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US Marines begin relocation from Okinawa to Guam (1 Viewer)

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The United States has begun relocating Marine Corps units from Okinawa. This move has been confirmed by both Tokyo and Washington, and it comes as a response to long-standing complaints from residents about the presence of American military bases.
The first group, consisting of about 100 logistics personnel from the III Marine Expeditionary Force, is set to move to U.S. territory
According to the plan, out of the approximately 19,000 U.S. Marines stationed in Okinawa, more than 4,000 will be relocated to Guam. This project was agreed upon by the governments of Japan and the U.S. in April 2012. Including those moving to Hawaii, a total of about 9,000 Marines will leave Japan. As a result, the number of U.S. Marines remaining in the prefecture will be reduced to about 10,000.

I wonder what that surrounding property will go for when all the servicemembers finally leave.
 
The United States has begun relocating Marine Corps units from Okinawa. This move has been confirmed by both Tokyo and Washington, and it comes as a response to long-standing complaints from residents about the presence of American military bases.
The first group, consisting of about 100 logistics personnel from the III Marine Expeditionary Force, is set to move to U.S. territory
According to the plan, out of the approximately 19,000 U.S. Marines stationed in Okinawa, more than 4,000 will be relocated to Guam. This project was agreed upon by the governments of Japan and the U.S. in April 2012. Including those moving to Hawaii, a total of about 9,000 Marines will leave Japan. As a result, the number of U.S. Marines remaining in the prefecture will be reduced to about 10,000.

I wonder what that surrounding property will go for when all the servicemembers finally leave.
Their wives and daughters will be safer.
3 sexual assaults so far this year.

 
The United States has begun relocating Marine Corps units from Okinawa. This move has been confirmed by both Tokyo and Washington, and it comes as a response to long-standing complaints from residents about the presence of American military bases.
The first group, consisting of about 100 logistics personnel from the III Marine Expeditionary Force, is set to move to U.S. territory
According to the plan, out of the approximately 19,000 U.S. Marines stationed in Okinawa, more than 4,000 will be relocated to Guam. This project was agreed upon by the governments of Japan and the U.S. in April 2012. Including those moving to Hawaii, a total of about 9,000 Marines will leave Japan. As a result, the number of U.S. Marines remaining in the prefecture will be reduced to about 10,000.

I wonder what that surrounding property will go for when all the servicemembers finally leave.
About time. A large number of the Okinawans don’t want the US military there, and there’s been ongoing efforts for over fifty years to try and get the US to leave.
 
About time. A large number of the Okinawans don’t want the US military there, and there’s been ongoing efforts for over fifty years to try and get the US to leave.
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The United States has begun relocating Marine Corps units from Okinawa. This move has been confirmed by both Tokyo and Washington, and it comes as a response to long-standing complaints from residents about the presence of American military bases.
The first group, consisting of about 100 logistics personnel from the III Marine Expeditionary Force, is set to move to U.S. territory
According to the plan, out of the approximately 19,000 U.S. Marines stationed in Okinawa, more than 4,000 will be relocated to Guam. This project was agreed upon by the governments of Japan and the U.S. in April 2012. Including those moving to Hawaii, a total of about 9,000 Marines will leave Japan. As a result, the number of U.S. Marines remaining in the prefecture will be reduced to about 10,000.

I wonder what that surrounding property will go for when all the servicemembers finally leave.
So...we finally get to see an island tip over.
 
About time. A large number of the Okinawans don’t want the US military there, and there’s been ongoing efforts for over fifty years to try and get the US to leave.

"Hamby, also known as Camp Hamby, was a US Marine Corps base in Okinawa, Japan that was used during the Vietnam War. The base was returned to Okinawa in 1981, and the surrounding coast was reclaimed to build the American Village shopping area. The northern part of Kitamae is now known as "Hamby Town" in recognition of the base's former location."
 
Yes. And a large number want them there. And Japan agreed to having us there.

Times change.
The UK also has many overseas bases and has to take into account local sentiment in the decision to stay.
 
Yes. And a large number want them there. And Japan agreed to having us there.
Large scale protests against US military presence on Okinawa date back to 1955.

Which means less than nothing given Japan’s history of total disregard for the people of Okinawa, as exemplified by their actions during the battle there.

“In February 2019, in a referendum for the citizens of Okinawa, over 70% of voters – about 434,000 people – voted against the construction of the new Henoko base. Following the results of the referendum, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed for an understanding by Okinawan citizens for the relocation of the base. Some Okinawan voters claimed their voices were not heard in Tokyo as the central government still pushes for the move of the base to stay committed to the security alliance between the US and Japan.[20]


Over 70 percent of the locals voting against the new base strongly argues against the idea many of them “want the US there.”

In fact, the long standing movement protesting against US presence there paints a completely different picture.
 
"Hamby, also known as Camp Hamby, was a US Marine Corps base in Okinawa, Japan that was used during the Vietnam War. The base was returned to Okinawa in 1981, and the surrounding coast was reclaimed to build the American Village shopping area. The northern part of Kitamae is now known as "Hamby Town" in recognition of the base's former location."
And your point is......what, exactly? That was over a decade after hundreds of fed-up locals stormed onto Kadena Air Base, torching cars and buildings in the process.
 
So...we finally get to see an island tip over.
LOL....very good!

I remember this comment. I thought it was tongue-in-cheek clever, but the ensuing uproar indicated many took it seriously/literally.

Thanks for the memory - and the laugh.

 
3 sexual assaults in a year by 19,000 marines? That's probably a lower rate than sexual assaults by the locals of a similar age.

Oh, it's even more because a significant number of those Marines are actually only there for 6 months.

About 75% of the Marines on Okinawa are part of UDP (Unit Deployment Program), where a Battalion from the US is sent to Okinawa for six months. And this is nothing new, this has been going on since the 1950s.

And yeah, considering the vast majority are single men aged 22 and younger, that is actually a rather low statistic. But to give an example, UCLA has about double the number of students as there are Marines on Okinawa. And other than the percentages of gender are vastly different, most of the other demographics are about the same.

And in 2022, there were 23 rapes, and 22 incidents of "fondling" reported at UCLA. And by the way the military compiles their statistics, that would be 45 cases of "Sexual Assault".


Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I would say that 45 cases out of 48,000 students is a significantly higher rate than 3 out of 19,000. And it is a significantly higher number, as in not even close. Just doing fast math in my head, increase the number of Marines by 1.5X and even round up the number of sexual assaults, that leaves 8 sexual assaults for around 50,000 Marines. That is less than 1/4 of the number that happen on a US College Campus.

Which by the way is typically vastly underreported, as colleges and universities will try to prevent victims from going to the cops, and promise to handle it "internally" instead. In general, it is believed that 90% of such are not even reported.

Despite numerous studies showing that rape is common on campuses, 89% of colleges and universities reported zero incidents of rape. AAUW’s analysis of 2016 data reported under the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act), which requires colleges and universities who participate in federal financial aid programs to disclose campus crime statistics and security information, shows that the vast majority (89%) of 11,000 college and university campuses failed to disclose even a single reported incident of rape that year, even though there are numerous studies showing that campus rape is common.

And here is yet another thing to consider. Okinawa actually has a fairly high crime rate for Japan, not counting the US servicemembers.

The resolution, citing figures that Onaga also has used, also said SOFA-status personnel had committed 5,896 crimes since 1972. What it didn’t point out is that government figures show the rest of Okinawa’s populace has a crime rate more than twice as high over the same period — 69.7 crimes per 10,000 people, compared with 27.4 by SOFA members.

The SOFA crime rate also has been dropping, police figures show. In 2014, the prefecture saw the lowest level of crime committed by SOFA-status personnel since the reversion. Out of 3,410 arrests prefecture-wide that year, only 27 involved SOFA personnel.

This is a great example of when "facts lie". As I would be the first to say that any sexual assaults are wrong, and those that do it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But trying to blow a problem up to be bigger than it is is also wrong. And if people really cared about sexual assaults, then they should be going after colleges who largely underreport the problem (if not outright deny it even happens) instead of trying to use it as is common to attack the military.
 
3 sexual assaults in a year by 19,000 marines? That's probably a lower rate than sexual assaults by the locals of a similar age.
Gee, I wonder if something happened on Okinawa that was deeply traumatic to the locals and made them especially unwilling to put up with abuse from an unaccountable foreign military?

“In its history of the war, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum[88] presents Okinawa as being caught between Japan and the United States. During the battle, the Imperial Japanese Army showed indifference to Okinawans' safety, and its soldiers used civilians as human shields or outright killed them. The Japanese military also confiscated food from the Okinawans and executed those who hid it, leading to mass starvation, and forced civilians out of their shelters. Japanese soldiers also killed about 1,000 people who spoke in the Okinawan language to suppress spying.[90]

“Witnesses and historians claim that soldiers, mainly Japanese troops, raped Okinawan women during the battle. Rape by Japanese troops reportedly "became common" in June, after it became clear that the Imperial Japanese Army had been defeated.[35][19]: 462 “

“There are, however, numerous credible testimony accounts which note that a large number of rapes were committed by American forces during the battle. This includes stories of rape after trading sexual favors or even marrying Americans,[100] such as the alleged incident in the village of Katsuyama, where civilians said they had formed a vigilante group to ambush and kill three black American soldiers who they claimed would frequently rape the local girls there.[101]

“Reportedly, three African-AmericanMarines of the United States Marines Corps began to repeatedly visit the village of Katsuyama, northwest of the city of Nago, and every time they violently took the village women into the nearby hills and raped them. The Marines became so confident that the villagers of Katsuyama were powerless to stop them, they came to the village without their weapons.[2]

The villagers took advantage of this and ambushed them with the help of two armed Imperial Japanese Army soldiers who were hiding in the nearby jungle.[2]Shinsei Higa, who was sixteen at the time, remembers that "I didn't see the actual killing because I was hiding in the mountains above, but I heard five or six gunshots and then a lot of footsteps and commotion. By late afternoon, we came down from the mountains and then everyone knew what had happened."[1]

 
Gee, I wonder if something happened on Okinawa that was deeply traumatic to the locals and made them especially unwilling to put up with abuse from an unaccountable foreign military?

“In its history of the war, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum[88] presents Okinawa as being caught between Japan and the United States. During the battle, the Imperial Japanese Army showed indifference to Okinawans' safety, and its soldiers used civilians as human shields or outright killed them. The Japanese military also confiscated food from the Okinawans and executed those who hid it, leading to mass starvation, and forced civilians out of their shelters. Japanese soldiers also killed about 1,000 people who spoke in the Okinawan language to suppress spying.[90]

“Witnesses and historians claim that soldiers, mainly Japanese troops, raped Okinawan women during the battle. Rape by Japanese troops reportedly "became common" in June, after it became clear that the Imperial Japanese Army had been defeated.[35][19]: 462 “

“There are, however, numerous credible testimony accounts which note that a large number of rapes were committed by American forces during the battle. This includes stories of rape after trading sexual favors or even marrying Americans,[100] such as the alleged incident in the village of Katsuyama, where civilians said they had formed a vigilante group to ambush and kill three black American soldiers who they claimed would frequently rape the local girls there.[101]

“Reportedly, three African-AmericanMarines of the United States Marines Corps began to repeatedly visit the village of Katsuyama, northwest of the city of Nago, and every time they violently took the village women into the nearby hills and raped them. The Marines became so confident that the villagers of Katsuyama were powerless to stop them, they came to the village without their weapons.[2]

The villagers took advantage of this and ambushed them with the help of two armed Imperial Japanese Army soldiers who were hiding in the nearby jungle.[2]Shinsei Higa, who was sixteen at the time, remembers that "I didn't see the actual killing because I was hiding in the mountains above, but I heard five or six gunshots and then a lot of footsteps and commotion. By late afternoon, we came down from the mountains and then everyone knew what had happened."[1]


Hmmmmm

1945....
 
Hmmmmm

1945....
Hmmm......

Deliberately trying to pretend like such incidents didn’t occur repeatedly in the decades that followed....and that the Okinawan locals didn’t repeatedly protest over the fact the US military was completely immune to the consequences of such actions.
 
So 30% isn't a large number?

Interesting.
Not when compared to the rest of the population, funnily enough.

An overwhelming majority went against the new base, and no amount of sputtering can change that.
 
Hmmm......

Deliberately trying to pretend like such incidents didn’t occur repeatedly in the decades that followed....and that the Okinawan locals didn’t repeatedly protest over the fact the US military was completely immune to the consequences of such actions.

There were assults and rapes in the following decades....

Yep.

And we sent many offenders to Courts Martial.

The "completely immune to the consequences of such actions" is hyperbole.
 

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