Two US marines in Okinawa, Japan, are under investigation for alleged rapes, police said yesterday, the latest in a string of assault cases that have angered residents.
The US has about 54,000 military personnel stationed in Japan — mostly on the subtropical southern island of Okinawa, to the east of Taiwan.
“A US marine in his 20s is suspected of raping a Japanese woman at an American military base in March, and is also suspected of injuring another woman,” a local police official said.
Photo: AFP
The second marine, also in his 20s, is suspected of raping a Japanese woman at a US base in January, the official said.
Police have referred the two cases to prosecutors.
Washington will cooperate “fully” with Japanese authorities in the investigations, US Ambassador to Japan George Glass said.
“We deeply value the ties of trust and friendship we have built over many decades with our Japanese hosts, and I am committed to doing everything I can to prevent actions that may jeopardize these bonds,” he said in a statement.
On Friday last week, US service members joined Japanese officials and residents in Okinawa for a one-off joint nighttime patrol along a downtown street dotted with bars.
The patrol — the first such joint operation since 1973 — followed other sexual assault cases in Okinawa involving US service members.
A 21-year-old marine was charged with rape in June last year, just months after prosecutors charged a 25-year-old US soldier for allegedly assaulting a girl under the age of 16.
Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki called the latest cases “deplorable” and said authorities would urge the US military to prevent similar incidents, Japanese media reported.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi declined to comment on the cases at a regular briefing yesterday, but said crimes by US troops were “unacceptable.”
The alleged rape last month took place in a restroom, and the woman injured was trying to stop the assault on the other woman, Japanese media said, citing police sources.
Relations have long been fraught between Okinawans and the US bases.
Last year, 80 people connected to the US military were charged in Okinawa for various crimes, police said.
The 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US soldiers in Okinawa prompted a major backlash — with calls for a rethink of the 1960 pact allowing the US to station troops in Japan.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS