UPDATE: I now have a new posting up that has the crime stats for Okinawa for 2002-2007 that are quite interesting.
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The US Marines on Okinawa are coming under some intense scrutiny after the rape of a 14 year old Okinawan girl a week ago allegedly by a Marine NCO, along with the arrest of two more junior enlisted Marines this week for drunken behavior. What I find interesting about this is that many people in Japan are expecting the Marines to have no criminal incidents:
“This is not a crime involving a single U.S. serviceman. If you take the stance that it is at the core of the Japan-U.S. alliance, this is not a matter I think can be solved simply by demanding tighter discipline or efforts to make sure something similar doesn’t happen again,” Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba said.
The government has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. military presence in Japan is essential for national security. If that is in fact the case, the government should not expect the United States to ask, as it has requested it to, but instead insist that Washington promise to come up with a concrete policy acceptable to the people of Japan, especially those in Okinawa, and will ensure they can live at ease and free from scandalous behavior. [Mainichi]
There are over 14,000 Marines stationed on Okinawa and over 33,000 US military personnel total in Japan. In addition to this number there are 52,000 dependents and 5,500 contractors stationed in Japan as well. So with a total population of 90,000 USFJ servicemembers and families, an expectation that they should commit no crime is unrealistic. Does anyone know of a city in Japan with over 90,000 people with no crime? When there is one then the Japanese can start holding US military personnel to that same standard. In the mean time you have to look at crime rates to determine if US servicemembers in Japan are committing an inordinate amount of crime compared to the local population.
So I went I did some searching on the Okinawa Prefecture’s official webpage and found this graph of criminal statistics involving US servicemembers stationed on Okinawa. The graph has statistics of crime committed by all Status of Forces Agreement personnel on Okinawa between 1972-2001. On the last year of the graph, 2001 SOFA status personnel committed 70 total crimes on Okinawa compared to 5,268 total crimes committed on Okinawa overall. Those 70 crimes when compared to the total crimes on Okinawa worked out to be 1.3% of total crime on Okinawa in 2001. This is significant because Okinawa has a population of 1,318,218 people while SOFA status personnel on Okinawa have a total population of roughly 50,000. This means that SOFA status personnel make up 4% of the Okinawan population but only committed 1.3% of the crime in 2001.
If you look at the graph you can see 2001 was actually a high year for crime because in the six years prior SOFA members comprised less than 1% of crime on Okinawa. Even in 1995 when the infamous rape of a 12 year old Okinawan girl occurred SOFA status personnel composed .5% of crime on Okinawa that year. Clearly when looking at the statistics, SOFA status personnel of Okinawa have committed less crime then the general population on Okinawa since the 1970’s. If anyone has the current SOFA status crime stats for Okinawa please leave a link in the comments section and I will add the findings to the post, but I seriously doubt the number of SOFA crime on Okinawa has surged above the 4% of the total population of Okinawa that SOFA status personnel comprise on the island.
I also want to emphasize that these stats are from the Okinawa Prefecture website which gives them great creditability. While searching for statistics all the usual anti-US sites had plenty of their own statistics that unsurprisingly did not match what is on the Okinawa Prefecture’s website. So clearly on Okinawa the military is facing a problem similar to what USFK leaders face on the Korean peninsula and that is the perceptions created by activists groups and a media willing to sensationalize their claims. Than this all gets further sensationalized by the Internet and before you know it everyone thinks the military on Okinawa is a bunch of out of control criminals even though the Okinawa Prefecture website clearly shows they are not.
7:36 am on February 20th, 2008 1
I did a year in Korea (Camp Casey 1-503) 96/97 and got familiar with the reputation the US military has over there. The thing about it that really gets to me is that I don’t recall ever seeing numbers like this come out of official statements of US military spokespeople or the US State department. What kind of ass-brained mentality thinks it’s practical or diplomatic to not respond with these facts when foreign media (and our own media) paint marines and soldiers as a bunch of thugs?!! Is Okinawa prefecture (and this blog) really doing more for the reputations of our troops than our own government? I didn’t know about these numbers myself until now. I probably should have done the kind of digging you have. I lived with the idea that US soldiers actually were committing crimes out of proportion to their numbers everywhere they went. Anyway, wow! This is an amazing post and I hope it gets some attention.
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8:49 am on February 20th, 2008 2
I cannot comment on how well USFJ defends itself against the constant accusations because I don’t follow USFJ issues as closely as I follow USFK issues. With USFK and even the US embassy especially after the 2002 armored vehicle accident they issued many press releases to counter disinformation put out by the media and the Internet and all their press releases were ignored.
It was the same thing in 2000 with the Yongsan water dumping scandal and other anti-US issues in Korea. USFK cannot make the Korean media print and broadcast the truth. This is where political leadership from Washington is needed to pressure the Korean politicians to show some leadership and crackdown on the lies and disinformation put out by the Korean media instead of in the case of the Roh administration actually encouraging it.
Most politicians in the US have very little understanding about what goes on in Korea and could care less until recently. Primarily through the work of Joshua Stanton with the OFK blog and his testimony to Congress more people in Washington are becoming aware of what is going on in Korea and some changes are happening such as the hand over of operation control, USFK reductions, as well as the Camp Humphreys relocation.
When US politicians are aware of what is going on and playing a leadership role it makes it harder for Korean politicians to demagogue and bash USFK for their own domestic political agendas.
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10:38 am on February 20th, 2008 3
If anyone out there could find me a link to one of those releases, I would love to see it. I don’t doubt your claim that they exist, I just would be very reassured if I could read one with an america.gov url above it. I tried searching the State department’s site (america.gov) but didn’t find anything.
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11:51 am on February 20th, 2008 4
Cedar here is a release from the US Embassy regarding the inaccurate media reports in regards to the 2002 Armored Vehicle Accident:
http://seoul.usembassy.gov/july_27_2002.html
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11:53 am on February 20th, 2008 5
Good response on that GI Korea.
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2:31 pm on February 20th, 2008 6
one heck of a post man.
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6:16 pm on February 20th, 2008 7
[...] servicemembers and their families are currently on lock down on Okinawa due to recent a spate of criminal incidents by US Marines. Share This Popularity: 1% Share [...]
7:27 pm on February 20th, 2008 8
[...] someone at the Stars & Stripes reading the ROK Drop because they just answered the request I posed yesterday in regards to providing the recent USFJ crime rate on [...]
7:45 pm on February 20th, 2008 9
Funny, although the majority of Japanese seem to be bashing the US marines in Okinawa in the mainstream media, the majority of the 2-channelers (where Japanese can anonymously write their raw views) share you opinion that crime-wise, the US troops have a better record than the locals and that this incident would not have made the headlines if it hadn’t been commited by a US serviceman. As for the lock down and the damage to the local business, most are of the opinion that the locals deserve it since they went along with the lefties in the unfair bashing, and that they should take the opportunity to experience how life would be like without the troops for once.
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8:45 pm on February 20th, 2008 10
I think the 2-channelers may be reflecting this opinion because I get the perception from my time in Japan that main islanders look down on the people of Okinawa since it has long been considered a bit of backward place.
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12:00 am on February 21st, 2008 11
Words just can’t describe how annoyed I am with all of this. First of all, it’s despicable that any grown man would touch a young girl. He should be punished heavily. I still just can not wrap my brain around why we’re all suffering for this crime. I had to get special permission to go to work off base, and I’m not even in the military! They’re calling it a “period of reflection” so we can become better ambassadors for our country. However, I was also specifically told not to go anywhere and spend money.
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12:19 am on February 21st, 2008 12
Actually, I’ve never in my life encountered anybody with that kind of prejudice towards Okinawa. I do know that the people of Okinawa still refer to the other parts of Japan as “naichi (pre-war term for mainland Japan in the strict sense)”, but most people on the outside presently regard Okinawa as just another prefecture, albeit one with a problem concerning the US base that is really inevitable when one considers its geographical location. The 2-channelers (though that phrase really doesn’t apply to any single group since there is a variety of opinions on 2 channel if one bothers to look) current scorn for Okinawa is mostly based on the wacky leftist view of its main newspaper, the Okinawa Times, and all the garbage that comes blaring out from the leftist activists who support a base-free Okinawa, who completely ignore the fact that the economy of Okinawa and the livelihood of its silent majority relies heavily on the presence of the US troops.
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10:42 am on February 21st, 2008 13
I admit my knowledge of attitudes of Japanese people is limited because I have never been stationed in Japan and have only visited the country four different times mainly to see my wife’s brother’s family there
However, from my limited knowledge of the place I got the impression that Okinawa is viewed sort of like Puerto Rico in the US as a nice place to visit but a bit of backwater with a lot of country bumpkins. This stereotype may or may not be true because I have never been to Puerto Rico but I know plenty of people who think this way.
What is ironic is that Puerto Rico has had its own issues in the past with the US military presence there. I think small islands with limited land is bound to have issues with a large military presence but the important thing is to keep things in context and makes decisions based on facts instead of disinformation.
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11:44 am on February 21st, 2008 14
The book Realm of the Dying Emperor by Norma Field:
http://www.amazon.com/Realm-Dying-Emperor-Japan-Centurys/dp/0679741895/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203555945&sr=8-1
talks about an Okinawa politician who burned a Japanese flag on government property. I haven’t read 2-channel because reading Japanese is still a very slow process for me, but I do know that there are some issues between Okinawa and the rest of Japan related to the way Japanese soldiers slaughtered Okinawans rather than let them surrender in WWII (also described in detail in that book). That they did the same to other Japanese in other places doesn’t make it a whole lot better. Whether or not Okinawans are Japanese has been an issue in the past and I think it’s almost entirely settled in the affirmative, but some people don’t agree.
In the six months I lived on the main island (Kuroiso, Tochigi prefecture), I never heard anything negative said about Okinawa. I also didn’t hear a lot of political talk. My Japanese is getting pretty good, but I think the presence of foreigners tends to shut down that kind of talk until you reach a much higher level of fluency and demonstrate an ability to argue in Japanese. That’s a long way off for me.
GI’s comment on the issues with a large military presence in a small island is close to the mark, but I don’t think it’s about the available space. I would say that it has more to do with the inherent issues between military and non-military which will always exist as long as you live in a culture that has a non-military and that doesn’t foster a good relationship between the two. Japan and the US are the same in that respect only Japan is more so because they have pacifism in their constitution–put there by the US military.
Really collectively Americans are at least as bad when it comes to slandering our own troops as any other country, arguably worse when you consider that they are *OUR* troops. Another book I recently read “Stolen Valor” by BG Burkett talks about how Vietnam veterans have been treated in the media and how far from reality that treatment always has been. The bullet points are that they are in fact less mentally ill, less drug addicted, and more financially successful than the general American population and that most of the bums on the street claiming to be Vietnam veterans have never even worn the soldier suit.
Another important problem inherent in the military and non-military relationship is that the human mind is drawn to scary things. There are good reasons for the mind to work this way, but if there’s no philosophical rudder, or there’s a defective one, scary stories not based in reality (like rampaging insane Vietnam vets) wind up being treated like legitimate concerns. The Burkett book tells of how the same story was briefly seen in the media in the 40’s, with a “Back from the war and now killing all of us” kind of headline, but WWII veterans were a much bigger and better organized group than Vietnam veterans ever were and they responded effectively to that story whenever it appeared, so it didn’t wind up looking like a legitimate part of the record.
Getting back to Okinawa and Japan. The story of different colored foreigners raping all the women and being responsible for all the crime has the same kind of scare-appeal that the damaged and dangerous Vietnam vet did and still does back here. And a lot of people aren’t capable of distinguishing that fright-appeal from reality.
This is why I’m so very impressed that Okinawa prefecture is doing the right thing on the issue–doing more for our Marines’ reputation than many of us are willing to do.
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1:17 pm on February 21st, 2008 15
Cedar,
Burkett’s book is excellent and really changed my views of Vietnam veterans that had been drilled into me since grade school by the either incompetent or bias education system as well as Hollywood and the media. I highly recommend it to everyone.
With Okinawa I’m not sure if the fear of foreigners raping Japanese women is a motivating factor or not since I have never been stationed there. From reading the Stars & Stripes over the years it appears land use is a major issue along with the crime, but as I have shown the crime statistics are just something exploited by the leftist groups and their media allies.
That just leaves land use as a real issue which once again reading the S&S many Okinawans feel that the mainlanders dumped all the servicemembers on them. I’m curious if further troop reduction would do anything to appease public sentiment on Okinawa?
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2:56 pm on February 21st, 2008 16
There’s so much that’s dead-on right in what you’re saying about the land use issue and the analogy to Puerto Rico. There was a West Wing episode about the controversy surrounding the Naval bombing range at Vieques. And it *is* unfair to put the burden of military land use so disproportionately on a given community. But why do you suppose the controversy (the Puerto Rican one) is not about all the other American communities who wish the Navy would drop bombs and fire missiles closer to them? I personally would like military aircraft and their bombs and missiles as close to me as they can safely do their thing. If there was a way they could safely drop bombs on a target barge in Elliot bay here in Seattle I would like nothing better than to go down to the pier and watch them. I love bombs and missiles because I know that my freedom depends on them and the people who have to train to drop them accurately. But most of Seattle doesn’t agree with that view. And most of America doesn’t either. So we put our Naval firing ranges in Puerto Rico. Some weapons systems do need to be far from the public for Opsec reasons and all that, but the point is, the land use issue wouldn’t be an issue, here or in Japan, if my philosophical views of military weapons were the dominant ones in our culture. But the opposite view of war and weaponry is very prevalent, has been for a long time, so prevalent in fact that one of our greatest military heroes wrote it into the Japanese postwar constitution, which is otherwise probably the 2nd best such document on earth.
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4:03 pm on February 25th, 2008 17
[...] the Philippines at Subic about 3 years back.GIKorea has been following this story pretty well. Read here and here for more from his ROKDROP blog.As always, click on the title of this post for the related [...]
9:35 am on February 29th, 2008 18
I would say that Hawaii would be a better analogy.
Its distance from the main part of the US (like Okinawa in Japan) is a great handicap to its economy, and there is zero chance that cities like New York or Tokyo will ever develop. So you could never experience the excitement, extravagance, chances of financial success that a metropolis has to offer if you remain in Okinawa, but that could be said of other prefectures as well like Iwate or Shimane (= South Dakota or Kansas of Japan, maybe), but poverty is not a general image associated with Hawaii or Okinawa. Having a base is unavoidable since it’s located in a strategically important position for the state it belongs to. (Although I presume that the stress on Okinawa’s society is greater since the US base is a foreign group, and friction is bound to be larger). Tourism is probably the only decent source of outside money. Sugar and pineapples are mostly likely the only cash crops (Hawaii has coffee, too, so maybe they’re better off), but they can’t compete with cheaper products from SE Asia.
Okinawa is just one of those many prefectures in Japan where more young people leave than return. At least, that’s my impression, having lived in Puerto Rico, New York, and several parts of Japan.
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7:07 am on March 1st, 2008 19
[...] other Okinawa news a trespassing charge against another Okinawa Marine that brought more public anger on the island was dropped as well. It will be interesting to see how the juicy girl rape case on [...]
8:23 am on March 24th, 2008 20
[...] like with the Okinawa rape case that was debunked, you have to wait and allow the investigation to take place before jumping to [...]
3:50 am on March 28th, 2008 21
I really liked reading the first post on this page and shown the link to the actual statistics of the crime rate committed by US servicemen. I just ended my tour on Oki (Feb 2005-Feb 2008) and I’ve come to know that any incident that involves an American serviceman doing something to a local gets immediate media coverage and gets blown out of proportion which in turn has all the prefectural governments start pounding the US for stricter measures and fueling the fire in the bellies of anti-base protest groups. These guys love to champion their cause about how much crime in Oki is caused by military personnel and their dependents yet I have yet to see one web site post the actual crime statistics. Some web sites post info on how much land the military occupies and in the end that’s what it’s all about. The US presence maybe reduced in the coming years due to the recent alleged rape, but for those seeking the total removal of all military in Okinawa will have to wait for a long, long time.
By the way-Does anybody really believe that when Okinawa becomes military-free, would their economy recover and stabilize? For me, I think it would plummet like a sinking stone.
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4:59 am on April 27th, 2008 22
[...] Found the following here. So I went I did some searching on the Okinawa Prefecture’s official webpage and found this graph of criminal statistics involving US servicemembers stationed on Okinawa. The graph has statistics of crime committed by all Status of Forces Agreement personnel on Okinawa between 1972-2001. On the last year of the graph, 2001 SOFA status personnel committed 70 total crimes on Okinawa compared to 5,268 total crimes committed on Okinawa overall. Those 70 crimes when compared to the total crimes on Okinawa worked out to be 1.3% of total crime on Okinawa in 2001. This is significant because Okinawa has a population of 1,318,218 people while SOFA status personnel on Okinawa have a total population of roughly 50,000. This means that SOFA status personnel make up 4% of the Okinawan population but only committed 1.3% of the crime in 2001. [...]
10:09 pm on May 13th, 2008 23
i was stationed in japan and okinawa for 21/2 years 90- 93 and deployed back to japan in 94.okinawans commit aussults on u.s servicemrn all the time(where are these stats)they also are looked at and treated like 2nd class people and are not considered japanese.maybe these racists should spend more time on these issues instead of harrasing the people who are keeping them and japan from being wiped out by china*who hates them both)in the near future.okinawa is a dangerous uncivilized place compared to mainland japan and the bars are full of sex slaves from the p.i as are japan and china.clean youre own house first.
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6:19 am on May 14th, 2008 24
Mr. Jones
I was very pleasantly surprised to read that Okinawa prefecture is publishing the stats. I was surprised that the numbers were as they are, and then surprised again that Okinawa prefecture is posting them in English and Japanese online. An honorable news media would mention these numbers every time they report on a protest against the US presence, but neither the US or Japan has one of those.
Knowing what I do from this post–that Okinawa prefecture has a much better regard for the facts of this issue than the media, it seems likely that the prefectural government may have the numbers you’re talking about. I would, on the other hand, be very surprised if someone in the media (theirs or ours) reported them. I’ll try and remember to dig around for that data at some point and, if I find anything, I’ll post it here.
Another thing I know absolutely nothing about but would be interested to learn is what is the security benefit of having marines on Okinawa? Their number isn’t big enough to make much of a difference in a second Korean war. And there’s no enemy that can reach Okinawa without getting past the US navy first. There’s nobody on earth who can get past the US navy. Why do we need ground troops over there?
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9:27 pm on May 16th, 2008 25
[...] Marine that was alleged to have raped a 14 year old Japanese girl and then had Japanese charges dropped against him, was cleared of rape once again in his military [...]
12:33 am on June 7th, 2008 26
[...] for decades. The US State Department should be answering the Japanese and Korean news media with statistics like these and aggressively defending the reputations of our troops. The people in Okinawa and Korea can’t [...]
6:06 pm on July 18th, 2008 27
[...] http://rokdrop.com/2008/02/19/us-marines-on-okinawa-face-scrutiny-over-recent-crimes/ [...]