Spotlight: Gov't officials demand revision of archaic pact following murder of Okinawan woman by U.S. military worker

Following the murder of a 20-year-old local woman in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture, by a U.S. military-affiliated civilian, the prefectural government on Tuesday has amped up its demands for the U.S. to reduce its military footprint on the tiny island as anti-U.S. sentiment in the region continues to surge.

While investigations into the rape, strangulation and dumping of the body of 20-year-old Rina Shimabukuro in a forested area in Onna Village on the night of April 28 or in the early hours of the morning thereafter, 32-year-old Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, a former U.S. Marine and resident of Yonabaru Town in the southwestern prefecture, was arrested for the crime on May 19.

In the latest developments on the case, local investigating sources said that Shinzato used a suitcase to transport the corpse of his victim in his car and a stick had also been recovered that has also been implicated in the assault, leading to the young lady's death.

On Tuesday, Okinawa Deputy Gov. Mitsuo Ageda made it abundantly clear that officials and regular citizens in Okinawa had been deeply traumatized by the murder and that daily lives of the island's citizens had been adversely affected.

"In Okinawa, people cannot feel safe in their daily lives," Ageda was quoted as saying Tuesday in a meeting with both foreign and defense ministry officials in Tokyo. During the meeting, Ageda submitted a petition demanding drastic measures to address the safety of the islanders.

The petition, which represents the view of Okinawa's prefectural government, is demanding the scaling down of U.S. bases currently being hosted in the prefecture and is also calling for a whole scale review of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which stipulates how U.S. military personnel are dealt with in Japan and is widely seen to legally favor the U.S..

On Tuesday, Aiko Shimajiri, minister in charge of Okinawa affairs, firmly announced her intention to see a revision to the SOFA between the two sides, in the wake of the latest heinous crime committed by a U.S. military-linked individual against a local citizen.

Shimajiri was quoted as saying that the SOFA, as it stands, is raised every time a crime is committed by U.S. military-linked personnel, or in other incidents involving the U.S. military in Okinawa, and that as a legislator from the prefecture, she now sees it as time to review the aging pact.

Shimajiri said she is aware of the efforts the Foreign Ministry is making with the U.S. government, but she said the agreement needs to be changed, as it could stand in the way of having suspects being handed over to Japanese investigators in such heinous cases.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Japan's top government spokesperson, for his part, said the central government will continue to work toward improving the ways the agreement is applied.

But the latest incident involving the murder of an innocent young lady, has riled the people of Okinawa, who also feel the SOFA pact that was inked in 1960 and has never been revised since, no longer represents or can cater to the needs of the current climate of fear and abandonment of the central government felt by the people living on the island, which since WWII has doubled-up as a de facto hub for a multitude of U.S. military activities in the Pacific.

"Citizens in the city and the prefecture are deeply shocked and worried. Deep sorrow and strong anger are growing," an Uruma city assembly said in a statement issued Tuesday, reflecting a growing sense that the base-hosting burdens of ordinary citizens in Okinawa have far reached capacity and local communities, feeling threatened and unprotected, can no longer endure the ongoing potential threat of violence, sexual assault, pollution, noise and accidents, all associated with the U.S. bases' presence on the island.

The defense ministry here however, despite condemning the latest crime, seems to be toeing the U.S. line, much to the consternation of prefectural officials and locals, with Defense Minister Gen Nakatani saying Tuesday that, "Investigation on this case has been carried out rigorously based on Japan's right to investigate and jurisdiction under the status of forces agreement."

Nakatani also indicated that following his strong protest over the incident on a recent telephone conversation with U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Carter, while apologizing for the incident, said that the case should be investigated strictly under Japan's jurisdiction, intimating at some leeway from the archaic SOFA pact.

Nakatani added that the U.S. side would do its utmost to prevent incidents like this from occurring in the future, but such rhetoric has totally fallen on deaf ears, particularly those of the locals, who have been affected by such instances for decades.

In the latest case to roil the tiny sub-tropical island in Japan's south, Shinzato said he drove around for hours "looking for a woman to rape," as quoted by investigative sources in the region.

He said he then strangled, stabbed and raped Shimabukuro, before stuffing her dead body in a prepared suitcase and transporting it in his car before dumping it in a wooded area.

Shinzato, according to local media reports, also said he used a stick to initially attack the woman.

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.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, is planning to visit Okinawa to hold talks with Okinawa Gov. Onaga, possibly this week, government sources have said, and deliver an official apology from the U.S. for the latest incident to the people of Okinawa.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has also said he will raise the matter with visiting U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the two-day Group of Seven leaders' summit, to be held in Mie Prefecture, central Japan, from Thursday.

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 country'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.'s requests, amid rising instances of crime, noise and pollution connected to the bases.

Anti-U.S. sentiment has been steadily rising on the island, and spiked in 1995, when an elementary schoolgirl was savagely gang-raped by three U.S. servicemen. Endit