Suspect arrested in Japan

Action comes after death threat to Caroline Kennedy

TOKYO — Japanese police arrested a resident of Okinawa over death threats against U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, as a nearly two-decade row over the expansion of an American military base rumbles on.

The 52-year-old man used a public phone in Naha, the capital of the southern Japanese island, to make anonymous calls in English and threatened to blow up the embassy building in Tokyo, the Jiji news agency reported. The U.S. State Department welcomed the arrest as a “positive step.”

The threat comes after the U.S. envoy to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was slashed in the face before a speech in Seoul earlier this month, highlighting the risks faced by diplomats globally. It was accompanied by a threat to blow up the U.S. Marine base in Okinawa, where expansion plans are being protested by local residents, who say they bear an unfair share of the burden of the American military presence in Japan.

“We take any threats to U.S. diplomats and U.S. diplomatic facilities very seriously,” Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, told reporters in Washington. “We’ve been working with the Japanese government on these threats since prior to Ambassador Lippert’s attack.”

Protests have been flaring at the Okinawan marine base since the resumption of work to reclaim land to build new runways at the facility, meant to replace Futenma Air Station in a crowded city on the island.