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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://theintercept.com/2021/10/03/okinawa-sexual-crimes-us-military/">theintercept.com</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">NCIS Case Files Reveal Undisclosed U.S. Military Sex Crimes in Okinawa</h1>
<div class="gmail-PostByline-names"><a class="gmail-PostByline-link" rel="author" href="https://theintercept.com/staff/jon-mitchell/"><span>Jon Mitchell</span></a><span></span> - Oc<span class="gmail-PostByline-date"><span>tober 3 2021</span></span>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><p><em>Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.</em></p>
<p><u>One evening in</u> March 2017, a U.S. sailor walked through the
parking lot of a shopping mall in Kitanakagusuku Village, Okinawa,
Japan, exposing himself to female customers. The area was crowded with
cars and pedestrians, and for half an hour, the 23-year-old American
masturbated in front of women and approached drivers stopped at traffic
lights.</p>
<p>One witness reported what was happening to the mall’s security
office. Using closed-circuit TV cameras, the guards located the
suspect — still masturbating — and contacted the local police
department. But before the officers arrived, the man got into his car
and left the scene.</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>Witnesses told police the sailor ought to be severely punished. That didn’t happen.</p></blockquote><div><p>It
was easy for police to confirm that the suspect was a U.S. service
member — his car’s license plate was stamped with the letter “Y,” a
registration assigned to military members, their dependents, and
contractors in Japan, more than 55,000 of whom live in Okinawa. The
police determined that the suspect was a petty officer second
class sailor stationed on a Navy installation within the U.S. Air
Force’s Kadena Air Base, the largest U.S. facility in the Asia-Pacific
region. Under questioning by police and Naval Criminal Investigative
Service, or NCIS, agents, the sailor confessed to the offense. He also
admitted to masturbating inside his car at the same mall and elsewhere
on four previous occasions.</p>
<p>Witnesses told police that the incident had left them disturbed. One
woman explained how the sailor had followed her while he was
masturbating; she had felt “extremely sickened” and feared that he would
assault someone. Describing the American’s actions as “hideous,” one of
the security guards said he would not be able to forget what had
happened. Both witnesses told police the sailor ought to be severely
punished.</p>
<p>That didn’t happen.</p>
<p>Japanese prosecutors, who can request jurisdiction when U.S. service
members commit offenses while off-duty, ceded control of the case to the
military; by the time the Navy convened a court-martial, nine months
had passed since the incident. The sailor pleaded guilty to indecent
exposure and was sentenced to 90 days confinement and a bad conduct
discharge. But due to a pretrial agreement, he received only 30 days and
was permitted to leave the military under an administrative separation.
He was not recorded on a sexual offender registry.</p>
<p><u>Despite the severity</u> of the offense, and the lax
punishment, the sailor’s crime was not made public. It required a series
of Freedom of Information Act requests, which I filed with the NCIS in
2018 and 2019 and wrote about for the Okinawa Times in August. (This is
the first publication of the FOIA results in English.) According to the
NCIS case files, between 2017 and 2019 there were at least seven other
investigations into U.S. military personnel for sexual offenses against
Japanese women in Okinawa — and none were made public. Perpetrators had
not been punished under Japanese law nor had their cases appeared in the
annual reports produced by the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and
Response Office for the U.S. Congress. (The Intercept has revealed
similar gaps in reporting <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/07/06/military-africa-sexual-assault/">sexual assaults committed by U.S. troops in Africa.</a>)</p>
<p>At the time of publication, United States Forces Japan had not
provided comment on the apparent omission of these cases from the SAPRO
reports.</p></div><div><p>It is a pattern familiar to
Suzuyo Takazato, co-chair of the feminist group Okinawa Women Act
Against Military Violence and chair of the Rape Emergency Intervention
Counseling Center Okinawa.</p>
<p>“Both the U.S. and Japanese governments want to minimize people’s
awareness of the number of crimes committed by U.S. service members on
Okinawa. They think if this information becomes public, it will harm
U.S.-Japan relations. They believe the U.S.-Japan relationship should
take priority over the rights of Okinawans,” she said.</p>
<p>Today, Okinawa prefecture is the reluctant host to 31 U.S. military
bases, which occupy approximately 15 percent of the main island.
Although the prefecture consists of less than 1 percent of Japan’s total
land mass, it has 70 percent of the country’s U.S. facilities; 11 of
the bases in Okinawa belong to the U.S. Marine Corps. Washington and
Tokyo insist that these troops are needed to maintain stability in the
region, but a majority of Okinawans have repeatedly expressed resentment
toward the disproportionate burden placed on their prefecture. In <a href="https://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/research/yoron/pdf/20170801_7.pdf">a 2017 survey</a>
of residents conducted by Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, 26 percent
of respondents called for all U.S. bases to be removed from their
island, and another 51 percent wanted them to be reduced to a level
equivalent to mainland Japan. Packing so many military facilities onto
Okinawa concentrates many of the problems there: <a href="https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14422895">aircraft accidents</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/11/07/military-pfas-pollution-japan/">environmental contamination</a>, and <a href="https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13860131">crime</a>, particularly against women.</p>
<p>For more than 25 years, Takazato and the members of Okinawa Women Act
Against Military Violence have compiled an ongoing chronology of U.S.
military rapes of Okinawan women. Combing through municipal records and
interviewing victims, they have uncovered how the earliest attacks
started soon after the U.S. invasion of Okinawa in 1945 and have
continued unabated to the present day. The total number of victims runs
into the hundreds, but Takazato says many cases remain hidden.</p>
<p>In mainland Japan and overseas, people are aware of only a few of
these crimes, notably the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S.
service members in 1995 and the rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman
by a former Marine in 2016. Both events triggered mass protests on the
island, attended by tens of thousands of Okinawans demanding the
revision of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA.</p></div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/GettyImages-98165053.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="People from all over Okinawa raise their arms and shout slogans during a massive rally 21 October 1995 in Ginowan to protest the alleged rape of a 12-year-old Japanese school girl by three US soldiers in Okinawa. About 10,000 people, including union members, demanded withdrawal of the US forces and an amendment of the Security Treaty between USA and Japan. This incident led to island-wide demonstrations and an agreement to close several US bases in Okinawa. (Photo credit should read TORU YAMANAKA/AFP via Getty Images)" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="426" height="280"></p><p class="gmail-caption">Okinawans
protest the rape of a 12-year-old Japanese girl by three U.S. soldiers
during a massive rally on Oct. 21, 1995, in Ginowan, Okinawa, Japan.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Photo: Toru Yamanaka/AFP via Getty Images</p></div><div><p>Established
in 1960, SOFA outlines the rights and responsibilities of U.S. troops
and military-related civilians living in Japan, including how they ought
to be tried when they break local laws. SOFA gives the military
jurisdiction over service members who commit offenses while in the
performance of official duty, and it only requires suspects to be handed
over to Japanese authorities after charges have been filed. Such
loopholes have allowed the military to unilaterally determine what
constitutes “on duty,” and they have impeded Japanese police’s ability
to interview suspects.</p>
<p>Hiroshi Fukurai, a sociology professor at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, explains that the roots of SOFA lie in the wave
of U.S. colonization of islands such as Cuba, Hawaii, and the
Philippines in the late 19th century: “The U.S. wanted to protect its
citizens from what it saw as ‘odd’ local laws, so it created
extraterritorial jurisdiction whereby military members and other
Americans were exempt from punishment. Today’s Japan-U.S. SOFA is based
on the same principle of immunity — in effect, SOFA protects U.S. troops
and military-related personnel from being prosecuted under Japanese
law.”</p></div><div><p>In response to public fury
following the crimes in 1995 and 2016, the U.S. and Japan promised to
make improvements to SOFA, but these changes turned out to be merely
cosmetic. The U.S. <a href="https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/usa/sfa/rem_keiji_01.html">said</a>
it would give “sympathetic consideration” when Japan requested the
pre-indictment handover of service members suspected of heinous crimes
(interpreted as rape or murder) and reduced the categories of
contractors protected by SOFA.</p>
<p>Although SOFA applies throughout Japan, Okinawa, which hosts the bulk
of the U.S. presence, suffers the most, explains Takazato, and it is
women who repeatedly become the victims of these failures in military
and Japanese justice.</p>
<p>Takazato’s assertion is supported by the NCIS Okinawa case files
released via FOIA. The reports detail at least eight instances in which
Japanese women were the victims of military sexual offenses between 2017
and 2019. Six of the suspects were Marines; one was a military
contractor affiliated with the Marine Corps; and one, the perpetrator of
the shopping mall exposure, was a sailor. Not only do these cases
reveal U.S. service members’ continuing sexual violence against women in
Okinawa, but they also highlight how the U.S. military and Japanese
civilian judicial systems fail to provide justice for women sexually
attacked by service members on the island.</p></div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/USMC-Okinawa-map.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1000&h=1182" alt="USMC-Okinawa-map" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="360" height="426"></p><p class="gmail-caption">A map of Okinawa and U.S. military camps.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Map: U.S. Marine Corps via FOIA</p></div><div><p><u>In August 2017,</u>
just a year after the 2016 rape and murder prompted mass outcry, a
Marine seized a woman’s mobile phone to lure her into an alleyway. He
raped her, then told her to wash up using water from a puddle; she later
explained to police that she thought she was going to be murdered. The
victim filed a formal complaint with Okinawa police, and according to
the NCIS case file, she was adamant that charges would be pressed.
Nevertheless, when the case was referred to the Japanese prosecutor’s
office, it declined to proceed.</p>
<p>The NCIS took control of the case and declined to hold the suspect in
confinement during its investigation. Seven months after the alleged
attack, the victim withdrew from participation.</p>
<p>The suspect, meanwhile, committed another sexual assault — this time
against a female Marine in January 2018. He was tried at a general
court-martial and found guilty of this offense and others, including
attempted drug distribution, and received a three-year prison sentence
and a dishonorable discharge. But he was not punished for the rape of
the civilian.</p>
<p>In October 2017, a woman contacted the NCIS to file a complaint
against a Marine who had choked and raped her. The base commander
declined prosecution on the grounds that there was insufficient
evidence. The case file does not mention whether Japanese police were
informed of the incident.</p>
<p>In the spring of 2018, the NCIS investigated two on-base incidents.
In February, a Marine touched a woman’s buttocks at a club on Camp
Hansen. The incident was reported to the military police, but the victim
told Okinawa police she did not wish to participate in an
investigation; the base commander decided not to punish the suspect. The
following month, a Marine sexually assaulted a woman during a concert
at Camp Schwab. The NCIS identified the suspect, but he denied the
accusations. Japanese prosecutors declined to prosecute, and the U.S.
military decided not to take action either.</p>
<p>Autumn of 2018 saw two more assaults. In October, at an off-base
establishment, a Marine pulled down a woman’s shirt to expose her
breasts. The woman declined to participate in the investigation by the
NCIS or Japanese police. As a result, the military charged the Marine
with disobeying orders as well as drunk and disorderly conduct. Instead
of facing a court-martial, he was allowed to leave the military without
receiving any punishment. In November, a woman reported that she had
been raped by a Marine at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. Japanese
prosecutors ceded jurisdiction to the military, and following the NCIS
investigation, the Marine received a warning for disorderly conduct,
drunkenness, and indecent conduct — but he was permitted to stay in the
military.</p></div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/AP0611300914.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="Soldiers walk for an activation ceremony for the 1-1 Air Defense Artillery Battalion (PAC-3) at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, southern Japan, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006. The stationing of the 1-1 ADA will enhance the security of Japan by providing a reliable defense asset and deterrent in the region. The deployment of PAC-3 is part of efforts to bolster Japan's missile defense capabilities. Seen in the background are PAC-2 missiles used for training. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="426" height="310"></p><p class="gmail-caption">Soldiers walk for an activation ceremony at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, on Nov. 30, 2006.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Shizuo Kambayashi/AP</p></div><div><p><u>“When you look</u>
at these cases from an outsider’s perspective, it might seem the
military justice system is failing — but from a military viewpoint,
these cases show SOFA is working just fine,” said Fukurai. “For the
military, this is what SOFA and extraterritoriality are designed to do
— it is a system designed to protect American service members who break
the law in Japan from being punished under Japanese law.”</p>
<p>Takazato said she was angered by the NCIS reports — but not
surprised. “Okinawa is a paradise for U.S. service members wanting to
sexually assault women. They have the mentality that they won’t be
punished here, and they think Okinawan women don’t report sexual
assaults,” she said.</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>“When
you look at these cases from an outsider’s perspective, it might seem
the military justice system is failing — but from a military viewpoint,
these cases show SOFA is working just fine.”</p></blockquote><div><p>Takazato
asserts that some of the problem lies with the Japanese judicial
system, which frequently blames the victims of sexual assaults. Takazato
has accompanied victims of U.S. military violence to Japanese police
stations where she saw for herself how officers rebuke women for where
they had been or what clothes they had worn.</p>
<p>“When it comes to sexual crimes, this victim-blaming extends
throughout the Japanese justice system. But it is even worse for victims
of the U.S. military. Because the authorities prioritize Japan-U.S.
relations over the rights of Okinawans, prosecutors decline cases where
the accused is a U.S. service member,” said Takazato.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://english.ryukyushimpo.jp/2017/12/14/28195/">research</a>
by the Okinawan newspaper the Ryukyu Shimpo, Japanese prosecutors were
significantly more reluctant to indict U.S. service members,
contractors, and their dependents than members of the Japanese general
public. Between 2007 and 2016, only 18 percent of military-affiliated
suspects were indicted versus 41 percent of the public accused of
crimes. The proportion of military suspects prosecuted dropped to 15
percent in 2020, <a href="https://www.okinawatimes.co.jp/articles/-/786870">according to the nongovernmental organization</a> Japan Peace Committee.</p>
<p>One of the NCIS reports obtained via FOIA exemplifies how the U.S. military can shut down Japanese police investigations.</p>
<p>In April 2015, witnesses in Kin town reported a man wearing a Marine
Corps uniform masturbating in a car near schools on two different days.
Japanese police identified the owner of the vehicle as a Marine
sergeant. Interviewed by Okinawa police and NCIS agents, he denied any
involvement and attempted to provide an alibi — but it did not check
out.</p>
<p>When Okinawa police tried to interview the sergeant again, he invoked
his right to counsel, and then the Marine Corps Provost Marshal’s
Office advised the police that the suspect would not answer any more of
their questions. At this point, according to the NCIS report, Okinawa
police decided to drop the case, and the suspect’s command also decided
not to take any further action.</p>
<p>According to Marine Corps court-martial summaries, sex crimes
targeting children are endemic among the Marines in Okinawa. Between
January 2015 and December 2020, 69 Marines were convicted in Okinawa for
sexual offenses involving minors, including possession and distribution
of child sexual abuse images and actual or attempted sexual assault of a
child. All of those found guilty received military prison sentences and
bad conduct or dishonorable discharges. It is unclear how many of the
cases involved Okinawan children or how many were, for example, military
dependents.</p>
<p>Neither the U.S. Air Force nor the Army makes their own court-martial
summaries readily accessible to the public, so it is difficult to
ascertain the prevalence of sexual assault of children by members of the
Air Force and soldiers in Okinawa. The Intercept has requested this
data from United States Forces Japan — but it has not yet been provided.</p>
<p><u>Consistently, the U.S.</u> military attempts to play down the levels of offenses committed by its service members in Okinawa. The <a href="https://www.okinawa.marines.mil/Portals/190/Docs/Ethos.pdf">Okinawa Marines’ homepage</a>
states that most of them are “law abiding, honorable and respectful”
and claims: “According to the Okinawa Prefectural Police (OPP) the U.S.
SOFA per capita crime rate is less than half the crime rate in Okinawa.”</p></div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/09/document1.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1000&h=1295" alt="document1" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="329" height="426"></p><p class="gmail-caption">Marine Corps training slides, obtained via FOIA.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Document: FOIA</p></div><div><p><a href="https://apjjf.org/2016/13/Mitchell.html">Orientation lectures</a>,
given to new Marines arriving on the island, state, “U.S. crime is
limited to 1% of all crimes on Okinawa (compared to 4% of the
population).” Controversially, the lectures attribute military crimes to
“gaijin [foreigner] power.” One lecture from February 2014, which I
obtained via FOIA in 2016, states, “We get carried-away with our sudden
‘gaijin power’ (Charisma man effect) and tend to go over-board by doing
things that is [sic] not acceptable to the majority in society.”</p>
<p>Okinawa is <a href="https://www.okinawatimes.co.jp/articles/-/300288">the poorest prefecture in Japan</a> —
it has the country’s highest unemployment rate, and 30 percent of
Okinawan children live below the poverty line. Many Okinawan women work
in the service industry, often in relatively unstable jobs. Hotel, bar,
and restaurant staff frequently bear the brunt of military violence.</p>
<p>In January 2019, for example, a maid at a hotel within Kadena Air
Base reported that an American civilian employee of Marine Corps
Community Services had been masturbating while she cleaned his room. He
had stood up, exposed his penis, and then, with what appeared to be
semen on his fingers, asked her for a tissue. The NCIS tried to locate
the suspect in Okinawa, but they could not find him because he had quit
his on-base job and checked out of the hotel earlier than scheduled. The
report makes no mention that Okinawa police were notified of the
American employee’s harassment of the maid, and the NCIS closed the case
without finding the suspect.</p>
<p>Takazato says the NCIS reports help fill in the picture of military
sexual violence on her island, and she plans to add them to her ongoing
chronology of crimes against women dating back to April 1945. The sexual
offenses against women in Okinawa detailed in the reports are, of
course, only a fraction of the actual tally of military crime on the
island. The reports do not include investigations into offenses
committed by soldiers and members of the U.S. Air Force nor do they take
into account the number of victims who do not report their attacks.</p>
<p>But in the Marines’ perspective, as detailed in the orientation
talks, Okinawans have “double standards,” and their dissatisfaction
toward the U.S. military presence is “more emotional than logical.”
After I <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/05/25/issues/u-s-marines-briefing-links-crimes-gaijin-power-okinawans-pays-complain/">reported on the lectures </a>in 2016, there was widespread anger in the prefecture; the Marine Corps said <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/28/national/u-s-review-okinawa-training-procedures/">it would review its contents</a>.</p>
<p>A similar uproar occurred in 1995 when, commenting on the rape of the
12-year-old girl by three service members, Adm. Richard C. Macke,
commander of the United States Pacific Command, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/18/world/admiral-has-to-quit-over-his-comments-on-okinawa-rape.html">said</a>
it would have cost less to visit a prostitute than hire the vehicle the
rapists had used to abduct the child. He was forced to resign.</p>
<p>The U.S. military’s claims that offenses committed by service members
are lower than the local population are flawed. They fail to note
Japanese prosecutors’ low indictment rate of military personnel, and
they are silent on offenses committed within the military, including
rape and sexual assault.</p>
<p>United States Forces Japan has not yet explained whether it stands by
such claims about its purported low crime rate nor has it provided more
recent data.</p>
<p>“It pays to complain,” state the Marine orientation lectures. “Anywhere offense can be taken it will be used.”</p></div></div></div></div>
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