A Japanese F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter arrives at Nyutabaru Air Base in the island of Kyushu, Aug. 7, 2025. (Japan Air Self-Defense Force)
A town in southern Japan will pay its residents about $500 over four years to help offset noise from the Japan Air Self-Defense Force’s new F-35B fighters at a nearby air base.
Shintomi — a town in Miyazaki prefecture on the island of Kyushu — plans to pay each resident about $126 annually beginning in fiscal 2026, which starts April 1, a spokesman for the town’s Base Affairs Division said by phone Wednesday.
The town has about 15,570 residents, according to its website.
“Citizens can use the money for what they want, but we were thinking that it would be good if they can use it for soundproofing goods like curtains or headphones,” the spokesman said.
Japan plans to deploy 42 F-35B Lightning IIs to Nyutabaru Air Base, about two miles from the center of Shintomi, as part of efforts to strengthen defenses along the Nansei Islands, a chain that stretches from Kyushu toward Taiwan.
The first three short-takeoff, vertical-landing aircraft arrived at the base on Aug. 7, a spokesman for the Kyushu Defense Bureau said by phone Monday. Two more arrived on Oct. 28 and three additional aircraft arrived on Feb. 12. Four more are expected in fiscal 2026.
The payments will come from the town budget and are intended to help residents cope with noise from vertical-landing training through fiscal 2029, the town spokesman said.
Those landings can produce noise of up to 110 decibels, roughly equivalent to a chainsaw or a car horn at close range.
Some Japanese government officials must speak to the press on condition of anonymity.
Japan had planned to train F-35 pilots on Mageshima, a small island in Kagoshima prefecture southwest of Nyutabaru, but completion of the base there has been delayed until 2030, according to the Ministry of Defense.
Japan announced in 2018 that it would acquire the F-35B and later added 63 F-35A aircraft — capable of conventional takeoffs and landings — in a package worth about $23 billion. It has also modified two helicopter carriers, the JS Izumo and JS Kaga, to operate the aircraft.
Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, north of Nyutabaru, hosts two permanently based F-35B squadrons. Two additional squadrons were temporarily deployed there last year.
