When President Obama went to Hiroshima, the American media focused on what
he would – or wouldn’t – say about Harry Truman’s horrendous war
crime against the Japanese people. Would he apologize? Leaving aside how
one apologizes for such a monstrous act – short of committing seppuku – as it
turned out he just spoke in harmless generalities about the dangers of nuclear
weapons, expressing a commendable albeit vague wish to rid the world of them.
What the pundits mostly ignored, however, was Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe’s outrage at the
latest murderous sex crime committed by an American soldier stationed on
Okinawa; the brutal murder of 20-year-old Rina Shimabukuro by a US military
contractor.
Before Obama arrived, Abe gave
vent to his anger: “I am extremely upset.
I have no words. I demand that the United States take strict measures to prevent
something like this from happening again.” Those are stern words coming from
a Japanese leader: Japanese officials almost never express strong emotions,
especially when dealing with the United States. For Abe to say he “demands”
something in this context is like Donald Trump talking about how Mexico is going
to pay for The Wall. And when Obama did arrive, Abe brought the subject up again.
As the Washington Post reported:
“Using surprisingly strong language, the Japanese prime minister said he
felt ‘profound resentment’ at the ‘self-centered and absolutely despicable crime.
“’I have asked the president to carry out effective measures to prevent
a recurrence of such crimes,’ Abe said, a solemn-faced Obama standing beside
him.”
For the craven American puppet Abe to breach protocol in this way, the provocation
would’ve had to have been enormous. And it was. The murderer, one Kenneth
Franklin Gadson, is a former US Marine turned military contractor assigned
to Okinawa’s Kadana Air Base. After sexually assaulting Shimabukuro, who had
gone for a walk near her home, Gadson dumped her body in the woods. He admitted
to the crime under questioning.
Just a few days prior, another
sex crime committed on Okinawa by a US soldier was in the news: 24-year-old
Justin Castellanos, a seaman stationed at US Marine Corps Camp Schwab, is accused
of raping a Japanese woman at a hotel. Castellanos is pleading guilty.
These are the latest in a long line of such crimes, which keep coming without
respite. Since 1972, there have been over
120 cases of rape by American military personnel on the island of Okinawa.
And that’s just the cases that are reported. All in all, there have been over 4,700 crimes
committed by US soldiers on the island since Okinawa reverted to nominal Japanese
control.
Attention came to be focused on this outrageous situation in 1995, when three
US servicemen kidnapped
a 12-year-old Japanese…