The airfield began as Oroku, an Imperial Japanese Navy field opened in 1933 on the low ground south-west of Naha. It was taken by American forces during the Battle of Okinawa, and a US air depot moved in on 16 August 1945, according to English Wikipedia. Under the US administration of Okinawa it became Naha Air Base, and from 1954 it was also the island’s civil airport.

For a quarter of a century Naha was an American fighter base. Wikipedia lists the 51st Fighter Group and the 16th Fighter Squadron with F-80s from 1947, the 4th Fighter (All-Weather) Squadron with P-61s and F-82s, and from 1 August 1954 the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, whose 16th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron flew F-86s and then F-102 Delta Daggers until 31 May 1971, when USAF control ended.

Okinawa returned to Japanese administration in 1972, and the JASDF followed the Americans onto the field. The sources disagree on the date the military airfield itself was handed over: the Naha Air Base article gives 1979, the Naha Airport article 1982. Both are Wikipedia; neither date was confirmed on an official page, so the dataset gives the JASDF era from 1972 without a handover date.

The first JASDF fighters on Okinawa were F-104J Starfighters; the last F-104J unit in the service, the 207th Squadron, disbanded at Naha in 1986, according to Japanese Wikipedia. The F-4EJ Phantoms of the 302nd Squadron had arrived from Chitose on 26 November 1985, and they held Okinawa’s alert for more than 23 years.

On 9 December 1987 those Phantoms made history. A Soviet Tu-16 bomber crossed into Japanese airspace over Okinawa, and the F-4EJs fired warning shots on two occasions, the first warning shots ever fired by the Self-Defense Forces, according to English Wikipedia’s account of the squadron.

On 13 March 2009 the 302nd swapped places with the F-15-equipped 204th Squadron from Hyakuri, giving Okinawa the Eagle. As Chinese activity grew, one squadron was no longer enough: in January 2016 the 304th Squadron came from Tsuiki and the two formed the 9th Air Wing. In July 2017 the regional command itself was upgraded, from the Southwestern Composite Air Division to the Southwestern Air Defense Force, according to the JASDF.

The Joint Staff publishes scramble figures by region, and the south-west has led them for a decade. In FY2025 the JASDF flew 595 scrambles, down from a peak of 1,168 in FY2016; the Southwestern Air Defense Force flew 348 of them, against 165 in the north, 46 in the west and 36 in the centre. About 61 per cent were against Chinese aircraft and 36 per cent against Russian ones. In April–June 2026 the total rose to 181, 106 of them from the south-west, and the Chinese share rose to about 77 per cent.

The islands behind those numbers are contested. On 13 December 2012 a Chinese government aircraft entered airspace over the Senkaku Islands, which Japan administers, the first such violation by a Chinese aircraft since records began in 1958; Japan scrambled eight F-15s and an early warning aircraft, according to English Wikipedia. Japan’s position is that no territorial dispute exists; the People’s Republic of China, which calls the islands Diaoyu, and the Republic of China on Taiwan, which calls them Tiaoyutai, both claim them.

The Joint Staff also records the incidents that have shaped the base’s work since. In December 2025 a Chinese carrier operated east of Okinawa for the first time and its J-15 fighters illuminated JASDF F-15s with their radar; that month Chinese and Russian bombers flew jointly from the East China Sea between Okinawa and Miyako to the Pacific. On 27 June 2026 Chinese H-6 and Russian Tu-95 bombers flew another long joint flight.

Naha is a civil-military airport, and it shows. The JASDF counts 13 Self-Defense Force units on the base, from all three services, and lists F-15s, T-4s, E-2C and E-2D early warning aircraft, UH-60J rescue helicopters, U-125A search aircraft and CH-47J helicopters. Around them run the airliners of one of Japan’s busiest domestic airports.

For decades the two shared a single runway. The second, 2,700 m long and 60 m wide, opened in March 2020, alongside the original 3,000 m strip. English Wikipedia records how tight the sharing could be: on 3 June 2015 an All Nippon Airways Boeing 737 aborted its take-off because a JASDF helicopter was crossing in front of it. Nobody was hurt.