US soldier in Japan charged with raping underage girl

OKINAWA CITY — A U.S. soldier has been charged with kidnapping and raping a teenage girl on Okinawa, the Japanese island chain that is home to the region’s largest U.S. military base.

The case is likely to further fuel the long-standing Japanese resistance to the US military presence – more than half of the 54,000 US soldiers stationed in Japan live on the islands.

Anger was also fuelled by cases of sexual assault. One of the most spectacular cases occurred in 1995, when a 12-year-old girl was raped by three US soldiers, sparking months of protests.

The latest allegation also involves a minor who is younger than 16, the age of consent in Japan.

The 25-year-old Air Force soldier is believed to have attacked them on December 24. His identity was established from surveillance camera footage after the girls’ family reported it, local media reported.

Charges were brought against him at the end of March and he has been in the custody of the Japanese authorities since then, government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Tuesday when he made the charges public.

“We will continue to urge the U.S. side to prevent such incidents at every opportunity,” Hayashi said, adding that U.S. authorities were fully cooperating with investigators.

He also said that the Japanese Foreign Ministry had filed a complaint with the US Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emmanuel. He added that the first hearing in the case was scheduled for July 12.

The case was “not only disturbing … but also an affront to the girl’s dignity” and had “generated a considerable degree of mistrust,” said Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki.

Local media reported that the soldier was off-duty when he allegedly approached the girl in a park and told her to get into his car so they could talk, then drove her to his house where he allegedly raped her.

Japan is home to one of the world’s largest American military forces outside the United States.

Around 30,000 American soldiers are stationed in Okinawa, where the United States has maintained military bases since its victory over Japan in World War II.

The bases are increasingly strategically important to Washington, as Okinawa’s proximity to Taiwan allows the US to respond quickly to any Chinese threat.

The strong American presence is reflected in the malls, shops and restaurants serving steaks, burgers, tacos and root bear floats throughout the island chain.

In cities like Ginowan, where there is a large US base called Futenma, it is not uncommon for locals to be awakened by the hum of Osprey engines or to see them flying over public housing.

Seven out of ten Okinawans consider the concentration of US bases on their islands to be “unfair,” according to an opinion poll conducted last year.

While protests against the bases are commonplace, there are growing signs among young people in Japan that they have to accept the US military presence, according to the same survey.

Nevertheless, accidents and crimes involving Japanese victims have long been a source of tension with the American presence.

In 2012, a U.S. Navy officer killed two Japanese citizens in a car accident during a trip to Mount Fuji.

After 1995, the next major protests occurred in 2017, when an employee of a US military base was convicted of the rape and murder of a 20-year-old local woman.

In 2013, two U.S. Marines were jailed for raping an Okinawan woman in her 20s. The case led to curfews for U.S. troops across Japan.

There have been efforts to move the US bases to less populated parts of Okinawa, but the locals want to remove them altogether.

But experts say Japan’s military alliance with the US is too strong to achieve this, and they say Tokyo needs Washington given the challenges it faces, from China’s growing claims to disputed waters and islands to North Korea’s missile tests. — BBC