Japan lodges protest to U.S. embassy over death of Okinawa woman

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida late Thursday lodged a protest to U.S. embassy in Tokyo on an ex-U.S. Marine's arrest over the death of an Okinawa woman, calling that the case "regrettable."

Local police arrested 32-year-old Kenneth Franklin Shinzato after questioning him over the missing of the 20-year-old Okinawan Rina Shimabukuro, whose body was found later the day covered by weed at a location provided by the American, believed to be a former U.S. serviceman.

Local reports said Shimabukuro went missing on April 28 after going for a walk, with the official filing of her disappearance being made the following day to the police.

The police said suspicions were raised as she left home without her car or wallet.

The suspect, who works for U.S. military and lives off the U.S. Kaneda airbase, allowed the police to search his car after being questioned, of his own volition.

Local reports cited investigation source that DNA matches Shimabukuro's was found in the car.

The latest case follows a U.S. Navy sailor being arrested in March after raping a woman in a hotel in Naha City, the capital of Okinawa.

The sailor, 24-year-old Justin Castellanos, was based at the U.S. Marines' Camp Schwab in the northern part of the island.

Okinawa hosts some 75 percent of U.S. bases in Japan, yet the tiny sub-tropical island accounts for less than 1 percent of the county's total land mass, with local citizens becoming increasingly irate at their base-hosting burdens and the central government's ongoing pandering to the U.S. requests, amid rising instances of crime, noise and pollution connected to the bases.

In 1995, a 12-year-old schoolgirl was raped by three U.S. soldiers and the crime triggered large scale protests against U.S. bases in the prefecture. Endit