U.S. Naval Housing Annex Negishi, seen here on April 2, 2026, about 10 miles north of Yokosuka, Japan, was officially handed over to the Japanese government on June 30, 2026. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
The United States has returned a former U.S. Navy housing area in Yokohama to the Japanese government, one of the final steps in a $500 million initiative to restructure the Navy’s presence in Kanagawa prefecture.
Naval Housing Annex Negishi was officially returned on Tuesday, closing out nearly eight decades as home to U.S. Navy families beginning with its requisition by the U.S. military in 1947.
As many as 2,000 people lived in the annex across 400 homes but it has been vacant since its last residents moved out in 2015.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense plans to host a ceremony in September to commemorate the return alongside local government officials and U.S. representatives, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said during his news conference Tuesday, according to the Defense Ministry website.
Negishi is one of six properties — about 1,035 acres in the Yokohama area — that Washington agreed to return to Japanese control in 2004 in return for Japan building 700 housing units in at the Navy’s Ikego Hills Family Housing Area.
“This return – realized 79 years after the site was requisitioned in the immediate postwar period – marks a fresh start for urban development in the area,” Yokohama Mayor Takeharu Yamanaka said in a news release posted on city’s website on Tuesday.
An approximately 2.5-acre portion of Ikego is the only remaining site left to be returned under that agreement, according to the South Kanto Defense Bureau website.
“Regarding the remaining U.S. military facilities, we will continue to persistently urge the national government for early return of these facilities,” Yamanaka said.
U.S. Naval Housing Annex Negishi, seen here on April 2, 2026, about 10 miles north of Yokosuka, Japan, was once home to more than 2,000 U.S. Navy sailors and their famiiles. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
U.S. Naval Housing Annex Negishi, seen here on April 2, 2026, about 10 miles north of Yokosuka, Japan, was officially handed over to the Japanese government on June 30, 2026. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
This most recent handoff is also connected to the Facilities Adjustment Panel – Kanagawa program, a broader $500 million initiative between the U.S. Navy and the Japanese government.
In exchange for the return of Negishi, the Japanese government is helping the Navy build 13 facilities throughout Kanagawa – including a new food court and parking garages at Yokosuka Naval Base.
The city hopes to develop the 106-acre property into a community that’s focused on wellbeing and takes advantage of the area’s scenic views, Yamanaka said.
He also hopes to link that project with the preservation and utilization of Negishi Forest Park and the First-Class Grandstand – a historic structure built in 1929 at the site of the former Negishi Racecourse horse-racing facility – and revitalize the entire area, according to the news release.
Details of that development are still under discussion, Atsushi Adachihara, an official at Yokohama’s Urban Development Bureau, said by phone Wednesday.
