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

In some instances, under SOFA, the majority of US military members are exempt from Japan's visa and passport laws and past offenders have dodged the Japanese legal system here by being transferred back to the United States before being charged. Another loophole that exists in the agreement is that unless an offender is arrested outside of a US base by Japanese police or investigators, then the US authorities are allowed to retain custody of that individual.

While calls for SOFA to be urgently revised are becoming more vociferous, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, despite being a proponent of relocating the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from a crowded district in Ginowan to a coastal region on the island that will see vast amounts of land reclaimed from the sea to build the mega-base, also seeking its review, the protesters on Sunday adopted their own resolution demanding that definitive measures to prevent further heinous crimes from occurring in the future are instituted.

"The anger and sadness of the people of Okinawa has reached its limit toward the repeated incidents and accidents involving US military and nonmilitary personnel," the resolution said.

It also demanded an apology from both the Japanese and US government to the people of Okinawa and in particular to the family of the murdered woman. The resolution also called for compensation to be made to the family of the victim.

"To protect the lives and human rights of the people in Okinawa, it is urgent that US bases be significantly reduced and consolidated, and for Marines to withdraw from Okinawa," the resolution said, adding that plans to relocate the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma should also be scrapped.

The resolution also stated that previous measures to curtail acts of crime or enforce discipline had failed miserably and that the only way to effectively prevent crime against locals from US servicepeople going forward is to remove the US bases from Okinawa island entirely.

All prefectural and local assemblies in Okinawa have adopted resolutions against the latest murder and the prefectural assembly is now dominated by politicians opposed to the Futenma base relocation, which, along with growing indignation from the locals, adds gravitas and political momentum to Onaga's moves to block the relocation and make further moves in the future to see US bases removed from Okinawa entirely.