. This once again underscores the fact that Japan is a forward “U.S. military base nation”.

Based on the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Akahata obtained a summary version of the U.S. Department of Defense’s “Base Structure Report” for 2026. The report was previously published on the Pentagon website but is currently unavailable to the public. Only the summary version was disclosed to Akahata, suggesting that transparency in the United States has significantly diminished under the Trump administration.

According to the report’s summary, the U.S. military maintains 563 bases overseas, excluding U.S. territories and its trust territories, and 105 of those bases are in Japan. While Germany has more bases (123), Japan has a larger total area of U.S. military bases. In Germany, the area occupied by U.S. military facilities decreased by about 17% from the previous year.

Furthermore, according to statistics from the DoD Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), as of March 2026, 54,891 of the 174,428 U.S. military servicemembers stationed overseas were in Japan. This accounts for 31.5% of the total, significantly exceeding 2nd-place Germany (37,009 personnel) and 3rd-place South Korea (23,372 personnel).

Despite the heavy burden of hosting U.S. military bases, the Japanese government is building a new U.S. military base in Henoko, Nago City, Okinawa. Can Japan truly claim to be a sovereign country?

Past related article:
> Value of US military assets in Japan totals ¥27.6 trillion, highest in the world [May 28, 2025]