Word: servicemen
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Okinawa hates America, and Okinawa loves America. Okinawa is in fact so American that it can appear deceptively like home to the 25,203 U.S. servicemen stationed on its 38 U.S. military facilities. Reminders of Uncle Sam abound--America Mart, America Hotel and Club America. A two-story emporium called American Depot stands in the shadow of a giant Ferris wheel emblazoned with a Coca-Cola logo. Even at traditional matsuri, or summer festivals, children wave cotton candy, shirtless skateboarders do stunts on open walkways and women in shorts and bikini tops lick jewel-colored snow cones...
...stereotypes swing the other way too. The image of the geisha still pervades Western ideas of Japanese women. Among servicemen, the gaggles of pretty Japanese girls are a big reason that Okinawa ranks high on the "dream sheet," the list of desired stations for enlisted men, which usually includes Hawaii and the bases closest to their hometowns. Demetrius Young, 27, a black Marine corporal from Miami, has been stationed in Okinawa just a week and already: "I loooove Okinawa. Why? The ladies, they're all beee-yooo-tiful." There's a difference between viewing the ladies as delectable temptations, though...
...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 of consent. In the U.S. today, a woman's lifestyle and sexual history aren't relevant in such cases. In Japan, they can invalidate rape charges altogether. Given...
...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 dress alike--stiletto heels or sneakers, low-slung capris and halter tops, a spray of body glitter. (Short now says he doesn't recall a diminutive woman with white sneakers, a red sundress, brown-tinted hair and a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder.) Others...
...dusk outside the gates of Kadena Air Force Base, neon signs flicker on as servicemen begin to congregate, poking around in the clothing stores, buying yakitori on sticks from street vendors and horsing around. Some of the men later make their way to the dance clubs, others to the billiard bars. As midnight approaches, carloads of women pull into the parking lots nearby. They fix their lipstick in the rearview mirrors and tease out their hair as if according to some military instruction manual. It's as if they're going into battle...