r/japan • u/ScoMoTrudeauApricot • 1d ago

US Marine, 20, allegedly strangled Japanese woman to death inside hotel room as diplomatic tensions reach boiling point

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16182429/us-marine-robbery-murder-japan-woman-hotel-room.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
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u/Working-Morning-3645 1d ago

Why always Okinawa? I never hear this from other parts of Japan or other bases around the world. Do they cover it up, do they by default blame a US marines, or is there something in the water that make Americans go crazy?

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u/R_Prime 1d ago

Nah they do this everywhere. Back when my hometown used to host US aircraft carriers. There was often a spike in rapes while they were in town.

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u/KidAardvark24 19h ago

I was in Yokosuka for 6 years. The worst we had was a drug dealer and some fights. Nothing worse happened that I had heard of.

Sailors would rather watch anime in their barracks nights

1

u/New-Goat2731 18h ago

Why us marines need to deal with drug cases? Not local police's job?

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u/DrizzleDrake88 22h ago

As someone that used to be stationed in Japan. It’s usually Okinawa because that’s where the Marines are normally stationed at. And as for why the Marines? Their minimum ASVAB requirements is just 1 above the Army so it’s not really the brightest, but it really comes down to what kind of people each military branch attracts. Which for the Marines, tend to be really aggressive guys (basically pit bulls)

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u/PotentialSpaceman 19h ago

They do not "by default" blame US Marines

US marines are just very frequently to blame...

Combining the kind of people who often choose to be soldiers with an environment of zero accountability created when you refuse to let the local authorities prosecute them for anything they do is just a recipe for disaster, and that disaster materialises far too often

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u/pieholic 1d ago

Like just regarding murder or crime in general? Because US forces are notorious for bringing crime where they are stationed. Which makes sense, bring a group of people and you're bound to get some bad apples, especially when they are far from their normal morality enforcers

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u/Ori-Epsilon 1d ago

Also trending on young, dumb, and in a pretty aggressive military culture doesn’t help those stats much either. Plus, especially now, the military is taking literally anyone it can. So yea, wouldn’t be surprised if there are more than usual bad guys.

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u/tronald_dum 1d ago

By the numbers the US military crime rate in japan (118 cases out of ~60000 personnel) is much lower than the general crime rate in japan or the US. Of course trained soldiers should have lower crime rate in theory

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u/Koniev13 22h ago

And then you check the crime rate for the SA, murder, etc... And ads the fact they are a lot of times protected by the military...

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u/pieholic 1d ago

It shows a lot more due to the crimes happening in concentrated areas (near base) as well as the main perps being in their 20s-30s. Additionally the crimes are a lot more flashy (battery/assault/rape/murder) since it is rare usf can commit white collar crime in the stationed country. Finally, the local sentiment gets more negative because the servicefolk can be extradited to the U.S. to sometimes face weaker/no punishment. It's not very hard to find the correlation of soldiers being let loose correlating with an uptick of crime in said area - it is also relatively recent (2019) that Korea lifted the 0100i~0500i curfew for USF, and guess what rose?

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u/PotentialSpaceman 19h ago

Your stats are intentionally skewed.

They assume that every soldier is interacting with the Japanese public off-base 24/7 and compare those stats to a Japanese person who does spend every day out in Japanese society.

When normalised for the actual time soldiers spend around regular people in Okinawa the stats for how often they commit assault, SA and other crimes becomes horrific, even only using the number sthat the US will admit to, when the actual number seems to be far higher.

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u/derioderio [アメリカ] 14h ago

The US military presence in Okinawa is huge. 10% of the area of the island is US military bases, and there are 30K US military personnel there, which accounts for 70% of all US military in Japan.

Also Okinawa was not returned to Japanese sovereignty at the end of WWII. The US controlled it until 1972, and up until that time the USD was the only currency and Okinawans needed a passport to travel to mainland Japan.

The US military presence in Okinawa is called the keystone of the Pacific military strategy. The main purpose is to keep the major military powers in the region: China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea, all playing relatively nice with each other. And in that regard it has been successful:

  • Neither the Korean War nor the Vietnam War escalated into larger conflicts
  • North Korea has never done much besides occasional abduction of citizens of the other countries and shooting missiles into the ocean
  • China does a bunch of saber-rattling but has never seriously tried to invade Taiwan, and their island-grabbing schemes have been relatively small in scale.

The government in Tokyo realizes this too, which is why they persist in allowing the huge US military presence there. This overrides the will of the Okinawans themselves, which have generally been very vocal about wanting the US military out, esp. after despicable incidents like the one that just happened.

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u/Electrical-Call-6160 13h ago

You're hearing Okinawa mostly because it's Japan.

US Marines did this crap in several other 3rd world countries as well such as the Philippines.

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u/Hour-Equivalent-2518 1d ago

Well you're on to something. Near Clark Airbase in the Philippines theres a famous red light district. Where the marines can 'unload' all their active duty stress, likely Okinawa doesn't condone such establishments, thus you get these reoccurring incidents

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u/m2chaos13 1d ago

Is this related to the infamous “Pubic Bay”?