CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Some air exercises now conducted at Kadena Air Base, Misawa Air Base and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni are moving to six more remote Japan Self-Defense Force bases on the mainland.

Japan’s Defense Facilities Administration Agency announced earlier this week that 15 of the joint drills are scheduled to run this April through March 2008, Japan’s 2007 fiscal year. Aircraft from the U.S. bases will take part in the exercises with their Japanese counterparts in Chitose in Hokkaido, the Air Self-Defense Force base in Misawa, Hyakuri in Ibaragi, Komatsu in Ishikawa, Tsuiki in Fukuoka and Nyutabaru in Miyazaki.

Relocating flight training, including Kadena-based F-15s, to mainland SDF bases is part of a bilateral agreement signed in May in Washington to realign U.S. forces in Japan. The agreement states that bilateral training would start with one to five aircraft taking part in one- to seven-day exercises and eventually expand to six to 12 aircraft in eight- to 14-day exercises.

A major reason for dispersing the training throughout mainland Japan is to ease noise impact on Okinawans, said Munehide Taira, chief of Okinawa prefecture’s military affairs office.

Masaharu Noguni, mayor of Chatan, one of three communities surrounding Kadena Air Base, said as long as relocating the flight training “helps to reduce the jet noise that residents have suffered, I will welcome it. Those who are constantly exposed to the noise would be able to tell the change immediately.”

Noguni said he hopes more training will be moved to the mainland in future.

Japan has agreed to pay three-fourths of the cost of relocating the training, with the United States paying the rest. Japan’s Ministry of Defense has asked the Diet for about $3.13 million in its 2007 budget for costs related to the move.

Even before the fiscal 2007 training schedule begins, the first joint training outside Okinawa is to take place in March, the defense ministry announced last month, at a date and place yet to be announced.