The Okinawa Problem

The Governor of Okinawa Denny Tamaki will be in the U.S. the week of September 8th. He will be speaking publicly at in Washington, DC at the Hudson Institute on the 9th and George Washington University's Sigur Center on the 11th and in New York City at Columbia University on the 12th.

Okinawans must not be overlooked in new US–Japan counter-crime forum 

By Alexis Dudden, Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore, and APP Member.

First Published in the East Asian Forum, 6 September 2024.

On 22 July 2024, US Forces Japan Commander Lieutenant General Ricky Rupp announced the creation of a new joint US–Japan forum to address the endemic issue of crimes committed off base by US military personnel stationed in Okinawa — particularly sex crimes.

How Rupp’s forum will differ from the Cooperative Working Team established in October 2000 to address similar concerns is not clear. The Cooperative Working Team met 27 times until petering out in April 2017. It brought together representatives from the US military and government, Japanese foreign and defence ministries, the Okinawan prefectural government and police, as well as members of the prefecture’s chambers of commerce and bar association. Since its dissolution, active-duty US servicemen in Okinawa have committed several well-documented rapes, abductions and assaults — including against children.

The task force must acknowledge Okinawan elected officials’ right to immediate and accurate information about crimes US soldiers commit. This fundamental step does not require changing existing protocols. Instead, it requires that the US government, US military and the Japanese central government adhere to procedures established in the 1997 US–Japan Joint Committee Agreement. This document augmented Okinawans’ rights with regard to Article XVII of the Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Japan, which concerns jurisdiction over crimes committed on Japanese territory.

Notably indiscernible on the Japanese Foreign Ministry website, the Okinawan Prefectural Government wants more publicity for the Agreement’s ‘Notification Channel Details for Okinawa-related Issues’. According to protocol, in the aftermath of a crime committed by a US service member or civilian attached to the US military, the commander responsible must notify the duty officer at command headquarters and the Naha Defence Facilities Administration Bureau.

The US side then moves up through military and diplomatic chains of command to the US Embassy in Tokyo, while the Japanese side moves from the Naha-based agency — Okinawa’s capital city — and simultaneously notifies the Okinawan prefectural government, Defence Administration Agency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Okinawa Office, who then convey information to the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo.

This did not happen during the first half of 2024, leading Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki to emphasise during his press conference on 7 August at Tokyo’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan that he cannot be sure how many crimes he and previous Okinawan prefectural officials have never even learned about.

Tamaki accused the Japanese central government of ignoring his right to information about these crimes as Okinawa’s highest elected official. Referencing the 24 December 2023 abduction and rape of an Okinawan minor as well as the 26 May 2024 sexual assault of an Okinawan woman, Tamaki gave a full explanation of the 1997 Notification Channel Details and the Japanese government’s wilful failure to abide by them.

The repetitious nature of the crimes against Okinawan women and girls, and the US and Japanese government’s botched response to them — specifically the failure to notify the Okinawan prefectural government about crimes against their citizens — highlights the need for Commander Rupp’s forum to do something different from the prior Working Team. Reforms are urgent, with a third instance of sexual assault reported on 6 September 2024.

Speculation continues concerning Tokyo’s rationale for withholding information from the Governor. The central government may have feared that Okinawans would protest against the dominant presence of the US military, as they did in 1995 following three US servicemen’s abduction and gang rape of an elementary schoolgirl.

Such protests could have adversely affected the Okinawa elections held on 16 June 2024. Tokyo’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party wanted victory for the Governor’s opponents in order to resume construction on the unpopular new US base at Henoko, that Tamaki and his supporters blocked. Tamaki’s opponents won the election, and Tokyo ordered construction of the base to recommence despite ongoing local protests.

During the press conference Tamaki also underscored the challenge of overcoming the central government’s perennial disdain for Okinawans’ place in structural matters involving the US–Japan Alliance, despite the centrality of the territory and its people to this calculus. Taking umbrage with Tokyo’s use of ‘privacy’ as justification for not sharing information, Tamaki reiterated his 10 July 2024 Letter of Protest to Japanese Prime Minister Kishida and requested ‘that all crimes, incidents, and accidents involving US military service members and related personnel be reported, without fail, to the prefectural government’.

In September, Governor Tamaki will visit Washington to drive home his concerns to members of the US Congress and related bureaucracies. The governor will explain the disproportionate burden he and his constituents bear vis a vis US bases in Japan under the United States’ broader ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’. Noticeably, this policy emphasises a ‘rules-based order’. For these words to have any meaning at all, the Japanese government and the United States government and military must include Okinawans as equals.