Japan's Okinawa residents hold mass rally to protest US military crimes

Anti-US sentiment is reaching a fever pitch on the island where 75 percent of US bases in Japan are located, with the subtropical island itself accounting for just 1 percent of Japan's total land mass, following the latest rape and murder.

This crime comes on the heels of a drink driving incident and another account of rape by a serviceperson in a hotel in Naha, as well as the brutal attack by a high ranking military official on a Japanese female student onboard a commercial flight to Japan, and the father of the murdered girl has been left devastated and an entire prefecture shocked and worried about their safety.

"Why did it have to be my daughter? Why did she have to be killed?" exclaimed the victim's father in an open letter he read aloud at the protest.

"So as not to have another victim, the people in the prefecture can unite and make it possible for all bases in Okinawa to be removed," the father of the murdered girl urged.

As for Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga, a staunch advocate of lessening the base-hosting burdens of the islanders, and in particularly blocking the central government's plans to relocate a controversial US base within the prefecture, he expressed his deepest condemnation of the latest attack during the rally.

Describing the rape and murder of the young lady as "utterly unacceptable," Onaga reiterated his calls for a key agreement between Japan and the United States to be urgently reviewed and for the bases to be kicked out of the island for good.

"I hereby express my unflagging resolve to push for drastic review of the Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement and withdrawal of Marines from Okinawa," Onaga declared.

The Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was originally inked in Washington between the United States and Japan in 1960, and many politicians such as Onaga along with political watchers believe it does not work to effectively legislate treatment of US servicepeople in Japan who commit crimes and doesn't reflect the growing instances and severity of such.

Under the current agreement, US forces' personnel can be granted a great deal of legal autonomy and while the Japanese court system has jurisdiction for most crimes committed by US service members, if the accused was "acting in official duty," or if the victim was another American, the US justice system is used, not Japan's, despite the location.