Residents of Japan’s Okinawa Sunday elected a governor who opposes plans to relocate a US military base within the island chain

Residents of Japan's Okinawa Sunday elected a governor who opposes plans to relocate a US military base within the island chain.
  
Voters in the southern prefecture chose Takeshi Onaga over the incumbent Hirokazu Nakaima, NHK, Jiji Press and Nippon Televison reported, citing their exit polls.
  
Onaga's apparent victory is a significant blow to the central government because the governor can veto the landfill work needed for a new base to be built.
  
In his first comments, the 64-year-old indicated he would do just that.
  
Any veto would leave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe having either to overrule locally-elected officials -- risking charges of authoritarianism -- or reverting to the cajoling and persuading of recent years, which would not be popular with Japan's close ally the United States.
  
It would also take some of the wind out of Abe's sails just days before he is expected to announce a snap general election.

Okinawa is home to more than half of the 47,000 US service personnel stationed in Japan, and strategically key to the US-Japan security alliance at a time of simmering tensions in East Asia.
  
But there is widespread local hostility to the military presence, with complaints over noise, the risk of accidents.
  
There have been plans for years to move the US Marines' Futenma Air Station from a crowded urban area to a sparsely populated coastal district elsewhere on Okinawa -- some 50 kilometres (30 miles) to the north of the current location.
  
But opponents like Onaga say Okinawa already hosts a disproportionate share of the US military presence in Japan, and the US base should be moved outside the islands altogether rather than within them.