Word: okinawa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...they may dictate this case. Still, in the days immediately following the rape charge, most news outlets didn't report the race of the accused. Some Western journalists did, but they didn't note that the accuser was almost certainly a kokujo and that the nightclub culture around the Okinawa bases is almost as segregated as the Jim Crow South. When off duty, most military personnel tend to congregate according to race. The clubs that black servicemen frequent are also kokujo haunts. Of course, for a kokujo to say she was there to meet a man is not proof...
...Thursday night, June 28, the action in Okinawa is on the third floor of a building in a candy-colored open-air mall called the American Village. A pink-and-blue neon sign shows where everyone is going: 3F, a bar and restaurant with a Southeast Asian theme. A couple of hundred people are already there, drawn by $3 cocktails and reggae and hip-hop tunes. It's so crowded that manager Jeff Short has abandoned his tiki-hut office to help behind the bar. The crowd is familiar, mostly female Japanese partyers and U.S. servicemen. Many of the girls...
...about an hour the woman dances and drinks with a black American, a former serviceman who is an Okinawa resident. She tells him she moved to Okinawa a month ago and is working at a hospital. Her American boyfriend is in the U.S., she continues. When she and the ex-serviceman decide to leave together, the American says something to a friend about money--"13[cents]," to be exact. The woman misunderstands him and fumes, "I do not look 13." She abruptly returns...
...incident sparked a crisis in U.S.-Japan relations. For four days after an arrest warrant was issued on July 2, the U.S. refused to hand Woodland over to Okinawa police, infuriating Okinawans and many other Japanese. Under the Status of Forces Agreement between Japan and the U.S.--the so-called SOFA, which dictates service members' legal rights in Japan--those charged with a criminal offense are protected from incarceration by the Japanese until after they are indicted. Among the reasons for this is the long, isolating detention period, which the U.S. considers overly harsh. It was only after...
...read the Okinawa papers now, you would think the main mission of U.S. military personnel there is to engage in crime sprees. A closer look at the police blotter tells a different story. According to the Okinawa prefectural government, U.S. military personnel were responsible for 5,006 crimes between 1972 and 2001. That means of the 290,814 crimes committed in Okinawa during the 29-year period, 1.7% were perpetrated by a group that comprised 4% of the population. Rapes and sexual assaults by servicemen grab the biggest headlines. Last year 2,260 rapes nationwide were reported to authorities. Statisticians...