Fear of China appears to have combined with a phenomenon known as “base weakness” to quiet popular anger, despite another American service member being charged with sexual assault in Okinawa, which sparked anger among the local community and brought the island’s big and contentious US military appearance back in the spotlight.
As reported by the Japanese press, airman Brennon Washington, age 25, found a teenage girl in a park on the night of December 24, 2023, convinced her to get into his car and then drove back to his residence, where he raped her. The girl was under the age of 16 when it was raised from 13 to the age of consent in Japan.
Following the incident, a girl’s family member called the police. Washington was captured on security camera images. The US Air Force confirmed the identification and stated that he was not on duty at the time. On suspicion of nonconsensual sexual behavior and kidnapping, Washington was indicted on March 27.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry received a formal complaint to US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel the same day as the indictment. The Okinawa prefectural government did not learn about the incident until June 25 and the news media did not make a report about it.
The Liberal Democratic Party ( LDP ) candidate for prime minister Fumio Kishida won the majority of seats in the Okinawa prefectural assembly on June 16. A coalition of leftist parties supported Governor Denny Tamaki, whose career has been based on opposition to US military installations in Okinawa.
On June 23, Kishida was present at the ceremony held at the Peace Memorial Park in the city of Itoman, which was located at the southern end of the island where the fighting ended, to commemorate the 79th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa.
In his address, Kishida, who also represents Hiroshima in the Japanese Diet, said that the dreadful reality of the Battle of Okinawa must not be forgotten. He declared his desire to keep things calm. Kishida was born in Tokyo, but his family is from Hiroshima.
Governor Tamaki told the audience that the “people of Okinawa are deeply anxious due to the ongoing rapid expansion of the Self-Defense Forces ‘ deployment, in addition to the memories of the tragic Battle of Okinawa.” Protestors in the audience jeered Kishida, but did not disrupt the event.
Governor Tamaki filed a formal complaint with the US Air Force’s 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base on June 27. Brigadier General Nicholas Evans received the message from vice governor Takekuni Ikeda, asking for an apology and compensation.
The meeting lasted about 15 minutes and ended without Evans apologizing or explaining why it had taken so long to inform Okinawa prefectural officials, according to Japan’s left-leaning Asahi Shimbun.
According to Evans, the crime claim “does not reflect most of the US service members that work for the Japan-U.S. alliance,” according to the US military’s daily Stars and Stripes. It is regrettable that Okinawa’s citizens are concerned.
Washington has been released on bail while the trial is pending, but he is still housed at Kadena Air Base. On July 12 at Naha District Court, a hearing is scheduled. Naha is the capital of Okinawa Prefecture.
Governor Tamaki warned the public that “untiling this kind of crime will raise mistrust.” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, speaking in Tokyo, did not explain why Tamaki was not informed of the indictment, but did state that “incidents and accidents involving U.S. military personnel cause great concern to local residents and must not be allowed to happen.” We will continue to ask the US side to take steps to prevent these mishaps and accidents whenever possible.
The Japanese government has been making these requests for a very long time. In 1995, three US servicemen kidnapped and raped a 12- year- old girl in Okinawa. In 2016, there were two high- profile incidents. In the first, a US Marine Corps Camp Schwab seaman sexually assaulted a Japanese woman at a hotel in Naha.
A former Marine who worked as a civilian employee at Kadena Air Base in the second incident raped and murdered a 20-year-old Japanese woman who had gone for a walk. She was then stabbed in the head, choked, and dumping her body in the bushes where it was later discovered severely decomposed. Lieutenant General Lawrence Nicholson, commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, visited the prefecture’s then- Governor Onaga Takeshi to express his “deepest regret and remorse at the incident”. The accused, Kenneth Franklin Gadson, was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor in 2017.
The local Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper recalled the 1955 rape-murder of a 6-year-old Japanese girl by an American soldier and wrote,” The U.S. and Japanese governments have a heavy responsibility for not being able to prevent these recurring incidents.”
According to Stars and Stripes,” the reality that one cannot safely go for a walk in a private community even 72 years since the Battle of Okinawa” contributed to the crime.
Suzuyo Takazato, a founder of Okinawan Women Against Military Violence, notes that statistics show about 120 rapes committed by US military personnel in Okinawa since 1972, but since most rapes are not reported, that is just” the tip of an iceberg”.
In 1972, Okinawa reverted from US military occupation to Japanese rule. No official documents were kept prior to that time, but a booklet titled” Postwar U.S. Military Crimes Against Women in Okinawa,” compiled from newspaper reports and other local sources, lists about 350 sex crimes committed by US troops since 1945.
More than half of the 54, 000 US military personnel in Japan – about 30, 000, of whom 18, 000 are Marines – are stationed in Okinawa, which has a population of less than 1.5 million and accounts for only 0.6 % of Japan’s total land area. The Okinawa Times stated in 2017 that” The fundamental issue is that [ US ground forces are too concentrated on Okinawa” in accordance with a widely accepted statement.
If the details of the most recent kidnapping and rape incident had been made known before the election for the Okinawa prefectural assembly, there is no way to know how the voters would have felt. Before the election, each side held 24 seats. The pro-base faction currently held by the LDP is 27; the anti-base forces of Governor Tamaki are 20; and one is held by an independent.
How the assembly members will vote now that the incident has become a major international event is also uncertain, but public opinion appears to be shifting from an idealistic pacifism that seeks to remove US bases to one that recognizes the dangers posed by China’s assertiveness and the disputes over Taiwan, Taiwan, and the South China Sea.
What might be called base fatigue has also been a result of Tamaki’s long campaign to stop the US Marine Corps ‘ Futenma Air Station from moving to a new location in Henoko, which was constructed in a coastal landfill. Tamaki, an IT engineer who voted for change, claimed that the base issue and other things are not being done are what a person in Naha is too preoccupied with. Those other things include child- care, healthcare and job creation. Perhaps even worse for Tamaki, voter turnout was only 45.3 percent, the lowest ever.
The pace of history is continuing. The US-Japanese military alliance will not be brought on trial, but Benjamin Washington will have a hearing in court.
The Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper’s editor stated to the Voice of America last year that “young people believe that there is nothing we can do about the US military bases, since they already exist, and that they are also necessary for the defense of Japan.”
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