On my way home, my plane was delayed, so I went out drinking. I took a cab to the bars from base. I was drinking taquilia and beer. Last thing I remember was watching a stripper. Next thing I know I wake up in the police station. They told me they convicted me because my finger prints were on the cab. Well, I know i took a cab to get to the bars but I do not know if I robbed the cab.

Now, i am not saying i did not rob the cab. But every one who knows me knows I am not the type of person to robb someone else. But again, I am not saying I did not do it. I just wish I knew for certain. 2.5 years is a long time to be incarcerated for something i am not even sure i did.

If someone wants to ask me about the incident, please contact me at the contcts below. Just ask for Private Joiner or Jaybo.

email- UncleBubba1985@aol.com

Phone- 318-535-8441

The kind of attitude that just pops out one sentence like this — "Yeah, but that Japanese Okinawan taxi driver must've provoked the GI by trying to rip him off. So I think we can understand the GI, the way he felt."

So the Stars and Stripes reported them.

Are you thus claiming I misrepresented how the Korean media works?

Stars and Stripes is a Department of Defense-authorized daily newspaper distributed overseas for the U.S. military community. Editorially independent of interference from outside its editorial chain of command, it provides commercially available U.S.and world news and objective staff-produced stories relevant to the military community in a balanced, fair, and accurate manner. By keeping its audience informed, Stars and Stripes enhances military readiness and better enables U.S. military personnel and their families stationed overseas to exercise their responsibilities of citizenship.
— Revised DoD Directive 5122.11

When was the curfew started?

Your question was good. In the US, when the media covers one story, they seem to notice more of them popping up here and there I guess because they start noticing it. But Korea is a lot smaller in size and in other ways. And they have been focused on GI crimes for a long time. So, my guess is that for some reason you have more GIs doing criminal things or getting caught in a bad situation.

The thing that gets me about people like Tom and Korean society overall is that —-

in the end of the day, nearly all, if not every one, of these GIs in the incidents will be punished. I believe most will be punished twice. 1st, they will either plead guilty or be found guilty in a Korean court. And a Korean judge will give them a sentence, and from what I've watched over the years since 1995, the sentences are most usually in line with what I've seen a Korean get for a similar conviction. Then, the soldier will probably be punished by the US military. The punishment on that side probably starts soon after the accusation — with detention and loss of priveledges.

People like Tom and Koreans react with outrage at the very face a US soldier would commit a crime, and they claim Korea or the outside world is "powerless" to do anything, and the military just shrugs its shoulders.

But, the US military has authority over the civil liberties of a soldier civilian police and courts in the US would love to have, but the ACLU would die of a heartattack if they did.

So, you have a handful of the 32,000 soldiers left in Korea who get into street fights with one or more Koreans.

And the soldiers are charged with a crime and punished by Korean law and the US military.

But this is such a moral outrage, people just can't stand it????

The only way this makes sense to me is if Tom-like claims are true — that the few acts reported are "just the tip of the iceberg" and many more similar and worse actions go unreported but Korean society has to suffer them — then perhaps the sense of moral outrage fit.

But it is hard to believe watching this for years that the Korean media knows about many more such incidents but sits on them.

And let's look at a flip-side angle.

In my opinion, Korean society is wrongheaded for how much attention it pays to bad behavior by some Koreans abroad.

You see articles like it every few months. A Korean-Korean will be in a foreign country and do something bad, and the Korean press will cover it. Or a Korean born in another land or having immigrated to another land will do something very bad, and the Korean media will cover it.

Or even with something like the big organized crime and prostitution bust in the US this year. Korean society reports it like some sense of national shame.

If these bad acts were a sign of a much, much bigger problem, or say if the Korean mafia was causing huge problems in the United States, maybe I could understand why the Korean media feels the need to lament such events.

But it makes little sense to me….

The soldiers in these incidents, if convicted by host country courts and incarcerated, will almost certainly not be retained by the Army after they serve their sentences but instead administratively discharged, probably with a "general" or "other-than-honorable" discharge (not sure about "bad conduct" or "dishonorable" discharges, I think these are reserved as "punishment" measures for the results of a US military court-martial).

Such an "administrative" discharge is not considered to be "punishment", as strictly defined by the UCMJ and by military regulations (though the soldier may refer colloquially to such a discharge as "punishment").

If he was in a US civilian prison the military might proceed with such a discharge immediately, but for a military member incarcerated overseas I think Uncle Sam would wait until he is released before proceeding with administrative dismissal, so that he retains his SOFA protection until then.

The idea that tough (but basically good-hearted) old soldiers can get into trouble, be thrown in the "guardhouse", lose their stripes, and then come back and re-earn them by "soldiering" on is at least 40-50 years out of date (I suppose this stereotype survives due to its prevalence in many old movies).

But in fact there's no "second chances" anymore. If a young guy gets drunk, takes a swing at a taxi driver, and it gets reported officially (and he goes to jail), he's almost certainly ruined any chance at a career in the military. From a long distance I sense that it's likely that host country nationals (such as the taxi drivers) sense this and that may be why some of them are provocative in their conduct toward US military (like the so-called sun visor "damage" to the taxi incident, as reported by the GI in an earlier entry).

If the offender is considered "redeemable" by his immediate chain of command and they can keep it out of the courts, this may not be true. But the problem with such incidents getting big play in host country press is that it inevitably heightens the visibility, and higher chain of command may take the final dispositon of the incident out of the hands of the immediate c of c.

Only the guys on the spot, in particular the chain of command can be the judge of this. If you are a young guy and happen to be involved in such an incident at a time when such things are receiving intensive scrutiny — too bad for you.

But I thought E-stripes which reported the naughtieness was a US army publication. Maybe you should write to them for over reporting GI misbehaviors. Or do you only get upset if when Korean publications report them?

1) Timing, there were some high profile inicidents involving Marines there around the same time.

2) Okinawa wants the US to commit to reduced forces on the Island.

3)The guy obviously did not make the right words of remorse which usually helps get the sentence lowered.

4) He was from Korea…..which does not help.

Either way its game over for the guy. My bet is he will do a year then be released and banned from ever entering Japan again , discharged with a BCD and sent on his way, all because he could not just pay a cab driver and go along his way.

It also higlights the types of incidents these days. This was not just a guy getting drunk and stupid, this was a criminal act.