Network to Close U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa, Japan

On September 4, 1995, 2 U.S. marines and a sailor kidnapped, duct-taped, beat, and raped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl “just for fun.” On September 29, 1995, the three U.S. servicemen were indicted and handed over to Japanese custody.

The rape precipitated a temporary crisis in the US-Japan Security Alliance and catalyzed participatory democracy in Okinawa, spurring previously politically inactive people, especially housewives and elders, to challenge U.S. military presence on their small island. Local activism led by the Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence resulted in the historic Oct. 22, 1995 mass demonstration against U.S. bases in Okinawa.

In November of the same year, Adm. Richard C. Macke, a four-star admiral and 35-year Navy veteran who was commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, resigned after making this comment at a press conference: “I think it was absolutely stupid, I’ve said several times. For the price they paid to rent the car, they could have had a girl.”

However both sexual assaults and prostitution are methods of subjugation, according to Suzuyo Takazato, director of Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, who stated in 1995: “Prostitution and rape are the military system’s outlets for pent up aggression and methods of maintaining control and discipline – the target being local community women.”

Despite the admiral’s resignation and expressions of remorse by the White House, rapes of Okinawan women by U.S. troops have continued: In 2001, an Air Force sergeant was arrested for publicly raping a 20-year-old Okinawan woman on the hood of a car. In 2003, military police handed over to Okinawan police a marine who broke a 19-year-old woman’s nose and raped her. In 2005, an Air Force sergeant molested a 10-year-old Okinawan girl on her way to Sunday school. He claimed to be innocent, but police found a photo of the girl’s naked body on his cell phone. These are just a few of the hundreds of reported sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers in Okinawa. Most military sexual assaults (and other crimes) go unreported.

This 1995 report from L.A. Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe graphically reminds us of the sexual violence and emotional trauma that U.S. bases have brought to Okinawa for almost seven decades.

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