Okinawans protest U.S. military

A March 23 rally in Okinawa, Japan, protested the continued presence of the U.S. military on the island, after the rape of a 14-year-old schoolgirl by a U.S. Marine. The protest cited a string of crimes involving U.S. service members, including the recent murder of a taxi driver in which a man from the U.S. Navy is being questioned.

According to Agence France-Presse and Xinhua, the protest was organized by local parents’ groups, lawyers, labor unions and women’s rights activists. (March 23) Despite driving rain and wind, about 6,000 people turned out to denounce the U.S. military—making it the largest demonstration against the U.S. military there since 1995, after U.S. service members gang raped a 12-year-old girl.

In the current case, the soldier was handed over from Japanese custody into the hands of U.S. military authorities. Their response was simply to impose a two-week, round-the-clock curfew on U.S. soldiers and relatives at the Okinawa base and two others in Japan. The survivor has dropped the charges after intense media coverage of the case—some of which blamed the survivor.

More than 40,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan; and more than half of those are located in Okinawa.

E-mail: ldowell@workers.org