Issue:
November 2024 | Japan Media Review
The rights and safety of Okinawans, especially women, are being sacrificed in the name of national security
In June, news outlets reported that a U.S. Air Force serviceman stationed in Okinawa had been indicted in March for allegedly kidnapping and sexually assaulting a Japanese teenager the previous December. However, up until the point when the story broke, the Okinawan government was not aware of the case. Prosecutors had decided not to disclose it in order to protect the victim's privacy, but Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki complained vociferously to the central government, asking why neither the foreign ministry nor the defense ministry had told him about the alleged rape. It was then revealed that an Okinawa-based Marine was also being prosecuted for injuring and attempting to sexually assault a local woman in May. This case was also kept from the Okinawan government.
According to the Tokyo Shimbun, a woman's group organized a meeting in the lower house of the Diet in early September to share data with lawmakers about sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers in Okinawa in light of the two incidents. A women's studies scholar, Harumi Miyagi, who is from Okinawa, described alleged sexual assaults that have occurred in Okinawa in recent years, adding that many had been described in police records as “reports” in which no charges were brought. Miyagi suggested that this could mean there are more cases that go unreported. It is common for women to not press charges because they don't want to expose themselves as victims of rape, and police seem to encourage this response. Nevertheless, rape is a crime, and if police fail to investigate then it could be seen as a dereliction of duty.
Miyagi pointed out that the two cases in question were only revealed after the Okinawan prefectural assembly elections, implying that the government withheld the information so as not to hurt the chances of candidates supported by the ruling coalition. Whenever an alleged crime by U.S. service personnel is reported, activist groups invariably demonstrate against both the U.S. military presence and the Japanese government. The Tokyo Shimbun cited a survey that showed 61% of the prefecture’s population wanted to reduce the U.S. military presence, while 15% wanted the bases moved out of the prefecture altogether.
According to Miyagi, 948 cases of sexual assault by U.S. soldiers against local girls and women in Okinawa were reported between 1945 and 2021. When the U.S. controlled the prefecture from 1945 to 1972, many cases of sexual assault were likely not reported or recorded. In the 1960s and early 1970s, when the U.S. was embroiled in the Vietnam War, sexual assaults in Okinawa increased in number and brutality, with bar hostesses raped, killed, and dumped into landfills or abandoned in cemeteries. Miyagi said these actions reflected an American attitude that still saw Okinawa and its people as the "spoils of war" after Japan's World War II defeat. Women in particular were seen as something that U.S. soldiers could do with as they pleased.
Part of the problem is connected to Okinawan culture. Girls and women who are victims of rape are considered blights on the reputations of their families and thus such incidents are either not reported or not prosecuted for fear of the victim's identity being revealed. The incident that changed this dynamic was the rape of a 15-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemen in 1995. After an effective campaign by outraged women's groups, the issue of Okinawan women's human rights in the shadow of U.S. bases was finally addressed. But 30 years later, the government persists in downplaying the continuing scourge of sexual assault. Kaori Ishimine, a former member of the city assembly of Miyakoshima, which hosts a Japan Self-Defense Force base, attended the Diet meeting remotely from Okinawa and addressed the government's claim that it had not revealed the two incidents in order to protect the privacy of the victims. “They don't need to reveal the victims' names [when they report on the incidents],” she said. "But they need to inform the public about what happened so people can be more careful and understand the situation.”
Shigeaki Iijima, a professor of constitutional studies at Nagoya Gakuin University, added that the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Japan "infringes" on Japan's right to prosecute U.S. servicemen by relegating crimes they commit "while on duty" to U.S. military courts. As for crimes allegedly committed outside of working hours, the Japanese government in 1953 reportedly told the U.S. that it would not try soldiers unless the crime was "very serious," a claim the Japanese government denies. In any case, Iijima says the rate of indictment by the Japanese side for sexual crimes allegedly committed by U.S. servicemen has been "extremely low," thus indicating that some kind of pressure has been exerted to keep it that way.
In the fallout of the June revelations, the U.S. military said it would bolster efforts to prevent sexual assaults. There is also a plan to establish a forum between the U.S. military and the prefecture where residents can give their opinions. The section of the prefectural government that deals with U.S. bases said it was in contact with the foreign ministry to arrange for the forum, but the Tokyo Shimbun has not found any indication that the section is talking to the U.S. side. The women's group who held the meeting with lawmakers asserted that simply "improving communications" between the two sides won't solve the fundamental problem of sexual assault, and it is believed that incidents of sexual violence in other prefectures that host U.S. bases have also been under-reported. A women's group from the city of Sasebo learned that local police withheld files related to sexual assaults by U.S. personnel in 2016-17 from the prefectural government and news outlets. The matter has become so heated that a movement has formed to appeal the matter to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The purpose is to exert pressure on the Japanese government to explain its policy in the Diet toward sexual assault by U.S. military personnel, although some activists also hope that UN attention will somehow reduce the size of the U.S. military footprint in Okinawa, since most believe sexual violence is directly linked to the presence of U.S. bases.
These matters sparked a discussion in the August 21 edition of the Asahi Shimbun about social disparities related to gender in Okinawa, where male privilege is built into local customs and traditions. The Asahi highlighted the situation of an Okinawan woman in her 40s who left her husband after eight years of marriage. As the wife of the eldest son in the family, she was expected to wait on other members, especially when the extended family got together. When the woman became pregnant with her first child, her mother-in-law gave her a list of boys' names she had to choose from so that the name would have at least one character identical to one in her husband's name. As years passed, her husband became more demanding and often complained about her fitness as a wife and mother. She eventually left him and took her two daughters to live with her own parents.
Cultural factors have contributed to Okinawa having the highest rate of single-mother households in Japan, as well as the highest divorce rate. According to the most recent surveys, 4.3% of all households in Okinawa are headed by single mothers, while nationwide the rate is 2.3%. When asked why they are single mothers 32.3% in Okinawa cited physical and verbal abuse from their former husbands.
Ikue Kina of Ryukyu University adds that the "normalization" of male privilege makes it difficult to eliminate local customs that are harmful to women, and the equally male-centered culture of the U.S. bases exacerbates the problem. Kina goes so far as to say that women's poverty, which is particularly pronounced in Okinawa, is caused by a social system informed by historical U.S. military dominance of the prefecture, combined with the native concept of male privilege that holds sway. In addition, mainland Japan's prejudices about Okinawan women has also had an effect. The population, she says, must be made aware that it is social norms that are preventing women from improving their situation, since Okinawan women themselves are generally under the impression that they have something to do with their oppression.
A more recent Asahi report extrapolated these theories to explain the specific issue of sexual assault by U.S. servicemen. Kazuko Hirai, a guest researcher at Hitotsubashi University, found that during the postwar period of U.S. rule of Okinawa no records were kept on sexual assault victims. Very little related testimony was available after U.S. rule ended. She believes that is partly due to trauma and the generally held idea that women should be "sexually innocent". Consequently, victims of sexual assault became tainted in the eyes of society. That's why the then foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, said she did not inform the prefecture about the two cases: she wanted to protect the victims, mainly from the critical gaze of others. But by not condemning these assaults openly she reinforced the shaming of the women.
Hirai says that the government's suppression of reports of sexual assaults by U.S. servicemen shows that, psychologically, Okinawa is still under U.S. military occupation. Rape is a common means of dominating an enemy civilian population during wartime, and Hirai mentions the Soviet attacks on Japanese women on the Asian continent at the end of and after the war, as well as the Japanese military forcing local women in regions they conquered into sexual slavery. Civilian women in these cases were also considered the spoils of war, and Hirai does not make a distinction between them and the women who worked at brothels clandestinely set up by the Japanese government to serve American soldiers during the U.S. occupation of mainland Japan. The women of Okinawa are no different in the mind of the Japanese government, which believes they must make a sacrifice for the sake of national security.
Similarly, Kosuzu Abe, a professor of anthropology at the University of the Ryukyus, believes these recurring sexual assaults are a consequence of government intentions and inaction. She says that the construction of the U.S. Marine base at Henoko, which has been met with protests from locals, demonstrates starkly how the Japanese government disregards Okinawan autonomy. "When I heard about the failure to report sexual assaults," she says in the Asahi article, "I became angry because it meant they were trying to prevent us from protesting [the U.S. military presence]."
Even more to the point, Ai Abe, an international human rights scholar, told the Asahi she deems the suppression of assault reports an example of femicide, since the motivation seems to be misogynistic in nature. In countries that were once colonies, native women are typically the weakest demographic, and it is in these societies where femicide is most prevalent. Due to the U.S. rule of Okinawa between 1945 and 1972, the rest of Japan still looks down upon the prefecture as a former colony of the U.S., not to mention that it was once part of the Ryukyu kingdom conquered by Japan. In other words, it's been subjugated twice over. In the eyes of the Japanese government, says Abe, the people of Okinawa are not worth protecting.
Philip Brasor is a Tokyo-based writer who covers entertainment, the Japanese media, and money issues. He writes the Japan Media Watch column for the Number 1 Shimbun.
