Spotlight: Japan's Okinawa residents hold mass rally to protest U.S. military crimes, demand bases be removed from island

Tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets of Okinawa in Japan's southernmost Prefecture on Sunday to express their ongoing anger at the disproportionate presence of U.S. military personnel on the island and the crimes committed by them, in particular the brutal rape and murder of a local women by a base-linked worker recently.

The rally took place in a park in Naha, the capital city of Okinawa, and saw around 65,000 protestors united in calling for the withdrawal of the U.S. military on the island and the urgent review over an archaic agreement inked between the United States and Japan governing the handling of incidents caused by U.S. military personnel in Japan.

The protesters, the majority of whom were dressed in black in spite of the scorching heat to show their respects for the murdered women, holding placards and shouting slogans like "U.S. Military Out!" and "How many more crimes will we suffer?" as well as "Relocate the (U.S.) bases outside Okinawa," and chanting like "We want our land back!"

The rally, the biggest organized protest in Okinawa since three U.S. servicemen viciously raped an elementary schoolgirl in 1995, follows the alleged rape, murder and dumping of a 20-year-old local woman by Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, 32, a former U.S. Marine.

Shinzato stands accused of raping the deceased in a grassy area beside the road in Uruma in central Okinawa, as the young lady was walking home before stabbing her to death with a knife on April 28.

Initially, Shinzato told investigators he had struck the women multiple times from behind with a metal bar and stabbed her repeatedly. There were also reports that Shinzato also attempted to strangle his victim whom he'd been driving around to search for, for as long as 3 hours prior to the premeditated attack.

The accused has not been cooperating with local investigators and has remained silent regarding pertinent information to the murder, such as the location of the knife and his motive, although the metal bar has been retrieved from a water channel. Investigators have said that Shizato has remained silent during interrogations since May 20.

Anti-U.S. sentiment is reaching a fever pitch on the island where 75 percent of U.S. bases in Japan are located, with the subtropical island itself accounting for just 1 percent of Japan's total land mass, following the latest rape and murder.

This crime comes on the heels of a drink driving incident and another account of rape by a serviceperson in a hotel in Naha, as well as the brutal attack by a high ranking military official on a Japanese female student onboard a commercial flight to Japan, and the father of the murdered girl has been left devastated and an entire prefecture shocked and worried about their safety.

"Why did it have to be my daughter? Why did she have to be killed?" exclaimed the victim's father in an open letter he read aloud at the protest.

"So as not to have another victim, the people in the prefecture can unite and make it possible for all bases in Okinawa to be removed," the father of the murdered girl urged.

As for Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga, a staunch advocate of lessening the base-hosting burdens of the islanders, and in particularly blocking the central government's plans to relocate a controversial U.S. base within the prefecture, he expressed his deepest condemnation of the latest attack during the rally.

Describing the rape and murder of the young lady as "utterly unacceptable," Onaga reiterated his calls for a key agreement between Japan and the United States to be urgently reviewed and for the bases to be kicked out of the island for good.

"I hereby express my unflagging resolve to push for drastic review of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement and withdrawal of Marines from Okinawa," Onaga declared.

The Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was originally inked in Washington between the United States and Japan in 1960, and many politicians such as Onaga along with political watchers believe it does not work to effectively legislate treatment of U.S. servicepeople in Japan who commit crimes and doesn't reflect the growing instances and severity of such.

Under the current agreement, U.S forces' personnel can be granted a great deal of legal autonomy and while the Japanese court system has jurisdiction for most crimes committed by U.S. service members, if the accused was "acting in official duty," or if the victim was another American, the U.S. justice system is used, not Japan's, despite the location.

In some instances, under SOFA, the majority of U.S. military members are exempt from Japan's visa and passport laws and past offenders have dodged the Japanese legal system here by being transferred back to the United States before being charged. Another loophole that exists in the agreement is that unless an offender is arrested outside of a U.S. base by Japanese police or investigators, then the U.S. authorities are allowed to retain custody of that individual.

While calls for SOFA to be urgently revised are becoming more vociferous, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, despite being a proponent of relocating the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from a crowded district in Ginowan to a coastal region on the island that will see vast amounts of land reclaimed from the sea to build the mega-base, also seeking its review, the protesters on Sunday adopted their own resolution demanding that definitive measures to prevent further heinous crimes from occurring in the future are instituted.

"The anger and sadness of the people of Okinawa has reached its limit toward the repeated incidents and accidents involving U.S. military and nonmilitary personnel," the resolution said.

It also demanded an apology from both the Japanese and U.S. government to the people of Okinawa and in particular to the family of the murdered woman. The resolution also called for compensation to be made to the family of the victim.

"To protect the lives and human rights of the people in Okinawa, it is urgent that U.S. bases be significantly reduced and consolidated, and for Marines to withdraw from Okinawa," the resolution said, adding that plans to relocate the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma should also be scrapped.

The resolution also stated that previous measures to curtail acts of crime or enforce discipline had failed miserably and that the only way to effectively prevent crime against locals from U.S. servicepeople going forward is to remove the U.S. bases from Okinawa island entirely.

All prefectural and local assemblies in Okinawa have adopted resolutions against the latest murder and the prefectural assembly is now dominated by politicians opposed to the Futenma base relocation, which, along with growing indignation from the locals, adds gravitas and political momentum to Onaga's moves to block the relocation and make further moves in the future to see U.S. bases removed from Okinawa entirely. Enditem