Japan Lodges Protest Over Alleged Sexual Assault Cases by US Service Members in Okinawa

(CTN News) – Japan has protested at the US embassy in Tokyo over at least two alleged sexual assault instances involving American servicemen on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, which were recently made public.

On Friday, Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister Masataka Okano met with Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, to propose disciplinary and preventive steps in response to the two attacks that occurred within months of each other in December and May.

“Criminal cases and accidents by US military personnel cause great anxiety to local residents, and they should never occur in the first place,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.

Prosecutors in Naha, Okinawa’s capital, charged a 21-year-old US Marine Corps man with nonconsensual sex and assault in May, Hayashi said.

According to an Okinawa police spokeswoman, the woman was “bitten in the mouth” and needed two weeks to heal completely. According to media sources, she was also choked.

The story surfaced just days after it was revealed that a 25-year-old US airman on Okinawa had been charged in March with raping a teenage girl three months prior.

Brigadier General Nicholas Evans, commander of the 18th Wing at Okinawa’s Kadena Air Base, said on Thursday that he was “deeply concerned” by the claims’ “severity”. “I regret the anxiety this has caused,” he told me.

Impact on US-Japan Relations

He assured that the US military will fully cooperate with the investigation by local police and tribunals.

Both cases have sparked anger and heightened tensions among residents about US military deployments in the region. Okinawans have long complained about base-related accidents and criminality, and they are angry about the lack of transparency.

The situation involving the youngster reminds many Okinawans of the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US service members, which sparked widespread protests against the island’s substantial US soldier presence.

In 1996, Japan and the US agreed to close a vital US air station. However, the plan was delayed owing to protests at the relocation site on another part of the island.

A bilateral security agreement has placed over 50,000 US troops in Japan, roughly half of them stationed on Okinawa. As tensions with China rise, the island’s strategic importance to the Japan-US military alliance grows.