Incident in Okinawa

By Tim Larimer/Chatan

When night falls outside the sprawling Kadena Air Force Base in the center of Okinawa, the streets turn into a bacchanal of hard drinking, drag racing, loud music and raucous, sweaty dancing. Tattooed guys in muscle shirts and cargo pants rub against women in midriff-baring T shirts and tight jeans, and as the crowd spills from bars onto sidewalks, the night shifts into overdrive. "Hey, we're 19-year-old guys, we're away from home, we're pumped up and we're horny," says a young Marine from California. "Of course it's all about sex."

Trouble is, it's all about politics too. Last week, just hours before Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met at Camp David with George W. Bush, Okinawa saw the type of ugly incident that happens there with depressing regularity--becoming, once again, a tawdry pivot in the complex relationship between the U.S. and Japan. A woman in her 20s told police that a foreigner raped her early Friday morning in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Chatan, not far from the Kadena base. Details of the alleged crime are sketchy, but for several hours police questioned an Air Force technical sergeant identified as a suspect. "We need measures to prevent unnecessary friction or bad feelings between the Japanese people and the U.S. forces," Koizumi said after arriving in Washington.

While the police continued their investigation, diplomats dealt with the fallout. With some 26,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on the tropical island, Okinawa is the cornerstone of Washington's defense strategy in Asia. But Okinawans have long considered themselves pawns in a geopolitical game. In 1995, after three U.S. servicemen raped a 12-year-old girl, 85,000 Okinawans took to the streets to protest. Alleged crimes like the one last week just feed the sour mood. "How long do we have to wait until this ends?" asks Suzuyo Takazato, a member of the legislature of Naha, Okinawa's largest city. "Why can't the U.S. take these men and their training and do it somewhere else?"

Unfortunately, there is nowhere else quite so convenient. Okinawa suits American purposes because of its proximity to the Korean peninsula and the rest of Asia. From the standpoint of the government in Tokyo, keeping so many American troops in Okinawa makes sense; that way they are segregated from the Japanese mainland. Koizumi has said, however, that he wants to "lighten the burden" on the island. Japanese have paid rapt attention to the debate on the U.S. bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and to Washington's decision to close the range in 2003. But the chances of such a dispensation for Okinawa are zero. "The presence of American forces on Okinawa," says a State Department official in Washington, "is vital for the security of the region."

That said, the relationship between the two countries is changing. A new defense arrangement--one that would loosen constraints on Japan's military activity--was at the top of the Camp David agenda. The current Japanese government is less pliant than its predecessors; Tokyo has said only that it "understands" the Bush Administration's plans for an antiballistic missile shield and has hinted it might develop its own missile defense. Koizumi, who enjoys enormous popular support, has rattled neighbors by displaying a nationalistic streak. He plans to visit a controversial shrine where convicted war criminals are memorialized, and he has refused to prohibit the publication of textbooks that whitewash Japan's war aggression. Koizumi favors rejiggering the American-inspired constitution, which renounces the use of war. In the past, the merest suggestion of rearming has been off limits, though the Japanese armed forces--despite being tagged purely "defensive"--are already among the best equipped in the world.

In Okinawa, life in the shadow of geopolitics produces strange anomalies. The weekend following the alleged rape, the Kadena base opened its gates to visitors for a festival with carnival rides, hamburgers and barbecued ribs. Hundreds of locals drove their cars across one of the airfield's long runways to get a glimpse of America's military hardware: an AWAC surveillance plane, armored vehicles, grenade launchers. Still, thoughts of the alleged rape were never far away. "My girlfriends and I are always bothered by these American servicemen," said Kaori Teruya. "They live in this safe place, behind fences, but they come out, do bad things to us and then return to their safe refuge." That uneasy relationship between the young people of two close allies won't end anytime soon.

--With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/Washington

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand/Washington