Okinawan officials documented thousands of GI crimes and accidents over four decades

Evidence

Meanwhile, Okinawans have watched as military personnel continue to be involved in crimes and accidents on the island they are theoretically protecting. In the first sixteen years after the 1995 rape, there were reports of at least twenty-three more rapes and sexual assaults committed by U.S. military personnel in Okinawa. In 2000, for example, a drunk nineteen-year-old marine sneaked into an apartment and sexually assaulted a fourteen-year-old girl. In total, between 1972 (when Okinawa was returned to Japan) and 2011, the Okinawan prefectural government has documented 5,747 criminal cases involving GIs, including more than a thousand violent offenses. Over the same period, the prefecture documented 1,609 “incidents and accidents” ranging from speeding tickets to damage from military exercises, and more than a thousand aircraft-related accidents and forest fires. Between 1981 and 2011, the prefecture counted 2,764 traffic accidents, many related to drunk driving. The nongovernmental organization Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence has compiled a list of around 350 documented rapes, sexual assaults, and other crimes against women between 1945 and 2011. Since sexual assaults are especially prone to underreporting, there have likely been more crimes and accidents not included in the statistics. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 864

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Vine’s broader argument that host-population harm, not security benefit, is the empirical reality of overseas bases.
• SHARE: Send to anyone researching the sexual violence costs of the status-of-forces basing system.